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Updated: May 10, 2025
This primitive arrangement is called a shaduf, and by its means the water from the Nile is lifted up to the surface of the fields, where it runs away in miniature channels to water the roots of the maize. This is one of the most extraordinary sights in the world.
Again the crew got out their poles. Two men stripped, went overboard with a rope, and, running along the shore, towed the Fatma up stream against the tide till she came to a lonely place where two men were vehemently working a shadûf. There they tied up for the night. The gold was fading. Less brilliant, but deeper now, was the dream of river and shore, of the groves of palms and the mountains.
That night, as she sat in the tent, she saw before her the orange garden that bordered the Nile, the wild geraniums making a hedge about the pavilion of bamboo, she heard the loud voice of the fellah by the shadûf. Was it raised in protest or warning? Did she care? Could she care? Could any voice stop her from following the voice that called her on?
In any case the human species, in course of deterioration through overstrain, would find amongst these singers of the shaduf and these labourers with the antiquated plough, brains unclouded by alcohol, and a whole reserve of tranquil beauty, of well-balanced physique, of vigour untainted by bestiality.
Armine listened, sitting absolutely still. Then suddenly she moved, got up, and went swiftly towards the house. Nigel was coming back. Mingling with the voices of the shadûf men she heard the voices of Baroudi's Nubians. When she had reached the house, she went up at once to her bedroom, shut the door, and stood by the open window that gave on to a balcony which faced towards the Nile.
The voices of the shadûf men had now suddenly died away. With the rapid falling of night the singers' time for repose had come; they had slipped on their purple garments, and were walking to their villages. Those other voices drew nearer and nearer, murmuring deeply, rather than actually singing, their fatalistic chaunt which set the time for the oars. Darkness came. The voices ceased. Mrs.
She longed to remain in this lodge in the wilderness, to be overtaken by the night of the African stars in the Villa of the Night of Gold. Now she heard again the far-away voice of the fellah by the shadûf, warning her surely to go. Or was it not, perhaps, telling her to stay? It was strange how that old, dead passion, which had metamorphosed her life, returned to her mind in this land.
The shadûf man cried again, and again she remembered a night of her youth, again she remembered "Aîda," and the uprising of her nature. She had been punished for that uprising she did not believe by a God, who educates, but by the world, which despises. Could she be punished again?
Antique and drowsy, with a plaintive drowsiness, was their continual music, which very gradually takes possession of the lonely voyager's soul. The shadûf men, in their long lines leading the eyes towards the south, sang to the almost brazen sky. And heat reigned over all. Was this pursuit? Where was the Loulia? To what secret place had she crept against the repelling tide?
All the way up the Nile we shall see them, and we shall hear the old shadûf songs, that sound as if they came down from the days when they cut the Sphinx out of the living rock, and we shall hear the drowsy song of the water-wheels, as the sleepy oxen go round and round in the sunshine; and we shall see the women coming in lines from the inland villages with the water-jars poised on their heads.
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