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EAGERNESS to see Africa brings us on deck at dawn. The low coast is not yet visible. Africa, as we had been taught, lies in heathen darkness. It is the policy of the Egyptian government to make the harbor difficult of access to hostile men-of-war, and we, who are peacefully inclined, cannot come in till daylight, nor then without a pilot.
The day breaks beautifully, and the Pharos is set like a star in the bright streak of the East. Before we can distinguish land, we see the so-called Pompey's Pillar and the light-house, the palms, the minarets, and the outline of the domes painted on the straw-color of the sky—a dream-like picture. The curtain draws up with Eastern leisure—the sun appears to rise more deliberately in the Orient than elsewhere; the sky grows more brilliant, there are long lines of clouds, golden and crimson, and we seem to be looking miles and miles into an enchanted country. Then ships and boats, a vast number of them, become visible in the harbor, and as the light grows stronger, the city and land lose something of their beauty, but the sky grows more softly fiery till the sun breaks through. The city lies low along the flat coast, and seems at first like a brownish white streak, with fine lines of masts, palm-trees, and minarets above it.
The excitement of the arrival in Alexandria and the novelty of everything connected with the landing can never be repeated. In one moment the Orient flashes upon the bewildered traveler; and though he may travel far and see stranger sights, and penetrate the hollow shell of Eastern mystery, he never will see again at once such a complete contrast to all his previous experience. One strange, unfamiliar form takes the place of another so rapidly that there is no time to fix an impression, and everything is sobizarrethat the new-comer has no points of comparison. He is launched into a new world, and has no time to adjust the focus of his observation. For myself, I wished the Orient would stand off a little and stand still so that I could try to comprehend it. But it would not; a revolving kaleidoscope never presented more bewildering figures and colors to a child, than the port of Alexandria to us.
Our first sight of strange dress is that of the pilot and the crew who bring him off—they are Nubians, he is a swarthy Egyptian. “How black they are,” says the Baroness; “I don't like it.” As the pilot steps on deck, in his white turban, loose robe of cotton, and red slippers, he brings the East with him; we pass into the influence of the Moslem spirit. Coming into the harbor we have pointed out to us the batteries, the palace and harem of the Pasha (more curiosity is felt about a harem than about any other building, except perhaps a lunatic asylum), and the new villas along the curve of the shore. It is difficult to see any ingress, on account of the crowd of shipping.
The anchor is not down before we are surrounded by rowboats, six or eight deep on both sides, with a mob of boatmen and guides, all standing up and shouting at us in all the broken languages of three continents. They are soon up the sides and on deck, black, brown, yellow, in turbans, in tarbooshes, in robes of white, blue, brown, in brilliant waist-shawls, slippered, and bare-legged, bare-footed, half-naked, with little on except a pair of cotton drawers and a red fez, eager, big-eyed, pushing, yelping, gesticulating, seizing hold of passengers and baggage, and fighting for the possession of the traveler's goods which seem to him about to be shared among a lot of pirates. I saw a dazed traveler start to land, with some of his traveling-bags in one boat, his trunk in a second, and himself in yet a third, and acommissionaireat each arm attempting to drag him into two others. He evidently couldn't make up his mind, which to take.
We have decided upon our hotel, and ask for thecommissionaireof it. He appears. In fact there are twenty or thirty of him. The first one is a tall, persuasive, nearly naked Ethiop, who declares that he is the only Simon Pure, and grasps our handbags. Instantly, a fluent, business-like Alexandrian pushes him aside—“I am thecommissionaire”—and is about to take possession of us. But a dozen others are of like mind, and Babel begins. We rescue our property, and for ten minutes a lively and most amusing altercation goes on as to who is the representative of the hotel. They all look like pirates from the Barbary coast, instead of guardians of peaceful travelers. Quartering an orange, I stand in the center of an interesting group, engaged in the most lively discussion, pushing, howling and fiery gesticulation. The dispute is finally between two:
“I Hotel Europe!”
“I Hotel Europe; he no hotel.”
“He my brother, all same me.”
“He! I never see he before,” with a shrug of the utmost contempt.
As soon as we select one of them, the tumult subsides, the enemies become friends and cordially join in loading our luggage. In the first five minutes of his stay in Egypt the traveler learns that he is to trust and be served by people who haven't the least idea that lying is not a perfectly legitimate means of attaining any desirable end. And he begins to lose any prejudice he may have in favor of a white complexion and of clothes. In a decent climate he sees how little clothing is needed for comfort, and how much artificial nations are accustomed to put on from false modesty.
We begin to thread our way through a maze of shipping, and hundreds of small boats and barges; the scene is gay and exciting beyond expression. The first sight of the colored, pictured, lounging, waiting Orient is enough to drive an impressionable person wild; so much that is novel and picturesque is crowded into a few minutes; so many colors and flying robes, such a display of bare legs and swarthy figures. We meet flat boats coming down the harbor loaded with laborers, dark, immobile groups in turbans and gowns, squatting on deck in the attitude which is the most characteristic of the East; no one stands or sits—everybody squats or reposes cross-legged. Soldiers are on the move; smart Turkish officers dart by in light boats with half a dozen rowers; the crew of an English man-of-war pull past; in all directions the swift boats fly, and with their freight of color, it is like the thrusting of quick shuttles, in the weaving of a brilliant carpet, before our eyes.
We step on shore at the Custom-House. I have heard travelers complain of the delay in getting through it. I feel that I want to go slowly, that I would like to be all day in getting through—that I am hurried along like a person who is dragged hastily through a gallery, past striking pictures of which he gets only glimpses. What a group this is on shore; importunate guides, porters, coolies. They seize hold of us, We want to stay and look at them. Did ever any civilized men dress so gaily, so little, or so much in the wrong place? If that fellow would untwist the folds of his gigantic turban he would have cloth enough to clothe himself perfectly. Look! that's an East Indian, that's a Greek, that's a Turk that's a Syrian-Jew? No, he's Egyptian, the crook-nose is not uncommon to Egyptians, that tall round hat is Persian, that one is from Abys—there they go, we haven't half seen them! We leave our passports at the entrance, and are whisked through into the baggage-room, where our guide pays a noble official three francs for the pleasure of his chance acquaintance; some nearly naked coolie-porters, who bear long cords, carry off our luggage, and before we know it we are in a carriage, and a rascally guide and interpreter—Heaven knows how he fastened himself upon us in the last five minutes—is on the box and apparently owns us? (It took us half a day and liberal backsheesh to get rid of the evil-eyed fellow) We have gone only a little distance when half a dozen of the naked coolies rush after us, running by the carriage and laying hold of it, demanding backsheesh. It appears that either the boatman has cheated them, or they think he will, or they havn't had enough. Nobody trusts anybody else, and nobody is ever satisfied with what he gets, in Egypt. These blacks, in their dirty white gowns, swinging their porter's ropes and howling like madmen, pursue us a long way and look as if they would tear us in pieces. But nothing comes of it. We drive to the Place Mehemet Ali, the European square,—having nothing Oriental about it, a square with an equestrian statue of Mehemet Ali, some trees and a fountain—surrounded by hotels, bankers' offices and Frank shops.
