Near the banks of the Nile
I walked in the park
and came across a group
of schoolgirls, teenagers.
Friendly, not flirtatious, they smiled.
– Welcome to Luxor.
– Ahlan bikum, I replied,
and they smiled again.
– Will you join in our game? said the teacher.
So I stood in the circle
and we played like nine-year-olds.
Happy for me to take their photograph
in their all-enveloping dresses,
their white headscarves,
they smiled or, wary of the camera,
cast their eyes down.
They don’t meet many foreigners.
In Qena, their town, tourism
is not encouraged.
Luxor in the headlines.
Tourists massacred by extremists.
Were they from Qena too?
Will these gentle girls remember
our small gesture of friendship?
or is it lost,
drowned in infidel blood?
I should have written to the teacher,
but I lost the address.
You know how it is.
