A Season to Every Time

In Luxor the season is Spring and turning to summer. The Time Traveller’s Wife rests in her Palm Palace in the shadow of Qourna mountain, surrounded by bright fields and migrating song birds. And mind-numbing heat is also migrating this way. I tell her about a new cool land – far to the west – filled with polite people – an orderly and educated society – with good food and true friends. She once was there, I remind her, before a treacherous employer’s jealousy stung her heart beside the Nile. In this new land she will find family, I tell her; people who speak her language, interesting work, and a life to remind her of happier times. So spoke the Time Traveller – who has seen these things in his travels. Her eyes held interest, but scepticism too. As I pressed my point, the breeze scattered reflections upon the Nile and my words were blurred. The evening breeze helped a felucca downstream, and the current held it fast.