Chapter 17

An abandoned mosque outside the walls of Cairo, and a caravan off for Suez across the desert

But every dog has his day. A sallow youth issued from the hotel and called for a man to carry a letter. “Buttons” was already raising a hand to point out a pock-marked Arab who had departed on four commissions since my arrival, when the tidal wave of humanity set me on the piazza. I shouted to the sallow youth just as “buttons” fell upon me. The youth nodded. It was a long-sought opportunity. I reversed rôles with the cockney and landed him in a picturesque spread-eagle on the heads of the backsheesh-seeking multitude. Had he not been wont to use his influence in favor of a very limited number of the throng, he would have been more immaculate in appearance, when he was dug out by his pock-marked confederate and restored to his coign of vantage. Meanwhile I had received the letter and a five piastre piece in payment, and had departed on my errand.

The coin paid my evening meal and a lodging for two nights in “the union,” and left me coppers enough for a native breakfast. Sunday was no time either to “forage,” or to visit rectors of the church of England. In company with Pia, who would under no circumstances use his inventive pen on the Sabbath, I visited those few corners of Cairo to which my search had not yet led me; the Mohammedan University of El Azkar, the citadel, and the ruined mosques beyond the walls.

When all other resources fail him, the Anglo-Saxon wanderer has one unfailing friend in the East—Tommy Atkins. However penniless and forlorn he may be, the glimpse of a red jacket and a monkey cap on a lithe, erect figure, hurrying through the foreign throng, is certain to give him new heart. Thomas has become a familiar sight in Cairo since the days of the Arabi rebellion. Down by the Kasr-el-Nil bridge, out in the shadows of the pencil-like minarets of Mohammed Ali’s mosque, in parade grounds scattered through the city, he may be found any afternoon perspiringly chasing a football or setting up his wickets in the screaming sunlight, to the astonishment and delight of a never-failing audience of apathetic natives. He doesn’t pose as a philanthropist—simple T. Atkins—nor as a man of iron-bound morality—rather prides himself, in fact, on his incorrigible wickedness. But the case has yet to be recorded in which he has not given up his last shilling more whole heartedly than the smug tourist would part with his cigar band.

Thomas, however, has no overwhelming love for “furriners—Dutchmen,dagoes, and such like.” It would be out of keeping with his profession. That was why Pia, after pointing out to me the least public entrance to the cavalry barracks, on this Sunday noon, strolled on down the street. The officers’ dinner was already steaming when I was welcomed by the six privates of that day’s mess squad. By the time it had been served, I was lending the cooks able assistance in disposing of the plentiful remnants, amid the stories and laughter of a red-coats’ messroom. Even the bulging pockets with which I departed were less cheering than the last bellow from the barrack’s kitchen:—“Drop in to mess any day, Yank, till you land something. No bloody need to let your belly cave in while there’s a khaki suit in Cairo.”

I was admitted to the library of the Reverend —— the following morning without so much as a hinted challenge from Maghmoód. The good rector was more distressed than surprised that I had not yet found work.

“The difficulty is right here,” he cried, as he made out a second Asile ticket. “No one will hire you in those rags, if you have a dozen trades. I must pick you up something that looks less disreputable. Come on Wednesday. I shall surely have something to offer.”

I fished out the note of the Greek cigarette maker and bore greetings from one European resident to another for two days more. On the third, I returned to the rectory and received a bundle of astonishing bulk.

“These things may not all fit you,” said the rector, “but it is all we have been able to collect.”

Red-eyed with hope, I hurried back to the Asile and opened the package. Just what I should have represented in the garments that came to view I have not yet concluded. On top was a pair of trousers, in excellent condition, but of that screaming pattern of unabashed checks in which our cartoonists are accustomed to garb bookmakers and Tammany politicians. In texture, they were just the thing—for Arctic explorers, and they resigned in despair some four inches above my Nazarene slippers. Next came a white shirt, with a mighty expanse of board-like bosom—and without a single button; then the low-cut vest of a dress suit, and, lastly, a minister’s long frock coat, with wide, silk-faced lapels.

