DIY History | Transcribe | Iowa Women’s Lives: Letters and Diaries | Eve Drewelowe travel correspondence, 1928-1929

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Eve Drewelowe travel correspondence, 1928-1929

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The AMERICAN EXPRESS CO. Inc.
CONTINENTAL-SAVOY BUILDINGS.
VISITORS' WRITING ROOM.
(Not Official)
CAIRO, Feb. 18, 1929.
Dearest Anne + Bobbie,
It seems absolutely thrilling to write a letter upon a Cairo letterhead; for of all the places connected with romance Cairo seems to outspell  them all, for me. And even now that we are here and have seen a big modern city with native outskirts and local color, the spell is not broken. Probably it is because I think of Cairo without the modern element and the tremendous French influence which dates back several hundred of years. Looking out over the city it is pierced with slender mosque minerets reaching high above the other buildings and is capped by mosque domes. Here as everywhere else in Egypt are buildings jutting out into narrow irregular streets. And the color over all is the powdery chalk-dust of years, faded to bleached bone dust by eternal years of sunshine. The sun too,is a constant glare. It dims the color of softer lights and throw jet black shadows from the form of objects - the middle valves or greys of different tones and thus lost. Even the people (the women) are an extreme contrast to the blare of white light. The go about draped in solemn black from head to foot and only the eyes are left unveiled. The vanity of the males, however, clad as they are in modern European dress, is fittingly topped by a red "fez," the headdress borrowed by our strutting parading "Shriners."
India is a land of peoples; Egypt is a land of monuments. No other country has anything that compares with the tombs, the temples, the sphinx or the pyramids which date back these several thousands of years. The

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The AMERICAN EXPRESS CO. Inc. CONTINENTAL-SAVOY BUILDINGS. VISITORS' WRITING ROOM. (Not Official) CAIRO, Feb. 18, 1929. Dearest Anne + Bobbie, It seems absolutely thrilling to write a letter upon a Cairo letterhead; for of all the places connected with romance Cairo seems to outspell them all, for me. And even now that we are here and have seen a big modern city with native outskirts and local color, the spell is not broken. Probably it is because I think of Cairo without the modern element and the tremendous French influence which dates back several hundred of years. Looking out over the city it is pierced with slender mosque minerets reaching high above the other buildings and is capped by mosque domes. Here as everywhere else in Egypt are buildings jutting out into narrow irregular streets. And the color over all is the powdery chalk-dust of years, faded to bleached bone dust by eternal years of sunshine. The sun too,is a constant glare. It dims the color of softer lights and throw jet black shadows from the form of objects - the middle valves or greys of different tones and thus lost. Even the people (the women) are an extreme contrast to the blare of white light. The go about draped in solemn black from head to foot and only the eyes are left unveiled. The vanity of the males, however, clad as they are in modern European dress, is fittingly topped by a red "fez," the headdress borrowed by our strutting parading "Shriners." India is a land of peoples; Egypt is a land of monuments. No other country has anything that compares with the tombs, the temples, the sphinx or the pyramids which date back these several thousands of years. The