There is not much in Alexandria to look at except the people, and the dirty bazaars. We never before had seen so much nakedness, filth and dirt, so much poverty, and such enjoyment of it, or at least indifference to it. We were forced to strike a new scale of estimating poverty and wretchedness. People are poor in proportion as their wants are not gratified. And here are thousands who have few of the wants that we have, and perhaps less poverty. It is difficult to estimate the poverty of those fortunate children to whom the generous sun gives a warm color for clothing, who have no occupation but to sit in the same, all day, in some noisy and picturesque thoroughfare, and stretch out the hand for the few paras sufficient to buy their food, who drink at the public fountain, wash in the tank of the mosque, sleep in street-corners, and feel sure of their salvation if they know the direction of Mecca. And the Mohammedan religion seems to be a sort of soul-compass, by which the most ignorant believer can always orient himself. The best-dressed Christian may feel certain of one thing, that he is the object of the cool contempt of the most naked, opthalmic, flea-attended, wretched Moslem he meets. The Oriental conceit is a peg above ours—it is not self-conscious.
In a fifteen minutes walk in the streets the stranger finds all the pictures that he remembers in his illustrated books of Eastern life. There is turbaned Ali Baba, seated on the hindquarters of his sorry donkey, swinging his big feet in a constant effort to urge the beast forward; there is the one-eyed calender who may have arrived last night from Bagdad; there is the water-carrier, with a cloth about his loins, staggering under a full goat-skin—the skin, legs, head, and all the members of the brute distended, so that the man seems to be carrying a drowned and water-soaked animal: there is the veiled sister of Zobeide riding a grey donkey astride, with her knees drawn up, (as all women ride in the East), entirely enveloped in a white garment which covers her head and puffs out about her like a balloon—all that can be seen of the woman are the toes of her pointed yellow slippers and two black eyes; there is the seller of sherbet, a waterish, feeble, insipid drink, clinking his glasses; and the veiled woman in black, with hungry eyes, is gliding about everywhere. The veil is in two parts, a band about the forehead, and a strip of black which hangs underneath the eyes and terminates in a point at the waist; the two parts are connected by an ornamented cylinder of brass, or silver if the wearer can afford it, two and a half inches long and an inch in diameter. This ugly cylinder between the restless eyes, gives the woman an imprisoned, frightened look. Across the street from the hotel, upon the stone coping of the public square, is squatting hour after hour in the sun, a row of these forlorn creatures in black, impassive and waiting. We are told that they are washerwomen waiting for a job. I never can remove the impression that these women are half stifled behind their veils and the shawls which they draw over the head; when they move their heads, it is like the piteous dumb movement of an uncomplaining animal.
But the impatient reader is waiting for Pompey's Pillar. We drive outside the walls, though a thronged gateway, through streets and among people wretched and picturesque to the last degree. This is the road to the large Moslem cemetery, and to-day is Thursday, the day for visiting the graves. The way is lined with coffee-shops, where men are smoking and playing at draughts; with stands and booths for the sale of fried cakes and confections; and all along, under foot, so that it is difficult not to tread on them, are private markets for the sale of dates, nuts, raisins, wheat, and doora; the bare-legged owner sits on the ground and spreads his dust-covered untempting fare on a straw mat before him. It is more wretched and forlorn outside the gate than within. We are amid heaps of rubbish, small mountains of it, perhaps the ruins of old Alexandria, perhaps only the accumulated sweepings of the city for ages, piles of dust, and broken pottery. Every Egyptian town of any size is surrounded by these—the refuse of ages of weary civilization.
What a number of old men, of blind men, ragged men—though rags are no disgrace! What a lot of scrawny old women, lean old hags, some of them without their faces covered—even the veiled ones you can see are only bags of bones. There is a derweesh, a naked holy man, seated in the dirt by the wall, reading the Koran. He has no book, but he recites the sacred text in a loud voice, swaying his body backwards and forwards. Now and then we see a shrill-voiced, handsome boy also reading the Koran with all his might, and keeping a laughing eye upon the passing world. Here comes a novel turn-out. It is a long truck-wagon drawn by one bony-horse. Upon it are a dozen women, squatting about the edges, facing each other, veiled, in black, silent, jolting along like so many bags of meal. A black imp stands in front, driving. They carry baskets of food and flowers, and are going to the cemetery to spend the day.
We pass the cemetery, for the Pillar is on a little hillock overlooking it. Nothing can be drearier than this burying-ground—unless it may be some other Moslem cemetery. It is an uneven plain of sand, without a spear of grass or a green thing. It is covered thickly with ugly stucco, oven-like tombs, the whole inconceivably shabby and dust covered; the tombs of the men have head-stones to distinguish them from the women. Yet, shabby as all the details of this crumbling cheap place of sepulture are, nothing could be gayer or more festive than the scene before us. Although the women are in the majority, there are enough men and children present, in colored turbans, fezes, and gowns, and shawls of Persian dye, to transform the graveyard into the semblance of a parterre of flowers. About hundreds of the tombs are seated in a circle groups of women, with their food before them, and the flowers laid upon the tomb, wailing and howling in the very excess of dry-eyed grief. Here and there a group has employed a “welee” or holy man, or a boy, to read the Koran for it—and these Koran-readers turn an honest para by their vocation. The women spend nearly the entire day in this sympathetic visit to their departed friends—it is a custom as old as history, and the Egyptians used to build their tombs with a visiting ante-chamber for the accommodation of the living. I should think that the knowledge that such a group of women were to eat their luncheon, wailing and roosting about one's tomb every week, would add a new terror to death.
The Pillar, which was no doubt erected by Diocletian to his own honor, after the modest fashion of Romans as well as Egyptians, is in its present surroundings not an object of enthusiasm, though it is almost a hundred feet high, and the monolith shaft was, before age affected it, a fine piece of polished Syenite. It was no doubt a few thousand years older than Diocletian, and a remnant of that oldest civilization; the base and capital he gave it are not worthy of it. Its principal use now is as a surface for the paint-brushes and chisels of distinguished travelers, who have covered it with their precious names. I cannot sufficiently admire thenaïvetéand self-depreciation of those travelers who paint and cut their names on such monuments, knowing as they must that the first sensible person who reads the same will say, “This is an ass.”
