Luxor

Luxor is the place where Romain Gary was sent to recover after typhoid nearly killed him in Damascus, and where medical convalescence became a period of travel, writing, and anxious attention to letters from his mother. The month’s leave offered a pause in his return to combat, but it also sharpened his sense that time was running out before he could get home to her.

A prescribed refuge after illness

Still subject to blackouts and fainting, Gary faced a medical examination at the Damascus base after recovering from a prolonged, life-threatening illness. The doctors did not clear him to rejoin an aircrew; instead, they ordered him to spend a month in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor before even considering his return to flying. The location was therefore both a destination and a condition of recovery: his military future remained uncertain while he was required to rest.

Tombs, river, and resumed work

In Luxor, Gary visited the tombs of the Pharaohs and fell deeply in love with the Nile. He traveled the river’s entire navigable course twice in each direction, then spent long hours on the balcony of the Winter Palace watching feluccas pass. The account places ancient tombs and the moving river beside the suspended routine of medical leave. Gary also resumed work on his book, making Luxor a period of renewed literary activity as well as physical recuperation.

Letters from Nice

During his stay, Gary wrote to his mother to make up for a long silence. Her letters seemed to show little anxiety, even though her latest letter must have left Nice after she had gone at least three months without news of him. Its restrained sadness and repeated appeals for courage troubled him. She urged him not to worry about her, said he was now a man who could stand on his own feet, encouraged him to marry and to write a great book, and claimed that her health was good. For the first time, she did not speak of France; the omission, together with her increasingly urgent exhortations to be brave, made Gary suspect that something remained unsaid.

The Nile setting thus frames a double interval: Gary is separated from the fighting while he rebuilds his strength, and separated from his mother while trying to understand her letters. The river journey and his resumed writing give the leave forward movement, but his hope of returning home triumphantly is shadowed by the possibility that his mother’s apparent calm conceals a crisis.