The first shock over, I bore the treasure back to the rectory. But the good padre refused to unburden me. “Oh, I don’t want them around the house!” he protested, “If you can’t wear them, sell them.” Even the proprietor of “the union,” however, refused to come to myrescue. With much cajoling, I lured an unsophisticated newcomer at the Asile inside the vest and trousers, and intrusted the other garments to the safe-keeping of Cap Stevenson.

The endless stream of notes, having its source at the office of Cook and Son, flowed on unchecked. If my object had been merely to gain intimate acquaintance with the Cairenes of all classes, I could not have chosen a better method. No tourist, with his howling bodyguard of guides and dragomans, ever peeped into half the strange corners to which my wanderings led me. My command of Arabic, too, increased by leaps and bounds; for the necessity of giving expression of my innermost thoughts to the servant body of Cairo required an ever-increasing vocabulary.

The two-hundredth letter of introduction—if my count be not at fault—took me to that ultra-fashionable world across the Nile. The director of the Jockey Club read the latest epistle carefully, and, with sportsman-like fairness, gave me another. The delivery thereof required my presence in the great Gezireh Hotel. For once I was not even challenged by the army of servants; the very audacity of my entrance into those Elysian Fields left the astonished domestics standing in petrified rows behind me. The superintendent was most kind. He gave me, even without the asking, a letter of introduction! The curse of Cain on him who invented the written character! My entire Cairene experience had been bounded by this endless chain of notes through all the cycle of her cosmopolitan inhabitants.

The new missive carried me back to Shepherd’s Hotel, and for once I escaped employment by a hair’s breadth. The portly Swiss manager was inclined to overlook the shortcomings in my attire. He needed a cellar boy, could use another porter, or “you may do as a bell-boy,” he mused, with half-closed eyes, “if—”

What vision was this? Might I aspire even to displace mine ancient enemy, in all the splendor of two close rows of bright, brass buttons, and pace majestically back and forth with the sang-froid of a lion tamer, above the common horde I had so lately quitted? What folly to keep silent concerning those acquirements that especially fitted me to serve a cosmopolitan clientèle, while fickle fortune was holding forth this golden prize! I broke in upon the manager’s brown study with a deluge of German. He opened wide his eyes. I addressed him in French. He sputtered with astonishment. I continued in Italian. He waved his hands above his head like a swimmer about to go down for the third time. I added a savoring of Spanishand Arabic for good measure, and he clutched weakly at a hotel pillar.

Gradually, strength returned to his trembling limbs. He rubbed his astonished gorge with a ham-like hand and dislodged an imprisoned shriek:—“Aber, mein lieber Kerl!Speaking all those langvages and out of a job—and in rhags! Why—you—you—you must haf been up to some crhooked business, yes?” He glanced fearfully about him at the silver ornaments of the office. “I—I—I am very sorry, we haf not now a single vacancy. But—but you vill not haf the least trouble—mit so viel’ Sprachen—in getting a position, not the slightest! I gif you a note—to Cook and Son.”

I wandered sadly away across the city and stumbled upon the American legation. Long battle won me admittance to the office of the secretary. Beyond that I could not force my way. The secretary heard my case, and, eager to be off to some afternoon function, thrust an official sheet into his typewriter and set forth in a “to-whom-it-may-concern” the half-dozen trades I mentioned; and several others to which I had never aspired. A second sheet he ruined with a score of addresses, and bade me be gone. If there was any corner of Cairo from Heliopolis to Masr el Attika which I had not already visited, these documents soon repaired the oversight. Two days the new task required, and it brought no reward, save one. The head of the Egyptian railway system promised me a pass to the coast when I chose to leave the country. I did not choose at once, and, returning on the third day to the legation, fought my way into the sanctum of the consul-general himself.

“If you are looking for work of a specific character,” said that gentleman, “I can do no more than has already been done—give you more addresses. If you are merely looking forwork, I can give you employment at once.”