We drive, still outside the walls, towards the Mahmoodéeh canal, passing amid mounds of rubbish, and getting a view of the desert-like country beyond. And now heaves in sight the unchanged quintessence of Orientalism—there is our first camel, a camel in use, in his native setting and not in a menagerie. There is a line of them, loaded with building-stones, wearily shambling along. The long bended neck apes humility, but the supercilious nose in the air expresses perfect contempt for all modern life. The contrast of this haughty “stuck-up-ativeness” (it is necessary to coin this word to express the camel's ancient conceit) with the royal ugliness of the brute, is both awe-inspiring and amusing. No human royal family dare be uglier than the camel. He is a mass of bones, faded tufts, humps, lumps, splay-joints and callosities. His tail is a ridiculous wisp, and a failure as an ornament or a fly-brush. His feet are simply big sponges. For skin covering he has patches of old buffalo robes, faded and with the hair worn off. His voice is more disagreeable than his appearance. With a reputation for patience, he is snappish and vindictive. His endurance is over-rated—that is to say he dies like a sheep on an expedition of any length, if he is not well fed. His gait moves every muscle like an ague. And yet this ungainly creature carries his head in the air, and regards the world out of his great brown eyes with disdain. The Sphinx is not more placid. He reminds me, I don't know why, of a pyramid. He has a resemblance to a palm-tree. It is impossible to make an Egyptian picture without him. What a Hapsburg lip he has! Ancient, royal? The very poise of his head says plainly, “I have come out of the dim past, before history was; the deluge did not touch me; I saw Menes come and go; I helped Shoofoo build the great pyramid; I knew Egypt when it hadn't an obelisk nor a temple; I watched the slow building of the pyramid at Sakkara. Did I not transport the fathers of your race across the desert? There are three of us; the date-palm, the pyramid, and myself. Everything else is modern. Go to!”
Along the canal, where lie dahabeëhs that will by and by make their way up the Nile, are some handsome villas, palaces and gardens. This is the favorite drive and promenade. In the gardens, that are open to the public, we find a profusion of tropical trees and flowering shrubs; roses are decaying, but the blossoms of the yellow acacia scent the air; there are Egyptian lilies; the plant with crimson leaves, not native here, grows as high as the arbutilon tree; the red passion-flower is in bloom, and morning-glories cover with their running vine the tall and slender cypresses. The finest tree is the sycamore, with great gnarled trunk, and down-dropping branches. Its fruit, the sycamore fig, grows directly on the branch, without stem. It is an insipid fruit, sawdust-y, but the Arabs like it, and have a saying that he who eats one is sure to return to Egypt. After we had tried to eat one, we thought we should not care to return. The interior was filled with lively little flies; and a priest who was attending a school of boys taking a holiday in the grove, assured us that each fig had to be pierced when it was green, to let the flies out, in order to make it eatable. But the Egyptians eat them, flies and all.
The splendors of Alexandria must be sought in books. The traveler will see scarcely any remains of a magnificence which dazzled the world in the beginning of our era. He may like to see the mosque that marks the site of the church of St. Mark, and he may care to look into the Coptic convent whence the Venetians stole the body of the saint, about a thousand years ago. Of course we go to see that wonder of our childhood, Cleopatra's Needles, as the granite obelisks are called that were brought from Alexandria and set up before a temple of Caesar in the time of Tiberius. Only one is standing, the other, mutilated, lies prone beneath the soil. The erect one stands near the shore and in the midst of hovels and incredible filth. The name of the earliest king it bears is that of Thothmes III., the great man of Egypt, whose era of conquest was about 1500 years before St. Mark came on his mission to Alexandria.
The city which has had as many vicissitudes as most cities, boasting under the Cæsars a population of half a million, that had decreased to 6,000 in 1800, and has now again grown to over two hundred thousand, seems to be at a waiting point; the merchants complain that the Suez Canal has killed its trade. Yet its preeminence for noise, dirt and shabbiness will hardly be disputed; and its bazaars and streets are much more interesting, perhaps because it is the meeting-place of all races, than travelers usually admit.
We had scarcely set foot in our hotel when we were saluted and waited for by dragomans of all sorts. They knocked at our doors, they waylaid us in the passages; whenever we emerged from our rooms half a dozen rose up, bowing low; it was like being a small king, with obsequious attendants waiting every motion. They presented their cards, they begged we would step aside privately for a moment and look at the bundle of recommendations they produced; they would not press themselves, but if we desired a dragoman for the Nile they were at our service. They were of all shades of color, except white, and of all degrees of oriental splendor in their costume. There were Egyptians, Nubians, Maltese, Greeks, Syrians. They speak well all the languages of the Levant and of Europe, except the one in which you attempt to converse with them. I never made the acquaintance of so many fine fellows in the same space of time. All of them had the strongest letters of commendation from travelers whom they had served, well-known men of letters and of affairs. Travelers give these endorsements as freely as they sign applications for government appointments at home.
The name of the handsome dragoman who walked with us through the bazaars was, naturally enough, Ahmed Abdallah. He wore the red fez (tarboosh) with a gay kuffia bound about it; an embroidered shirt without collar or cravat; a long shawl of checked and bright-colored Beyrout silk girding the loins, in which was carried his watch and heavy chain; a cloth coat; and baggy silk trousers that would be a gown if they were not split enough to gather about each ankle. The costume is rather Syrian than Egyptian, and very elegant when the materials are fine; but with a suggestion of effeminacy, to Western eyes.
The native bazaars, which are better at Cairo, reveal to the traveler, at a glance, the character of the Orient; its cheap tinsel, its squalor, and its occasional richness and gorgeousness. The shops on each side of the narrow street are little more than good-sized wardrobes, with room for shelves of goods in the rear and for the merchant to sit cross-legged in front. There is usually space for a customer to sit with him, and indeed two or three can rest on the edge of the platform. Upon cords stretched across the front hang specimens of the wares for sale. Wooden shutters close the front at night. These little cubbies are not only the places of sale but of manufacture of goods. Everything goes on in the view of all the world. The tailor is stitching, the goldsmith is blowing the bellows of his tiny forge, the saddler is repairing the old donkey-saddles, the shoemaker is cutting red leather, the brazier is hammering, the weaver sits at his little loom with the treadle in the ground—every trade goes on, adding its own clatter to the uproar.
