The Valley of the Kings is presented as the destination of a month’s medical leave during the narrator’s recovery from near-fatal typhoid in Damascus. Rather than a permanent home or a site of combat, it becomes a temporary place of convalescence: he visits the pharaohs’ tombs, travels the Nile, and resumes writing while waiting to learn whether he can return to flying.

A Place of Medical Leave

The narrator is sent to the Valley of the Kings after surviving typhoid with internal hemorrhages. Although he has recovered enough to leave hospital, he remains vulnerable to blackouts and fainting; the medical officers at the Damascus base will not yet allow him back into an air crew. Their instruction is specific: he must spend a month on leave before even considering a return to duty.

The leave follows a grave illness in which five transfusions have not stopped the hemorrhages and his doctors give him only a remote chance of survival. After delirium and a long, incomplete return of reason, he has also suffered lasting physical damage. The Valley is therefore associated not with an effortless recovery but with an uncertain interval between survival and the possibility of flying again.

Tombs, River, and Writing

During his stay, the narrator visits the tombs of the pharaohs and falls deeply in love with the Nile. He travels the river’s entire navigable course twice in both directions, making the journey a substantial part of his leave rather than a brief excursion. At Luxor, he spends long hours on the balcony of the Winter Palace, watching feluccas pass.

The balcony also becomes a place of work and correspondence. The narrator resumes his book and writes several letters to his mother to make up for the prolonged silence caused by his illness. The setting thus holds together physical recuperation, renewed literary effort, and the distance separating him from home.

Letters from Home and the End of Leave

His mother’s replies seem to show little anxiety, even though she has gone at least three months without news of him. Their tone, however, has changed. In one letter she tells him not to fear for her, says he no longer needs her and can stand on his own feet, urges him to marry, and asks him to write a great book. She also says her health is good and that her doctor is pleased with her.

Reading and rereading the letter on the balcony above the Nile, the narrator senses a sadness and reticence absent from her earlier correspondence. For the first time, she does not speak of France. Her repeated appeals for him to be brave unsettle him, although he takes comfort in believing that she is still alive and hopes to win the race against time by returning home in triumph. In the narrative, the Valley of the Kings is consequently a temporary refuge that sharpens rather than resolves his anxiety: recovery and renewed work proceed alongside a growing suspicion that something in his mother’s letters remains unsaid.