I pleaded indifference to qualifying adjectives.

The consul chose a card from his case, turned it over, and wrote on the back:—“Tom;—Let Franck do it.”

“Take this,” he said, “to my residence; it is opposite that of Lord Cromer, near the Nile, and give it to my butler.”

“Tom,” the commander-in-chief of the servant body of a vast establishment, proved to be a young American of the pleasantest type. I came upon him dancing blindly around the ballroom of Mr. Morgan’s residence, and shouting himself hoarse with the Arabic variation of “Get a move on!” The consul, it transpired, was to give a dinner,with dancing, to the lights of society wintering in the city. In the two days that remained before the eventful evening the ballroom floor must be properly waxed. Twelve native workmen, lured thither by the extraordinary wage of twenty-five cents a day, had been holding down the aforementioned floor since early morning. About them was spread powdered wax. In their hands were long bottles. Above them towered the dancing butler.

“Put some strength into it,” he bellowed, by way of variation, as I stepped across the room towards him. For the three succeeding strokes, the dozen bottles, moving in unison, to the chant of a thirteenth “workman” who had been hired to squat in a far corner and furnish vocal inspiration, nearly crushed the powdered wax under them. But this unseemly display of energy was of short duration.

I delivered the cabalistic message. The Arabs bounded half across the room at sound of the shriek emitted by its addressee:—“I’ll fire ’em!” bellowed Tom. “I’ll fire ’emnow. An American? I’m delighted, old man! Get on the job while I kick these niggers down the stairs. Had any experience at this game?”

I recalled a far-off college gymnasium, and nodded.

“Take you’re own gait, only so you get it done,” cried the butler, charging the fleeing Arabs.

I discarded the bottle process and rigged up an apparatus after the fashion of a handled holly-stone. By evening, the polishing was half completed. When I turned my attention to the dust-streaked windows, late the next afternoon, the ballroom floor was in a condition that boded ill for any but sure-footed dancers. The outbreak of festivities found me general assistant to the culinary department, separated only by a Japanese screen from the contrasting class of society; represented by such guests as Lord Cromer and his youthful Lady, the ex-Empress Eugenie, the Crown Prince of Sweden, and the brother of the Khedive. Deeply did I regret the lack of inventiveness that forced me to report to the sleepless inmates of the Asile to which Cap Stevenson admitted me long after closing hours, that the conversation of so distinguished a gathering had been commonplace, the dancing unanimated, and the flirting unseemly.

By arrangement with Tom, I continued to “do it” long after the day of the ball. The fare at the servants’ table was beyond criticism, but I declined a blanket and a straw-strewn stall in the consul’s stable, and retained my cot at the Asile at a daily cost of two piastres. As my earnings grew, I repaired, one night, to the AmericanMission Hospital, mounted to the third story, knocked on the first door to the right, pushed it open, and astonished an aged missionary from Pittsburg out of a night’s labor. One idle hour, too, I examined again the garments I had left with Cap Stevenson and found them less useless than I had once imagined. The shirt, being tied together, front and back, with string, awoke the envy of all the “comrades.” For the bosom was of many layers, and, as each one became soiled, I had but to strip it off, and behold!—a clean shirt. When I had laid the bundle away again, it contained only the minister’s frock coat.

Cap Stevenson had made a scientific study of the genus vagabundus that enabled him to gauge with surprising precision the demands that would be made on the Asile from day to day. There fell into my hands, one evening, a Cairo newspaper, containing the following item:—

Suez,February 2d, 1905.

The French troop-ship ——, outward bound to Madagascar with five hundred recruits, reports that while midway between Port Saïd andIsmaïlia, in her passage of the canal, five recruits who had been standing at the rail suddenly sprang overboard and swam for the shore. One was carried under and crushed by the ship’s screw. The others landed and were last seen hurrying away into the desert. All concerned were Germans.

I entered the office to point out the item to the superintendent.

“Aye,” said Cap, “I’ve seen it. That’s common enough. They’ll be here for dinner day after to-morrow.”

