Chapter 17
Deva‘s returnDeva walked the muddy streets of her home village and yearned for the grandeur and the space of the mountains, the magnificence of the palaces and colonnades of Egypt. She was impatient with the smallness of the houses, the contentment of the people. ‘Why are they satisfied with so little,’ she asked herself impatiently, ‘when there is so much more they could have?’ She spent more and more time telling them what they were missing, describing her Egyptian journeys, the chairs inlaid with ivory and gold, the cloth so fine you could see through it, the exotic foods, the fans of ostrich feather, vases of alabaster... Most listened fascinated to her tales and looked around their little houses of wood and thatch, with their few practical vessels of earthenware and wood,
