Dearest Alick,
I am glad my letters amuse you. Sometimes I think they must breathe the unutterable
dulness of Eastern life: not that it is dull to me, a curious spectator, but how the men
with nothing to do can endure it is a wonder. I went yesterday to call on a Turk at
Karnak; he is a gentlemanly man, the son of a former Moudir, who was murdered, I
believe, for his cruelty and extortion. He has 1,000 feddans (acres, or a little more)
of land, and lives in a mud house, larger but no better than any fellahs, with two wives
and the brother of one of them. He leaves the farm to his fellaheen altogether, I fancy.
There was one book, a Turkish one; I could not read the title-page, and he did not tell
me what it was. In short, there was no means of killing time but the narghile, no horse,
no gun, nothing, and yet they did not seem bored. The two women are always clamorous for
my visits, and very noisy and school-girlish, but apparently excellent friends and very
good-natured. The gentleman gave me a kufyeh (thick head kerchief for the sun), so I
took the ladies a bit of silk I happened to have. You never heard anything like his
raptures over Maurice’s portrait,
‘Mashallah, Mashallah, Wallahy zay el ward’ (It is the will of God, and by God he
is like a rose). But I can’t ‘cotton to’ the Turks. I always feel that they secretly
dislike us European women, though they profess huge admiration and pay personal
compliments, which an Arab very seldom attempts. I heard Seleem Effendi and Omar discussing English ladies one day lately while
I was inside the curtain with Seleem’s slave girl, and they did not know I heard them.
Omar described Janet, and was of the opinion that a man who was married to her
could want nothing more. ‘By my soul, she rides like a Bedawee, she shoots with the gun
and pistol, and rows the boat; she speaks many languages, works with the needle like an
Efreet, and to see her hands run over the teeth of the music-box (keys of piano) amazes
the mind, while her singing gladdens the soul. How then should her husband ever desire
the coffee-shop? Wallahy! she can always amuse him at home. And as to my lady, the
thing is not that she does not know. When I feel my stomach tightened, I go to the divan
and say to her, ‘Do you want anything, a pipe, or sherbet, or so and so?’ and I talk
till she lays down her book and talks to me, and I question her and amuse my mind, and,
by God! if I were a rich man and could marry one English Hareem like that I would stand before her and serve her like her memlook.
You see I am only this lady’s servant, and I have not once sat in the coffee-shop
because of the sweetness of her tongue. Is it not therefore true that the man who can
marry such Hareem is rich more than with money?’ Seleem
seemed disposed to think a little more of looks, though he quite agreed with all Omar’s enthusiasm, and asked if Janet were beautiful. Omar
answered with decorous vagueness that she was a ‘moon,’ but declined mentioning her
hair, eyes, etc. (it is a liberty to describe a woman minutely). I nearly laughed out at
hearing Omar relate his manœuvres to make me
‘amuse his mind’; it seems I am in no danger of being discharged for being dull.
The weather has set in so hot that I have shifted my quarters out of my fine room to
the south-west into one with only three sides looking over a lovely green view to the
north-east, with a huge sort of solid veranda, as large as the room itself, on the open
side; thus I live in the open air altogether. The bats and the swallows are quite
sociable; I hope the serpents and scorpions will be more reserved. ‘El Khamaseen’ (the
fifty) has begun, and the wind is enough to mix up heaven and earth, but it is not
distressing like the Cape south-easter, and, though hot, not choking like the Khamseen
in Cairo and Alexandria . Mohammed brought me a handful of the new wheat just now. Think
of harvest in March and April! These winds are as good for the crops here as a ‘nice
steady rain’ is in England. It is not necessary to water so much when the wind blows
strong. As I rode through the green fields along the dyke, a little boy sang as he
turned round on the musically-creaking Sakìah (the water-wheel turned by an ox) the one
eternal Sakìah tune—the words are ad libitum, and my little friend chanted ‘Turn oh
Sakìah to the right and turn to the left—who will take care of me if my father dies?
Turn oh Sakìah, etc., pour water for the figs and the grass and for the watermelons.
Turn oh Sakìah!’ Nothing is so pathetic as that Sakìah song.