They arrived exactly at the hour named, the four of them, weather-beaten and bedraggled from their swim and the tramp across the desert, but supplied with the Reverend ——’s tickets. Two of the quartet were very engaging fellows with whom I was soon on intimate terms. One of this pair had spent some months in Egypt years before, after using the same means to make the passage from Europe.

On the Friday after their arrival, this man of experience met me at the gate of the Asile as I returned from my day’s labor.

“Heh! Amerikaner,” he began, “do you get a half holiday to-morrow?”

“Sure,” I answered.

“I’m going to take Hans out for a moonlight view of the Pyramids. It’s full moon and all the tourist companies are sending out tally-ho parties. Want to go along?”

I did, of course. The next afternoon I left the Asile in company with the pair. At the door of the office, I halted to pay my night’s lodging.

Spinners in the sun outside the walls of Cairo

Guests of the Asile Rudolph, Cairo. François, champion beggar, in the center, in the cape he wore as part of his “system”

“Never mind that,” said Adolph, the man of experience, “we’ll sleep out there.”

“Eh?” cried Hans and I.

Adolph pushed open the outer gate, and we followed.

“Suppose you’ll pay our lodging at the Mena House?” grinned Hans, as we crossed the Kasr-el-Nil bridge.

“Don’t worry,” replied Adolph.

We pushed through the throng of donkey boys beyond the bridge and, ignoring the electric line that connects Cairo with the pyramids of Gizeh, covered the eight miles on foot. Darkness fell soon after our arrival, and with it rose an unveiled moon. The tourists were out in force. Adolph led the way in and out among the ancient monuments and pointed out the most charming views with the discernment of an antiquarian. The desert night soon turned cold. The tourist parties strolled away to the great hotel below the hill, and Hans fell to shivering.

“Where’s this fine lodging you’re telling about?” he chattered.

“Komm’ mal her,” said Adolph.

He picked his way over the tumbled blocks towards the third pyramid, climbed a few feet up its northern face, and disappeared in a black hole. We followed, and, doubled up like balls, slid down, down, down a sharply inclined tunnel, some three feet square, into utter darkness. As our feet touched a stone floor, Adolph struck a match. The flame showed two small vaults and several huge stone sarcophagi.

“Beds waiting for us, you see?” said Adolph. “Probably you’ve chatted with the fellows who used to sleep here? They’re in the British Museum, in London.”

He dropped the match and climbed into one of the coffins. I chose another and found it as comfortable as a stone bed can be, though a bit short. Our sleeping chamber was warm, somewhat too warm in fact, and Hans, given to snoring, awoke echoes that resounded through the vaults like the beating of forty drums. But the night passed quickly, and, when our sense of time told us that morning had come, we crawled upward on hands and knees through the tunnel and out into a sunlight that left us blinking painfully for several moments.

A throng of tourists and Arabian rascals was surging about the monuments. A quartet of khaki-clad Britishers kicked their heels on the forehead of the Sphinx, puffing at their pipes as they exchanged the latest garrison jokes. We fought our way through the clingingArabs, climbed to the summit of the pyramid of Cheops, took in the regulation “sights,” and strolled back to Cairo.

Many a strange bit of human driftwood floated ashore in the Asile Rudolph, but their stories would take too long in the telling. Yet no account of that winter season in Cairo would be complete without mention of “François.” François was, of course, a Frenchman, a Parisian, in fact, and, contrary to the usual rule, it was he, and not a German, who won and still holds the mendicant championship of Egypt. To all who spoke French, he was known as the most loquacious and jolly lodger at the Asile. The Reverend —— had long since turned him away from the door of the rectory; but François would not be driven from his accustomed bed, and paid his two piastres nightly.

