Thebes of the Hundred Gates

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The sensory impact pressed in on him from all sides at once in the first dazzling moment of his arrival: a fierce bombardment of smells, sights, sounds, everything alien, everything much too intense, animated by a strange inner life. Luminous visions assailed him. He wandered for some indeterminate span of astounded time in shimmering dream-forests. Even the air had texture, contradictory and confusing, a softness and a roughness, a heaviness and a giddy lightness. Egypt coursed through him like an uncheckable river, sparking and fizzing, stunning him with its immensity, with its stupefying aliveness.

He was inhaling magic, and he was choking on it. Breathing was a struggle—he was so stunned that he had to remind himself how it was done—but the real problem was the disorientation. There was too much information and he was having trouble processing it. It was like sticking not just your fingertip but your whole head into the light-socket. He was a dozen different sizes and he was experiencing every moment of his life, including moments he hadn’t yet lived, in a single simultaneous flash.

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