Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 76

workers beating their bowls and buckets, the furniture makers with their saws and chisels and the shouts of the butchers, the bakers and the other stall holders was deafening.

Right the way down the centre of the street ran a narrow canal which effectively divided it into two separate parallel boulevards and also gave some respite from the clangour and business of the city as well as cooling the already heat-filled air. To the west was the Moon gate. We turned eastwards towards the Sun Gate and the Nile Delta. The double roadway was jammed with carts and wagons, piled high with textiles, timber, building stone, everything imaginable. The drivers were pulling and pushing their mules and horses, their oxen and donkeys, jostling with each other as they careered along the carriageways. There were men bent double with carrying frames on their backs, leather belts tight across their foreheads, piled high with boxes and bales, weaving in and out of the various wheeled transports and there were camels, heads held high in the air, loping along through the middle of it all seemingly indifferent to the uproar, huge burdens roped to their humps. It looked chaotic to me, but everyone seemed to know what they were doing and where they were heading.

A little way along the street, on the left, was what must once have been a truly magnificent Ionic building, but it was now roofless and covered with wooden scaffolding.

THE JOURNEY