What impresses us most is the good nature of the throng, under trying circumstances. The street is so narrow that three or four people abreast make a jam, and it is packed with those moving in two opposing currents. Through this mass comes a donkey with a couple of panniers of soil or of bricks, or bundles of scraggly sticks; or a camel surges in, loaded with building-joists or with lime; or a Turkish officer, with a gaily caparisoned horse impatiently stamping; a porter slams along with a heavy box on his back; the water-carrier with his nasty skin rubs through; the vender of sweetmeats finds room for his broad tray; the orange-man pushes his cart into the throng; the Jew auctioneer cries his antique brasses and more antique raiment. Everybody is jostled and pushed and jammed; but everybody is in an imperturbable good humor, for no one is really in a hurry, and whatever is, is as it always has been and will be. And what a cosmopolitan place it is. We meet Turks, Greeks, Copts, Egyptians, Nubians, Syrians, Armenians, Italians; tattered derweeshes, “welees” or holy Moslems, nearly naked, presenting the appearance of men who have been buried a long time and recently dug up; Greek priests, Jews, Persian Parsees, Algerines, Hindoos, negroes from Darfoor, and flat-nosed blacks from beyond Khartoom.
The traveler has come into a country of holiday which is perpetual. Under this sun and in this air there is nothing to do but to enjoy life and attend to religion five times a day. We look into a mosque; In the cool court is a fountain for washing; the mosque is sweet and quiet, and upon its clean matting a row of Arabs are prostrating themselves in prayer towards the niche that indicates the direction of Mecca. We stroll along the open streets encountering a novelty at every step. Here is a musician a Nubian playing upon a sort of tambour on a frame; a picking, feeble noise he produces, but he is accompanied by the oddest character we have seen yet. This is a stalwart, wild-eyed son of the sand, coal-black, with a great mass of uncombed, disordered hair hanging about his shoulders. His only clothing is a breech-cloth and a round shaving-glass bound upon his forehead; but he has hung about his waist heavy strings of goats' hoofs, and those he shakes, in time to the tambour, by a tremulous motion of his big hips as he minces about. He seems so vastly pleased with himself that I covet knowledge of his language, in order to tell him that he looks like an idiot.
Near the Fort Napoleon, a hill by the harbor, we encounter another scene peculiar to the East. A yellow-skinned, cunning-eyed conjurer has attracted a ring of idlers about him, who squat in the blowing dust, under the blazing sun, and patiently watch his antics. The conjurer himself performs no wonders, but the spectators are a study of color and feature. The costumes are brilliant red, yellow, and white. The complexions exhaust the possibilities of human color. I thought I had seen black people in South Carolina; but I saw a boy just now standing in a doorway who would have been invisible but for his white shirt; and here is a fat negress in a bright yellow gown and kerchief, whose jet face has taken an incredible polish; only the most accomplished boot-black could raise such a shine on a shoe; tranquil enjoyment oozes out of her. The conjurer is assisted by two mites of children, a girl and a boy (no clothing wasted on them), and between the three a great deal of jabber and whacking with cane sticks is going on, but nothing is performed except the taking of a long snake from a bag and tying it round the little girl's neck. Paras are collected, however, and that is the main object of all performances.
A little further on, another group is gathered around a storyteller, who is reeling off one of the endless tales in which the Arab delights; love-adventures, not always the most delicate but none the less enjoyed for that, or the story of some poor lad who has had a wonderful career and finally married the Sultan's daughter. He is accompanied in his narrative by two men thumping upon darabooka drums, in a monotonous, sleepy fashion, quite in accordance however with the everlasting leisure that pervades the air. Walking about are the venders of sweets, and of greasy cakes, who carry tripods on which to rest their brass trays, and who split the air with their cries.
It is color, color, that makes all this shifting panorama so fascinating, and hides the nakedness, the squalor, the wretchedness of all this unconcealed poverty; color in flowing garments, color in the shops, color in the sky. We have come to the land of the sun.
At night when we walk around the square we stumble over bundles of rags containing men who are asleep, in all the corners, stretched on doorsteps, laid away on the edge of the sidewalk. Opposite the hotel is acasino, which is more Frank than Egyptian. The musicians are all women and Germans or Bohemians; the waiter-girls are mostly Italian; one of them says she comes from Bohemia, and has been in India, to which she proposes to return. Thehabituésare mostly young Egyptians in Frank dress except the tarboosh, and Italians, all effeminate fellows. All the world of loose living and wandering meets here. Italian is much spoken. There is little that is Oriental here, except it may be a complaisance toward anything enervating and languidly wicked that Europe has to offer. This cheap concert is, we are told, all the amusement at night that can be offered the traveler, by the once pleasure-loving city of Cleopatra, in the once brilliant Greek capital in which Hypatia was a star.
0053
0054
EGYPT has excellent railways. There is no reason why it should not have. They are made without difficulty and easily maintained in a land of no frosts; only where they touch the desert an occasional fence is necessary against the drifting sand. The rails are laid, without wooden sleepers, on iron saucers, with connecting bands, and the track is firm and sufficiently elastic. The express train travels the 131 miles to Cairo in about four and a half hours, running with a punctuality, and with Egyptian drivers and conductors too, that is unique in Egypt. The opening scene at the station did not promise expedition or system.
We reach the station three quarters of an hour before the departure of the train, for it requires a longtime—in Egypt, as everywhere in Europe—to buy tickets and get baggage weighed. The officials are slower workers than our treasury-clerks. There is a great crowd of foreigners, and the baggage-room is piled with trunks of Americans, 'boxes' of Englishmen, and chests and bundles of all sorts. Behind a high counter in a smaller room stand the scales, the weigher, and the clerks. Piles of trunks are brought in and dumped by the porters, and thrust forward by the servants and dragomans upon the counter, to gain them preference at the scales. No sooner does a dragoman get in his trunk than another is thrust ahead of it, and others are hurled on top, till the whole pile comes down with a crash. There is no system, there are neither officials nor police, and the excited travelers are free to fight it out among themselves. To venture into themêléeis to risk broken bones, and it is wiser to leave the battle to luck and the dragomans. The noise is something astonishing. A score or two of men are yelling at the top of their voices, screaming, scolding, damning each other in polyglot, gesticulating, jumping up and down, quivering with excitement. This is your Oriental repose! If there were any rule by which passengers could take their turns, all the trunks could be quickly weighed and passed on; but now in the scrimmage not a trunk gets to the scales, and a half hour goes by in which no progress is made and the uproar mounts higher.
Finally, Ahmed, slight and agile, handing me his cane, kuffia and watch, leaps over the heap of trunks on the counter and comes to close quarters with the difficulty. He succeeds in getting two trunks upon the platform of the scales, but a traveler, whose clothes were made in London, tips them off and substitutes his own. The weighers stand patiently waiting the result of the struggle. Ahmed hurls off the stranger's trunk, gives its owner a turn that sends him spinning over the baggage, and at last succeeds in getting our luggage weighed. He emerges from the scrimmage an exhausted man, and we get our seats in the carriage just in time. However, it does not start for half an hour.