As a young man the Frenchman had worked faithfully at his trade; he admitted it with shame. Three years in the army, however, had awakened within him an uncontrollable Wanderlust, and during the twenty-three years since his discharge, he had tramped through every country of Europe. He was a man of meager education and by no means the native ability of Pia and many of the German colony. But long years before his arrival in Egypt, he had evolved “un système” to which his fame as a mendicant was due. The first part of this system concerned his personal appearance. He was pale of complexion, though in reality very robust, and he had trained his shoulders into a droop that suggested the last stages of consumption. His garb, in general, was that of a French workman, but over this he wore a cloak with a long cape that gave him an aspect not unlike a monk, and, combined with his drooping shoulders and sallow, long-drawn face, created a figure so forlorn as to attract attention in any clime. Nothing, François asserted, had contributed so much to his success as this cloak. Rain or shine, from the Highlands of Scotland to the shores of the Black Sea, in the depth of winter or in midsummer, he had clung to this garb for twenty years, replacing in that time a dozen cloaks by others of identical design. Even in Egypt he refused to appear in public without this superfluous outer garment, and, though the African sun had turned the threadbare cape almost as yellow as the desert sands, he was not to be separated from it until he had picked up another in some charitable institution of the city.

The second part of François’s system was extremely simple. The method which Pia so successfully manipulated was too complicated fora man of little schooling; yet François rarely made a verbal appeal for alms. On a score of cards, which he carried ever ready in a pocket of his cloak, was written in as many languages this petition:—

“I am ill and in misery. Please help me.”

The French card was his own production. The others he had collected from time to time as he made friends in the various countries he had visited. For, with all his wanderings, François knew hardly a word of any language but his own.

I set out with the French champion, one Sunday afternoon, to visit the mosque of Sultan Hassan. Not far from the Asile gate, he caught sight of a well-dressed man, whose appearance stamped him as a German. François shuffled his cards with a hasty hand, chose the one in the corner of which was written, in tiny letters, the word “allemand,” and set off at a trot. Arrived within a few paces of his intended victim, he fell into a measured tread, thrust out the card, and waited with sorrowful face and hanging head. The German returned the card with a five-piastre piece.

Cairo is nothing if not cosmopolitan, and it is doubtful if every one of the cards did not make its appearance at least once during the afternoon. American tourists, English officers, French entrepreneurs, Greek priests, Italian merchants, Turkish clerks, Indian travelers, even the Arab scribes sitting imperturbable beside their umbrella-shaded stands,—all had the misery of François called to their attention. Whether it was out of gratitude for a sight of the familiar words of his native tongue, or out of pity for the abject creature who coughed so distressingly and pointed to his ears like a deaf mute whenever a question was put to him, rare was the man who did not give something. François collected more than a hundred piastres during that single promenade. Yet before we set out he had called me aside and drawn from an inner pocket a purse that contained twenty-six English sovereigns in gold!

But it was his method of dispensing his income that made the Frenchman an enigma to his confidants. François neither drank nor smoked; he rarely, if ever, indulged even in the mildest dissipation. Not far from the Asile, he stopped at a café for hispetit déjeunerof chocolate and rolls and his morning paper; and, had he met the Khedive himself out for a stroll, François would not have appealed to him before that breakfast was over. He was strictly a union man, was François, in his hours of labor.

But his daily expenditures were for bed and breakfast only. Therewere scores of French chefs in Cairo, ever ready to welcome whomever knew the kitchen door and the language of the cuisine. If his shoes wore out, there were several French shops in the vicinity of the Esbekieh Gardens. If he were in need of nothing more costly than a bar of soap, François begged one of the first druggist he came upon. The sovereigns which cosmopolitan Cairo thrust upon him were spent almost entirely for souvenirs for his relatives in Paris. The most costly albums of Cairene views, fine brass ware, dainty ornaments of native manufacturer were packed in the bazaars and shipped away to those fortunate brothers, sisters, and cousins of François in the French capital. Only once in twenty-three years had he visited them, but few were the towns and cities of all Europe the arts and manufactures of which were not represented in that Parisian household. As a supplement to his gifts, there came semi-annually a letter from François, announcing some new success in his career as a traveling salesman.

An Arab market-day at the village of Gizeh

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