A Death in Cairo, Part 2

Today continues to be Wednesday, 30 August 2006.

Because of recent movements, the Library of the Museum of the Bourgeois is somewhat out of order.

Which gives me the excuse, for a moment, from approaching the shelf, on which sits the works of Mahfouz, and saying:

"Are you orphans now, now that your father has died? I’m sorry for bringing you this news in such a stark way, but you are his words, and he never shrank from looking pitiless facts in the face, and so I must honour him and you by doing the same, even though it hurts you."

Let’s just sit down by the waters, and weep, and I will try to comfort you by recalling Auden on the death of Yeats: “He became his admirers.”