36 ❧ chapter one
in Egypt, the Sudan, Kenya, and Zanzibar before taking up my fi rst duties in
Johannesburg. I give here excerpts from a simulated diary based on my notes
and recollections.
Cairo
It is a shock to tumble from the Baroque world of Ansbach, Munich, and
come straight into the Arabian Nights. I see that I shall have a chance to follow
up what I only briefl y glimpsed during my day in Algiers in 1959.
Ancient Egypt has always left me rather chilly, both toward its civilization and
toward its art. But I am fascinated by the Islamic architecture of Cairo. Indeed
it was only incidentally, so to speak, that this morning I fi rst caught sight of
the Pyramids from a high and dusty minaret. In many of the older mosques I
recognize a style that I already know from vestiges in southern Spain. What a
happy sense of interior space uncluttered by representational sculpture or by
proportion-destroying frescos and grave monuments: How grateful I am for
the prohibition of man’s graven image and for the reduction of decoration to
a busy background music of plant fi gures and geometrical patterns. The cool-
ness of these interiors, which is blessedly unlike that of air conditioning, and
the fountain-fed courtyards give forth an irresistible magic. They offer spacious
oases of calm into which to escape from the dusty, broiling world outside.
Nairobi
The country is magnifi cent—high grassy savannahs with perfect visibility
everywhere. We had hardly reached the interior of the reserve before giraffes
appeared in abundance, and shortly thereafter a pride of lions scarcely more
than ten feet away from our car. My photos turned out very badly, but I had
fulfi lled my ambition, and not long thereafter could afford to give away
my camera and all its complicated appurtenances. Thereafter, every sort of
animal made its appearance; herds of zebra, lines of ostriches silhouetted
against the sky, and just before nightfall, a mother cheetah and two cubs.
This evening we made a montage with a postcard I had brought with me of
the Prunksaal in which I had played at Ansbach. When completed, it showed
a giraffe in a perfect rococo setting nuzzling at a large crystal chandelier.
My note produced an invitation to tea this afternoon at Government
House. The mansion is surrounded by terraces with superb English fl ower-
ing borders. In the drawing room I fi nd a small clavichord by Tom Goff, in
perfect tune, and on which I oblige with a French Suite and a few Preludes
and Fugues.
Zanzibar
I have never yet come so close to the Orient, and the spice-laden breezes
of the Indian Ocean conspire with my fi rst ride in a rickshaw to conjure up
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rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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