"Egyptian Time combines an exquisite and telling selection of images by photographer Robert Lyons with the sensuous words of Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz. The richness and subtlety of Lyons's photographs match the poetry and mystery of Mahfouz's short story, published here for the first time in English. "There is so much to love," Mahfouz writes in "The Cradle," a timeless evocation of the everyday wonders, fears, and blessings of a childhood in Cairo, in a time not that long ago." "There is so much to love in Robert Lyons's photographs, as he brings Egypt, a land whose past is very much alive, into our vision - the eternal to the present. His is a journey into the heart of a land and its people, and always his camera finds the unexpected grace, the contraries of contemporary life in a land so rich in history. Through his personal vision he reveals the quality of light and life that is unique to Egypt, a land where donkeys make their way through streets filled with automobiles; where the blue-green Nile flows for the boatman practicing his time-honored craft; where a field of grass opens onto the ruins of an ancient king, burning pink in the dusk, and one recalls the child in Mahfouz's story, who "appreciated the strange world of antiquities...a wonderland whose emblems were sketched into my heart and imagination forever."" "Both Naguib Mahfouz and Robert Lyons are masters of a quiet drama, allowing us to see the interiors and exteriors of Egypt - the people, homes, bustling streets, colorful markets, gardened roofs, minarets, and skies of this timeless land. Theirs is a celebration of the everyday, of "sensual bliss," where every last detail leaves an ember of resonance, and the mythologies of the old exist in peaceful opposition with those of the new."--BOOK JACKET.