Dearest Mutter,
We have had our winter pretty sharp for three weeks, and everybody has had violent
colds and coughs—the Arabs, I mean.
I have been a good deal ailing, but have escaped any violent cold altogether, and now
the thermometer is up to 64°, and it feels very pleasant. In the sun it is always very
hot, but that does not prevent the air from being keen, and chapping lips and noses, and
even hands; it is curious how a temperature, which would be summer in England, makes one
shiver at Thebes—Alhamdulillah! it is over now.
My poor Sheykh Yussuf is in great distress about his
brother, also a young Sheykh (i.e., one learned in theology
and competent to preach in the mosque). Sheykh Mohammed is
come home from studying in ‘El-Azhar’ at Cairo—I
fear to die. I went with Sheykh Yussuf, at his desire, to see
if I could help him, and found him gasping for breath and very, very ill. I gave him a
little soothing medicine, and put mustard plasters on him, and as it relieved him, I
went again and repeated them. All the family and a lot of neighbours crowded in to look
on. There he lay in a dark little den with bare mud walls, worse off, to our ideas, than
any pauper; but these people do not feel the want of comforts, and one learns to think
it quite natural to sit with perfect gentlemen in places inferior to our cattle-sheds. I
pulled some blankets up against the wall, and put my arm behind Sheykh Mohammed’s back to make him rest while the poultices were on him,
whereupon he laid his green turban on my shoulder, and presently held up his delicate
brown face for a kiss like an affectionate child. As I kissed him, a very pious old
moollah said Bismillah (In the name of God) with an approving nod, and Sheykh Mohammed’s old father, a splendid old man in a green
turban, thanked me with effusion, and prayed that my children might always find help and
kindness. I suppose if I confessed to kissing a ‘dirty Arab’ in a ‘hovel’ the English
travellers would execrate me; but it shows how much there is in ‘Mussulman bigotry,
unconquerable hatred, etc.,’ for this family are Seyyids (descendents of the Prophet)
and very pious. Sheykh Yussuf does not even smoke, and he
preaches on Fridays. You would love these Saeedees,
they are such thorough gentlemen. I rode over to the village a few days ago to see a
farmer named Omar. Of course I had to eat, and
the people were enchanted at my going alone, as they are used to see the English armed
and guarded. Sidi Omar, however, insisted on
accompanying me home, which is the civil thing here. He piled a whole stack of green
fodder on his little nimble donkey, and hoisted himself atop of it without saddle or
bridle (the fodder was for Mustapha
Agha), and we trotted home across the beautiful green barley-fields, to the
amazement of some European young men out shooting. We did look a curious pair,
certainly, with my English saddle and bridle, habit, hat and feather, on horseback, and
Sidi Omar’s brown shirt, brown legs and white
turban, guiding his donkey with his chibouque. We were laughing very merrily, too, over
my blundering Arabic.
Young Heathcote and Strutt called
here, but were hurrying on up the river. I shall see more of them when they come down.
Young Strutt is so like his mother I knew him in the street.
I would like to give him a fantasia, but it is not
proper for a woman to send for the dancing-girls, and as I am the friend of the Maōhn (police magistrate), the Kadee, and the respectable people here, I cannot do what is indecent in
their eyes. It is quite enough that they approve my unveiled face, and my associating
with men; that is ‘my custom,’ and they think no harm of it.
To-morrow or next day Ramadan begins at the first sight of the
new moon. It is a great nuisance, because everybody is cross. Omar did not keep it last year, but this year he will, and if he
spoils my dinners, who can blame him? There was a wedding close by here last night, and
about ten o’clock all the women passed under my windows with crys of joy ‘ez-zaghareet’ down to the river. I find, on inquiry, that in
Upper Egypt, as soon as the bridegroom has ‘taken the face’ of his bride, the women take
her down to ‘see the Nile.’ They have not yet forgotten that the old god is the giver of
increase, it seems.
I have been reading Miss Martineau’s book; the descriptions are excellent, but she evidently knew and
cared nothing about the people, and had the feeling of most English people here, that
the difference of manners is a sort of impassable gulf, the truth being that their
feelings and passions are just like our own. It is curious that all the old books of
travels that I have read mention the natives of strange countries in a far more natural
tone, and with far more attempt to discriminate character, than modern ones, e.g., Niebuhr’s
Travels here and in Arabia, Cook’s Voyages, and many others. Have we grown so very civilized since a hundred
years that outlandish people seem like mere puppets, and not like real human beings?
