Contact! (19 page)
Authors: Jan Morris
A cabman's wink
I was wandering the streets of Alexandria's Arab QuarterââThe best way to see it', E. M. Forster said, âis to wander aimlessly about'âwhen I happened to catch the eye of a wrinkled cabby with a towel wrapped round his head, high behind his poor Rosinante on the seat of his gharry. On the impulse of the moment I winked: and instantly there crossed his face an expression of indescribable knowingness and complicity, half comic, half conspiratorialâas though between us, he, the city and I, we had plumbed the depths of human and historical experience, and were still coming up for more.
The baby, we knew, was very near death.
We lay sleepless in our room overlooking the garden,
and a great moon shone.
Towards midnight a nightingale began to sing.
All night long it trilled and soared in the moonlight,
infinitely sad, infinitely beautiful.
We lay there through it all,
each knowing what the other was thinking,
and the bird sang on, part elegy, part comfort, part
farewell, until the moon failed
and we fell hand in hand into sleep.
In the morning the child had gone.