The reader would like to ride from Alexandria to Cairo, but he won't care to read much about the route. It is our first experience of a country living solely by irrigation—the occasional winter showers being practically of no importance. We pass along and over the vast shallows of Lake Mareotis, a lake in winter and a marsh in summer, ride between marshes and cotton-fields, and soon strike firmer ground. We are traveling, in short, through a Jersey flat, a land black, fat, and rich, without an elevation, broken only by canals and divided into fields by ditches. Every rod is cultivated, and there are no detached habitations. The prospect cannot be called lively, but it is not without interest; there are ugly buffaloes in the coarse grass, there is the elegant white heron, which travelers insist is the sacred ibis, there are some doleful-looking fellaheen, with donkeys, on the bank of the canal, there is a file of camels, and there are shadoofs. The shadoof is the primitive method of irrigation, and thousands of years have not changed it. Two posts are driven into the bank of the canal, with a cross-piece on top. On this swings a pole with a bucket of leather suspended at one end, which is outweighed by a ball of clay at the other. The fellah stands on the slope of the bank and, dipping the bucket into the water, raises it and pours the fluid into a sluice-way above. If the bank is high, two and sometimes three shadoofs are needed to raise the water to the required level. The labor is prodigiously hard and back-straining, continued as it must be constantly. All the fellaheen we saw were clad in black, though some had a cloth about their loins. The workman usually stands in a sort of a recess in the bank, and his color harmonizes with the dark soil. Any occupation more wearisome and less beneficial to the mind I cannot conceive. To the credit of the Egyptians, the men alone work the shadoof. Women here tug water, grind the corn, and carry about babies, always; but I never saw one pulling at a shadoof pole.
There is an Arab village! We need to be twice assured that it is a village. Raised on a slight elevation, so as to escape high water, it is still hardly distinguishable from the land, certainly not in color. All Arab villages look like ruins; this is a compacted collection of shapeless mud-huts, flat-topped and irregularly thrown together. It is an aggregation of dog-kennels, baked in the sun and cracked. However, a clump of palm-trees near it gives it an air of repose, and if it possesses a mosque and a minaret it has a picturesque appearance, if the observer does not go too near. And such are the habitations of nearly all the Egyptians.
Sixty-five miles from Alexandria, we cross the Rosetta branch of the Nile, on a fine iron bridge—even this portion of the Nile is a broad, sprawling river; and we pass through several respectable towns which have an appearance of thrift—Tanta especially, with its handsome station and a palace of the Khedive. At Tanta is held three times a year a great religious festival and fair, not unlike the old fair of the ancient Egyptians at Bubastis in honor of Diana, with quite as many excesses, and like that, with a gramme of religion to a pound of pleasure. “Now,” says Herodotus, “when they are being conveyed to the city Bubastis, they act as follows:—for men and women embark together, and great numbers of both sexes in every barge: some of the women have castanets on which they play, and the men play on the flute during the whole voyage; and the rest of the women and men sing and clap their hands together at the same time.” And he goes on to say that when they came to any town they moored the barge, and the women chaffed those on shore, and danced with indecent gestures; and that at the festival more wine was consumed than all the rest of the year. The festival at Tanta is in honor of a famous Moslem saint whose tomb is there; but the tomb is scarcely so attractive as the field of thefête, with the story-tellers and the jugglers and booths of dancing girls.
We pass decayed Benha with its groves of Yoosef-Effendi oranges—the small fruit called Mandarin by foreigners, and preferred by those who like a slight medicinal smell and taste in the orange; and when we are yet twenty miles from Cairo, there in the south-west, visible for a moment and then hidden by the trees, and again in sight, faintly and yet clearly outlined against the blue sky, are two forms, the sight of which gives us a thrill. They stand still in that purple distance in which we have seen them all our lives. Beyond these level fields and these trees of sycamore and date-palm, beyond the Nile, on the desert's edge, with the low Libyan hills falling off behind them, as delicate in form and color as clouds, as enduring as the sky they pierce, the Pyramids of Geezeh! I try to shake off the impression of their solemn antiquity, and imagine how they would strike one if all their mystery were removed. But that is impossible. The imagination always prompts the eye. And yet I believe that standing where they do stand, and in this atmosphere, they are the most impressive of human structures. But the pyramids would be effective, as the obelisk is not, out of Egypt.
Trees increase in number; we have villas and gardens; the grey ledges of the Mokattam hills come into view, then the twin slender spires of the Mosque of Mohammed Ali on the citadel promontory, and we are in the modern station of Cairo; and before we take in the situation are ignominiously driven away in a hotel-omnibus. This might happen in Europe. Yes; but then, who are these in white and blue and red, these squatters by the wayside, these smokers in the sun, these turbaned riders on braying donkeys and grumbling dromedaries; what is all this fantastic masquerade in open day? Do people live in these houses? Do women peep from these lattices? Isn't that gowned Arab conscious that he is kneeling and praying out doors? Have we come to a land where all our standards fail and people are not ashamed of their religion?
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OCAIRO! Cairo! Masr-el-Kaherah, The Victorious! City of the Caliphs, of Salah-e'-deen, of the Memlooks! Town of mediaeval romance projected into a prosaic age! More Oriental than Damascus, or Samarcand. Vast, sprawling city, with dilapidated Saracenic architecture, pretentious modern barrack-palaces, new villas and gardens, acres of compacted, squalid, unsunned dwellings. Always picturesque, lamentably dirty, and thoroughly captivating.
Shall we rhapsodize over it, or attempt to describe it? Fortunately, writers have sufficiently done both. Let us enjoy it. We are at Shepherd's. It is a caravansary through which the world flows. At itstable d'hoteare all nations; German princes, English dukes and shopkeepers, Indian officers, American sovereigns; explorers,savants, travelers; they have come for the climate of Cairo, they are going up the Nile, they are going to hunt in Abyssinia, to join an advance military party on the White Nile; they have come from India, from Japan, from Australia, from Europe, from America.
We are in the Frank quarter called the Ezbekeëh, which was many years ago a pond during high water, then a garden with a canal round it, and is now built over with European houses and shops, except the square reserved for the public garden. From the old terrace in front of the hotel, where the traveler used to look on trees, he will see now only raw new houses and a street usually crowded with passers and rows of sleepy donkeys and their voluble drivers. The hotel is two stories only, built round a court, damp in rainy or cloudy weather (and it is learning how to rain as high up the Nile as Cairo), and lacking the comforts which invalids require in the winter. It is kept on an ingenious combination of the American and European plans; that is, the traveler pays a fixed sum per day and then gets a bill of particulars, besides, which gives him all the pleasures of the European system. We heard that one would be more Orientally surrounded and better cared for at the Hotel du Nil; and the Khedive, who tries his hand at everything, has set up a New Hotel on the public square; but, somehow, one enters Shepherd's as easy as he goes into a city gate.