Miss M.’s bigotry against Copts and Greeks is droll enough, compared to her very proper
reverence for ‘Him who sleeps in Philae,’ and
her attack upon hareems outrageous; she implies that
they are brothels. I must admit that I have not seen a Turkish hareem, and she apparently saw no other, and yet she fancies the morals of
Turkey to be superior to those of Egypt. It is not possible for a woman to explain all
the limitations to which ordinary people do subject themselves. Great men I know nothing
of; but women can and do, without blame, sue their husbands-in-law for the full ‘payment
of debt,’ and demand a divorce if they please in default. Very often a man marries a
second wife out of duty to provide for a brother’s widow and children, or the like. Of
course licentious men act loosely as elsewhere. Kulloolum Beni
Adam (we are all sons of Adam), as Sheykh Yussuf
says constantly, ‘bad-bad and good-good’; and modern travellers show strange ignorance
in talking of foreign natives in the lump, as they nearly
all do.
Monday.—I have just heard that poor Sheykh
Mohammed died yesterday, and was, as usual, buried at once. I had
not been well for a few days, and Sheykh Yussuf took care
that I should not know of his brother’s death. He went to Mustapha Agha, and told him not to tell anyone in my house
till I was better, because he knew ‘what was in my stomach towards his family,’ and
feared I should be made worse by the news. And how often I have been advised not to
meddle with sick Arabs, because they are sure to suspect a Christian of poisoning those
who die! I do grieve for the graceful, handsome young creature and his old father. Omar was vexed at not knowing of his death, because
he would have liked to help to carry him to the grave.
I have at last learned the alphabet in Arabic, and can write it quite tidily, but now I
am in a fix for want of a dictionary, and have written to Hekekian Bey to buy me one in Cairo. Sheykh Yussuf knows not a word
of English, and Omar can’t read or write, and has
no notion of grammar or of word for word interpretation,
and it is very slow work. When I walk through the court of the mosque I give the
customary coppers to the little boys who are spelling away loudly under the arcade,
Abba sheddeh o nusbeyteen, Ibbi sheddeh o heftedeen,
etc., with a keen sympathy with their difficulties and well-smudged tin slates. An
additional evil is that the Arabic books printed in England, and at English presses
here, require a 40-horse power microscope to distinguish a letter. The ciphering is like
ours, but with other figures, and I felt very stupid when I discovered how I had
reckoned Arab fashion from right to left all my life and never observed the fact.
However, they ‘cast down’ a column of figures from top to bottom.
I am just called away by some poor men who want me to speak to the English travellers
about shooting their pigeons. It is very thoughtless, but it is in great measure the
fault of the servants and dragomans who think they must not venture to tell their
masters that pigeons are private property. I have a great mind to put a notice on the
wall of my house about it. Here, where there are never less than eight or ten boats
lying for full three months, the loss to the fellaheen
is serious, and our Consul Mustapha Agha
is afraid to say anything. I have given my neighbours permission to call the pigeons
mine, as they roost in flocks on my roof, and to go out and say that the Sitt objects to her poultry being shot, especially as I have
had them shot off my balcony as they sat there.
I got a note from M. Mounier
yesterday, inviting me to go and stay at El-Moutaneh, Halim Pasha’s great estate, near Edfoo, and offering to send his dahabieh for
me. I certainly will go as soon as the weather is decidedly hot. It is now very warm and
pleasant. If I find Thebes too hot as summer
advances I must drop down and return to Cairo, or
try Suez , which I hear is excellent in
summer—bracing desert air. But it is very tempting to stay here—a splendid cool house,
food extremely cheap; about £1 a week for three of us for fish, bread, butter, meat,
milk, eggs and vegetables; all grocery, of course, I brought with me; no trouble, rest
and civil neighbours. I feel very disinclined to move unless I am baked out, and it
takes a good deal to bake me. The only fear is the Khamaseen wind. I do not feel very well. I don’t ail anything in
particular; blood-spitting frequent, but very slight; much less cough; but I am so weak
and good for nothing. I seldom feel able to go out or do more than sit in the balcony on
one side or other of the house. I have no donkey here, the hired ones are so very bad
and so dear; but I have written Mounier to try
and get me one at El-Moutaneh and send it down in one of Halim Pasha’s corn-boats. There is no comfort like a donkey
always ready. If I have to send for Mustapha’s horse, I feel lazy and fancy it is too much trouble unless I can
go just when I want.
I have received a letter from Alexandria of
January 8. What dreadful weather! We felt the ghost of it here in our
three weeks of cold. Sometimes I feel as if I must go back to you all coûte qui coûte, but I know it would be no use to try it in
the summer. I long for more news of you and my chicks.