Flowing North

I’m gliding down the Nile on a skiff in my free time this week. Even bathing in it, standing in the silky water under the prow of the wooden boat on smooth sand. Watching the striated desert and the banana trees and the scrubby brush on the banks slide by in the impossible heat. There are green bee-eaters, doves, crested larks, and Nile Valley sunbirds dipping in the heavy air like the fish below my boat.

In her book Down the Nile, Rosemary Mahoney has met a Nubian man, Amr, captain of a small boat who helps her realize her dream of rowing alone on the ancient river. There are simple meals described. Animals. Men in long white caftans and turbans or nearly naked men brown as stones. Women fully veiled from scalp to heel. Small conversations detailed. White teeth. Cracked and yellowed feet. Not much is happening, but I am drawn to the book whenever I get a few minutes. A page here. Four pages there. What a lovely reading experience. Mahoney is a reporter with a poet’s eye.