They call the house entirely European. But there are pelicans walking about in the tropical garden; on one side is the wall of a harem, a house belonging to the Khedive's mother, a harem with closed shutters, but uninteresting, because there is no one in it, though ostriches are strutting in its paved court; in the rear of the house stretches a great grove of tall date-palms standing in a dusty,débris-strown field—a lazy wind is always singing through their tops, and a sakiya (a cow-impelled water-wheel) creaks there day and night; we never lock the doors of our rooms; long-gowned attendants are always watching in the passages, and, when we want one, in default of bells, we open the door and clap the hands. All this, with a juggler performing before the house; dragomans and servants and merchants in Oriental costume; the monotonous strumming of an Arab band in a neighboringcafe, bricklayers on the unfinished house opposite us, working in white night-gowns and turbans, who might be mistaken at a distance for female sleepwalkers; and from a minaret not far away, the tenor-voiced muezzins urging us in the most musical invitation ever extended to unbelievers, to come to prayer at daylight—this cannot be called European.
An end of the dinner-table, however, is occupied by a loud party of young Englishmen, a sprinkling of dukes and earls and those attendants and attentive listeners of the nobility who laugh inordinately when my lord says a good thing, and are encouraged when my lord laughs loudly at a sally of theirs and declares, “well, now, that's very good;” a party who seem to regard Cairo as beyond the line of civilization and its requirements. They talk loud, roar in laughing, stare at the ladies, and light their cigars before the latter have withdrawn. My comrade notices that they call for champagne before fish; we could overlook anything but that. Some travelers who are annoyed at their boisterousness speak to the landlord about them, without knowing their rank—supposing that one could always tell an earl by his superior manners. These young representatives of England have demanded that the Khedive shall send them on their hunting-tour in Africa, and he is to do so at considerable cost; and it is said that he pays their hotel bills in Cairo. The desire of the Khedive to stand well with all the European powers makes him an easy prey to any nobleman who does not like to travel in Egypt at his own expense. (It ought to be added that we encountered on the Nile an Englishman of high rank who had declined the Khedive's offer of a free trip).
Cairo is a city of vast distances, especially the new part which is laid out with broad streets, and built up with isolated houses having perhaps a garden or a green court; open squares are devoted to fountains and flower-beds. Into these broad avenues the sun pours, and through them the dust swirls in clouds; everything is covered with it; it imparts its grey tint to the town and sifts everywhere its impalpable powder. No doubt the health of Cairo is greatly improved and epidemics are lessened, by the destruction of the pestilent old houses and by running wide streets through the old quarters of twisting lanes and sunless alleys. But the wide streets are uninteresting, and the sojourner in the city likes to escape out of their glare and dust into the cool and shady recesses of the old town. And he has not far to go to do so. A few minutes walk from the Ezbekeëh brings one into a tangle like the crossing paths of an ants nest, into the very heart of the smell and color of the Orient, among people among shops, in the presence of manners, habits, costumes, occupations, centuries old, into a life in which the western man recognizes nothing familiar.
Cairo, between the Mokattam hill of limestone and the Nile, covers a great deal of ground—about three square miles—on which dwell somewhere from a third to a half of a million of people. The traveler cannot see its stock-sights in a fortnight, and though he should be there months he will find something novel in the street-life daily, even though he does not, as Mr. Lane has so admirably done, make a study of the people. And “life” goes on in the open streets, to an extent which always surprises us, however familiar we may be with Italian habits. People eat, smoke, pray, sleep, carry on all their trades in sight of the passers by—only into the recesses of the harem and the faces of the women one may not look. And this last mystery and reserve almost outweighs the openness of everything else. One feels as if he were in a masquerade; the part of the world which is really most important—womankind—appears to him only in shadow and flitting phantasm. What danger is he in from these wrapped and veiled figures which glide by, shooting him with a dark and perhaps wicked eye; what peril is he in as he slips through these narrow streets with their masked batteries of latticed windows! This Eastern life is all open to the sun; and yet how little of its secrets does the stranger fathom. I seem to feel, always, in an Eastern town, that there is a mask of duplicity and concealment behind which the Orientals live; that they habitually deceive the traveler in his “gropings after truth.”
The best way of getting about Cairo and its environs is on the donkey. It is cheap and exhilarating. The donkey is easily mounted and easily got off from; not seldom he will weaken in his hind legs and let his rider to the ground—a sinking operation which destroys your confidence in life itself. Sometimes he stumbles and sends the rider over his head. But thegooddonkey never does either. He is the best animal, of his size and appearance, living. He has the two qualities of our greatest general, patience and obstinacy. Thegooddonkey is easy as a rocking-chair, sure-footed as a chamois; he can thread any crowd and stand patiently dozing in any noisy thoroughfare for hours. To ride him is only a slight compromise of one's independence in walking. One is so near the ground, and so absent-mindedly can he gaze at what is around him, that he forgets that there is anything under him. When the donkey, in the excitement of company on the open street and stimulated by the whacks and cries of his driver, breaks into the rush of a gallop, there is so much flying of legs and such a general flutter that the rider fancies he is getting over the ground at an awful rate, running a breakneck race; but it does not appear so to an observer. The rider has the feeling of the swift locomotion of the Arab steed without its danger or its expense. Besides, a long-legged man, with a cork hat and a flying linen “duster,” tearing madly along on an animal as big as a sheep, is an amusing spectacle.
The donkey is abused, whacked, beaten till he is raw, saddled so that all the straps gall him, hard-ridden, left for hours to be assailed by the flies in the street, and ridiculed by all men. I wish we could know what sort of an animal centuries of good treatment would have made of him. Something no doubt quite beyond human deserts; as it is, he is simply indispensable in Eastern life. And not seldom he is a pet; he wears jingling bells and silver ornaments around his neck; his hair is shaved in spots to give him a variegated appearance, and his mane and tail are dyed with henna; he has on an embroidered cloth bridle and a handsome saddle, under which is a scarlet cloth worked with gold. The length and silkiness of his ears are signs of his gentle breeding. I could never understand why he is loaded with such an enormous saddle; the pommel of it rising up in front of the rider as big as a half-bushel measure. Perhaps it is thought well to put this mass upon his back so that he will not notice or mind any additional weight.
The donkey's saving quality, in this exacting world, is inertia. And, yet, he is not without ambition. He dislikes to be passed on the road by a fellow; and if one attempts it, he is certain to sheer in ahead of him and shove him off the track. “Donkey jealous one anoder,” say the drivers.
