Rashid

Description

Also known as Rosetta, Rashid is a lush, green city at the Nile’s western mouth — a striking contrast to Alexandria’s dust and glare. Tall houses of alternating black and red brick line streets shaded by date palms and orange groves, and the busy quay stands crowded with boats three deep. The party reached Rashid after a rough passage through the turbulent waters where the brown Nile shoves out against the sea over a dangerous underwater bar; Nathaniel’s quick action at the tiller alongside Captain Rais Sala got them through the standing waves and broken foam safely.

Their first night in Egypt proper beyond Alexandria was spent in a well-appointed brick house built right to the edge of the river, with a wooden deck extending out over the water. It was here that Emma pressed the silver St. George necklace into Thomas’s hands, and he told her — haltingly, in what was by his standards poetry — that he had had men behind him and beside him his whole career, but never anything over him, and that he would not take it off.

From Rashid, the party transferred to a dahabeah for the multi-day river journey up the Nile to Cairo.

Notable Features

• Tall houses of alternating black and red brick — the city’s distinctive architecture, immediately different from Alexandria’s whitewashed Mediterranean look.
• Date palms and orange groves — the green, fertile character of the Delta after the desert coast.
• The busy quay — boats crowded three deep, the city’s working river harbour.
• The riverside boarding house — a brick house at the river’s edge with a deck over the water; unnamed at the table, a candidate for naming only if the party returns and it recurs.
• The Nile bar — immediately offshore/upriver of Rashid, the dangerous meeting of river and sea where two riptides collide over the underwater bar; the site of the crossing’s one moment of real danger.

Connections

• The Nile River — Rashid sits at its mouth; the site of the party’s dangerous crossing of the bar.
• Cairo — five days upriver by dahabeah, the party’s next major stop.
• Reis Salah — captained the djerm that brought the party from Alexandria through the bar to Rashid.

Appearances

Relationships

• Near The Nile River — Sits at the Nile's western mouth, where the river meets the Mediterranean over a dangerous underwater bar
• Near Cairo — The party's next stop, five days upriver by dahabeah