down to the river to pray

I was Egypt-mad in March. It began with a purchase of an old Life magazine with Liz Taylor as Cleopatra on the cover, continued with a viewing of Death on the Nile, a hunting down of an old Vogue article about Christian Louboutin's mad dash to Cairo as a youth, a search for the perfect copy of The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, the loss of one achingly perfect Egyptiana bag on eBay, the naming of a card, and ended with...Passover.

"seven gentlemen wore trembling wings from cairo"

Clea (the final volume of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet)
purchased at a book stall in istanbul