Each donkey has his driver or attendant, without whose presence, behind or at the side, the animal ceases to go forward. These boys, and some of them are men in stature, are the quickest-witted, most importunate, good-natured vagabonds in this world. They make a study of human nature, and accurately measure every traveler the moment he appears. They are agile to do errands, some of them are better guides than the professionals, they can be entrusted with any purchases you may make, they run, carrying their slippers in their hand, all day beside the donkey, and get only a pittance of pay. They are however a jolly, larkish set, always skylarking with each other, and are not unlike the newspaper boys of New York; now and then one of them becomes a trader or a dragoman and makes his fortune.
If you prefer a carriage, good vehicles have become plenty of late years, since there are broad streets for driving; and some very handsome equipages are seen, especially towards evening on the Shoobra road, up and down which people ride and drive to be seen and to see, as they do in Central or Hyde parks. It isen règleto have a sais running before the carriage, and it is the “swell thing” to have two of them. The running sais before a rapidly driven carriage is the prettiest sight in Cairo. He is usually a slender handsome black fellow, probably a Nubian, brilliantly dressed, graceful in every motion, running with perfect ease and able to keep up his pace for hours without apparent fatigue. In the days of narrow streets his services were indispensable to clear the way; and even now he is useful in the frequented ways where every one walks in the middle of the street, and the chattering, chaffing throngs are as heedless of anything coming as they are of the day of judgment. In red tarboosh with long tassel, silk and gold embroidered vest and jacket, colored girdle with ends knotted and hanging at the side, short silk trousers and bare legs, and long staff, gold-tipped, in the hand, as graceful in running as Antinous, they are most elegant appendages to a fashionable turnout. If they could not be naturalized in Central Park, it might fill some of the requirements of luxury to train a patriot from the Green Isle to run before the horses, in knee-breeches, flourishing a shillalah. Faith, I think he would clear the way.
Especially do I like to see the sais coming down the wind before a carriage of the royal harem. The outriders are eunuchs, two in front and two behind; they are blacks, dressed in black clothes, European cut, except the tarboosh. They ride fine horses, English fashion, rising in the saddle; they have long limbs, lank bodies, cruel, weak faces, and yet cunning; they are sleek, shiny, emasculated. Having no sex, you might say they have no souls. How can these anomalies have any virtue, since virtue implies the opportunity of its opposite? These semblances of men seem proud enough of their position, however, and of the part they play to their masters, as if they did not know the repugnance they excite. The carriage they attend is covered, but the silken hangings of the glass windows are drawn aside, revealing the white-veiled occupants. They indeed have no constitutional objections to being seen; the thin veil enhances their charms, and the observer who sees their painted faces and bright languishing eyes, no doubt gives them credit for as much beauty as they possess; and as they flash by, I suppose that every one, is convinced that he has seen one of the mysterious Circassian or Georgian beauties.
The minute the traveler shows himself on the hotel terrace, the donkey-boys clamor, and push forward their animals upon the sidewalk; it is no small difficulty to select one out of the tangle; there is noise enough used to fit out an expedition to the desert, and it is not till the dragoman has laid vigorously about him with his stick that the way is clear. Your nationality is known at a glance, and a donkey is instantly named to suit you—the same one being called, indifferently, “Bismarck” if you are German, “Bonaparte” if you are French, and “Yankee Doodle” if you are American, or “Ginger Bob” at a venture.
We are going to Boulak, the so-called port of Cairo, to select a dahabeëh for the Nile voyage. We are indeed only getting ready for this voyage, and seeing the city by the way. The donkey-boys speak English like natives—of Egypt. The one running beside me, a handsome boy in a long cotton shirt, is named, royally, Mahmoud Hassan.
“Are you the brother of Hassan whom I had yesterday?”
“No. He, Hassan not my brother; he better, he friend. Breakfast, lunch, supper, all together, all same; all same money. We friends.”
Abd-el-Atti, our dragoman, is riding ahead on his grey donkey, and I have no difficulty in following his broad back and short legs, even though his donkey should be lost to sight in the press. He rides as Egyptians do, without stirrups, and uses his heels as spurs. Since Mohammed Abd-el-Atti Effendi first went up the Nile, it is many years ago now, with Mr. Wm. C. Prime, and got his name prominently into the Nile literature, he has grown older, stout, and rich; he is entitled by his position to the distinction of “Effendi.” He boasts a good family, as good as any; most of his relatives are, and he himself has been, in government employ; but he left it because, as he says, he prefers one master to a thousand. When a boy he went with the embassy of Mohammed Ali to England, and since that time he has traveled extensively as courier in Europe and the Levant and as mail-carrier to India. Mr. Prime described him as having somewhat the complexion and features of the North American Indian; it is true, but he has a shrewd restless eye, and very mobile features, quick to image his good humor or the reverse, breaking into smiles, or clouding over upon his easily aroused suspicion. He is a good study of the Moslem and the real Oriental, a combination of the easy, procrastinating fatalism, and yet with a tindery temper and an activity of body and mind that we do not usually associate with the East. His prejudices are inveterate, and he is an unforgiving enemy and a fast, self-sacrificing friend. Not to be driven, he can always be won by kindness. Fond of money and not forgetting the last piastre due him, he is generous and lavish to a fault. A devout Moslem, he has seen too much of the world not to be liberalized. He knows the Koran and the legendary history of the Arabs, and speaks and writes Arabic above the average. An exceedingly shrewd observer and reader of character, and a mimic of other's peculiarities, he is a goodraconteur, in his peculiar English, and capital company. It is, by the way, worth mentioning what sharp observers all these Eastern people become, whose business it is to study and humor the whims and eccentricities of travelers. The western man who thinks that the Eastern people are childlike oreffete, will change his mind after a few months acquaintance with the shrewd Egyptians. Abd-el-Atti has a good deal of influence and even authority in his sphere, and although his executive ability is without system, he brings things to pass. Wherever he goes, however, there is a ripple and a noise. He would like to go to Nubia with us this winter, he says, “for shange of air.”
So much is necessary concerning the character who is to be our companion for many months. No dragoman is better known in the East; he is the sheykh of the dragomans of Cairo, and by reason of his age and experience he is hailed on the river as the sultan of the Nile. He dresses like an Englishman, except his fez.
The great worry of the voyager in Egypt, from the moment he lands, is about a dragoman; his comfort and pleasure depend very much upon a right selection. The dragoman and the dahabeëh interest him more than the sphinx and the great pyramids. Taking strangers up the Nile seems to be the great business of Egypt, and all the intricacies and tricks of it are slowly learned. Ignorant of the language and of the character of the people, the stranger may well be in a maze of doubt and perplexity. His gorgeously attired dragoman, whose recommendations would fit him to hold combined the offices of President of the American Bible Society and caterer for Delmonico, often turns out to be ignorant of his simplest duties, to have an inhabited but uninhabitable boat, to furnish a meagre table, and to be a sly knave. The traveler will certainly have no peace from the importunity of the dragomans until he makes his choice. One hint can be given: it is always best in a Moslem country to take a Moslem dragoman.
We are on our way to Boulak. The sky is full of white light. The air is full of dust; the streets are full of noise color, vivid life and motion. Everything is flowing, free, joyous. Naturally people fall into picturesque groups, forming, separating, shifting like scenes on the stage. Neither the rich silks and brilliant dyes, nor the tattered rags, and browns and greys are out of place; full dress and nakedness are equallyen régie. Here is a grave, long-bearded merchant in full turban and silk gown, riding his caparisoned donkey to his shop, followed by his pipe-bearer; here is a half-naked fellah seated on the rear of his sorry-eyed beast, with a basket of greens in front of him; here are a group of women, hunched astride their donkeys, some in white silk and some in black, shapeless in their balloon mantles, peeping at the world over their veils; here a handsome sais runs ahead of a carriage with a fat Turk lolling in it, and scatters the loiterers right and left; there are porters and beggars fast asleep by the roadside, only their heads covered from the sun; there are lines of idlers squatting in all-day leisure by the wall, smoking, or merely waiting for tomorrow.
As we get down to Old Boulak the Saturday market is encountered. All Egyptian markets occupy the street or some open place, and whatever is for sale here, is exposed to the dust and the sun; fish, candy, dates, live sheep, doora, beans, all the doubtful and greasy compounds on brass trays which the people eat, nuts, raisins, sugar-cane, cheap jewelry. It is difficult to force a way through the noisy crowd. The donkey-boy cries perpetually, to clear the way, take care, “shimalak!” to the left, “yemenak!” to the right,ya! riglak!look out for your left leg, look out for your right leg, make way boy, make way old woman; but we joggle the old woman, and just escape stepping on the children and babies strewn in the street, and tread on the edge of mats spread on the ground, upon which provisions are exposed (to the dust) for sale. In the narrow, shabby streets, with dilapidated old balconies meeting overhead, we encounter loaded camels, donkeys with double panniers, hawkers of vegetables; and dodge through, bewildered by color and stunned by noise. What is it that makes all picturesque? More dirt, shabbiness, and nakedness never were assembled. That fellow who has cut armholes in a sack for holding nuts, and slipped into it for his sole garment, would not make a good figure on Broadway, but he is in place here, and as fitly dressed as anybody. These rascals will wear a bit of old carpet as if it were a king's robe, and go about in a pair of drawers that are all rags and strings, and a coarse towel twisted about the head for turban, with a gayinsouciancethat is pleasing. In fact, I suppose that a good, well-fitting black or nice brown skin is about as good as a suit of clothes.
But O! the wrinkled, flabby-breasted old women, who make a pretence of drawing the shawl over one eye; the naked, big-stomached children with spindle legs, who sit in the sand and never brush away the circle of flies around each gummy eye! The tumble-down houses, kennels in which the family sleep, the poverty of thousands of years, borne as if it were the only lot of life! In spite of all this, there is not, I venture to say, in the world beside, anything so full of color, so gay andbizarreas a street in Cairo. And we are in a squalid suburb.
At the shore of the swift and now falling Nile, at Boulak, are moored, four or five deep, the passenger dahabeëhs, more than a hundred of them, gay with new paint and new carpets, to catch the traveler. There are small and large, old and new (but all looking new); those that were used for freight during the summer and may be full of vermin, and those reserved exclusively for strangers. They can be hired at from sixty pounds to two hundred pounds a month; the English owner of one handsomely furnished wanted seven hundred and fifty pounds for a three-months' voyage. The Nile trip adds luxury to itself every year, and is getting so costly that only Americans will be able to afford it.
After hours of search we settle upon a boat that will suit us, a large boat that had only made a short trip, and so new that we are at liberty to christen it; and the bargaining for it begins. That is, the bargaining revolves around that boat, but glances off as we depart in a rage to this or that other, until we appear to me to be hiring half the craft on the river. We appear to come to terms; again and again Abd-el-Atti says, “Well, it is finish,” but new difficulties arise.
The owners were an odd pair: a tall Arab in soiled gown and turban, named Ahmed Aboo Yoosef, a mild and wary Moslem; and Habib Bagdadli, a furtive little Jew in Frank dress, with a cast in one of his pathetic eyes and a beseeching look, who spoke bad French fluently. Aboo Yoosef was ready to come to terms, but Bagdadli stood out; then Bagdadli acquiesced but Aboo made conditions. Ab-del-Atti alternately coaxed and stormed; he pulled the Arab's beard; and he put his arm round his neck and whispered in his ear.
“Come, let us to go, dis Jews make me mad. I can't do anything with dis little Jews.”
Our dragoman's greatest abhorrence is a Jew. Where is this one from? I ask.
“He from Algiers.” The Algerian Jews have a bad reputation.
“No, no, monsieur, pas Algiers;” cries the little Jew, appealing to me with a pitiful look; “I am from Bagdad.” In proof of this there was his name—Habib Bagdadli.
The bargaining goes on, with fine gesticulation, despairing attitudes, tones of anger and of grief, violent protestations and fallings into apathy and dejection. It is Arab against Arab and a Jew thrown in.
“I will have this boat, but I not put you out of the way on it;” says Abd-el-Atti, and goes at it again.
My sympathies are divided. I can see that the Arab and the Jew will be ruined if they take what we offer. I know that we shall be ruined if we give what they ask. This pathetic-eyed little Jew makes me feel that I am oppressing his race; and yet I am quite certain that he is trying to overreach us. How the bargain is finally struck I know not, but made it seems to be, and clinched by Aboo reluctantly pulling his purse from his bosom and handing Abd-el-Atti a napoleon. That binds the bargain; instead of the hirer paying something, the lessor gives a pledge.
Trouble, however, is not ended. Certain alterations and additions are to be made, and it is nearly two weeks before the evasive couple complete them. The next day they offer us twenty pounds to release them. The pair are always hanging about for some mitigation or for some advance. The gentle Jew, who seems to me friendless, always excites the ire of our dragoman; “Here comes dis little Jews,” he exclaims as he encounters him in the street, and forces him to go and fulfil some neglected promise.
The boat is of the largest size, and has never been above the Cataract; the owners guarantee that it can go, and there is put in the contract a forfeit of a hundred pounds if it will not. We shall see afterwards how the owners sought to circumvent us. The wiles of the Egyptians are slowly learned by the open-minded stranger.