I passed the house of the Sheykh-el-Ababdeh, who called out to me to take coffee. The
moon was splendid and the scene was lovely. The handsome black-brown Sheykh in dark
robes and white turban, Omar in a graceful white
gown and red turban, and the wild Ababdeh in all manner of dingy white rags, and with
every kind of uncouth weapon, spears, matchlocks, etc., in every kind of wild and
graceful attitude, with their long black ringlets and bare heads, a few little
black-brown children quite naked and shaped like Cupids. And there we sat and looked so
romantic and talked quite like ladies and gentlemen about the merits of Sakna and Almás,
the two great rival women-singers of Cairo. I
think the Sheykh wished to display his experiences of fashionable life.
The Copts are now fasting and cross. They fast fifty-five days for Lent; no meat, fish,
eggs, or milk, no exception for Sundays, no food till after twelve at noon, and no
intercourse with the hareem. The only comfort is lots
of arrak, and what a Copt can carry decently is an unknown quantity; one seldom sees
them drunk, but they imbibe awful quantities. They offer me wine and arrak always, and
can’t think why I don’t drink it. I believe they suspect my Christianity in consequence
of my preference for Nile water. As to that, though, they scorn all heretics, i.e.,
all Christians but themselves and the Abyssinians, more than they do the Muslims, and
dislike them more; the procession of the Holy Ghost question divides us with the Gulf of
Jehannum. The gardener of this house is a Copt, such a nice fellow, and he and Omar chaff one another about religion with the
utmost good humour; indeed they are seldom touchy with the Moslems. There is a pretty
little man called Michaïl, a Copt, vakeel to M. Mounier. I wish I could draw him to show
a perfect specimen of the ancient Egyptian race; his blood must be quite unmixed. He
came here yesterday to speak to Ali Bey, the Moudir of Keneh, who was visiting me (a splendid handsome Turk he is); so little
Michaïl crept in to mention his business under my protection, and a few more followed,
till Ali Bey got tired of holding a durbar in my divan and went away to his boat. You
see the people think the courbash is not quite so handy with an English spectator. The
other day Mustapha A’gha got Ali Bey to do a little job for him—to let the people in the
Gezeereh (the island), which is Mustapha’s property, work at a canal there instead of at
the canal higher up for the Pasha. Very well, but down comes the Nazir (the Moudir’s
sub.), and courbashes the whole Gezeereh, not Mustapha, of course, but the poor
fellaheen who were doing his corvée instead of the Pasha’s by the Moudir’s order. I
went to the Gezeereh and thought that Moses was at work again and had killed a firstborn
in every house by the crying and wailing, when up came two fellows and showed me their
bloody feet, which their wives were crying over like for a death, Shorghl el
Mizr—things of Egypt—like Cosas de España.
Wednesday.—Last night I bored Sheykh Yussuf with Antara and Abou-Zeyd, maintaining
the greater valour of Antara who slew 10,000 for the love of Ibla; you know Antara.
Yussuf looks down on such profanities, and replied, ‘What are Antara and Abou-Zeyd
compared to the combats of our Lord Moses with Og and other infidels of might, and what
is the love of Antara for Ibla compared to that of our Lord Solomon for Balkees (Queen
of Sheba), or their beauty and attractiveness to that of our Lord Joseph?’ And then he
related the combat of Seyyidna Mousa with Og; and I thought, ‘hear O ye Puritans, and
give ear O ye Methodists, and learn how religion and romance are one to those whose
manners and ideas are the manners and ideas of the Bible, and how Moses was not at all a
crop-eared Puritan, but a gallant warrior!’ There is the Homeric element in the religion
here, the Prophet is a hero like Achilles, and like him directed by God—Allah instead of
Athene. He fights, prays, teaches, makes love, and is truly a man, not an abstraction;
and as to wonderful events, instead of telling one to ‘gulp them down without looking’
(as children are told with a nasty dose, and as we are told about Genesis, etc.) they
believe them and delight in them, and tell them to amuse people. Such a piece of
deep-disguised scepticism as Credo quia impossibile would find no favour here; ‘What
is impossible to God?’ settles everything. In short, Mohammed has somehow left the stamp
of romance on the religion, or else it is in the blood of the people, though the Koran
is prosy and ‘common-sensical’ compared to the Old Testament. I used to think Arabs
intensely prosaic till I could understand a little of their language, but now I can
trace the genealogy of Don Quixote straight up to some Sheykh-el-Arab.
A fine, handsome woman with a lovely baby came to me the other day. I played with the
baby, and gave it a cotton handkerchief for its head. The woman came again yesterday to
bring me a little milk and some salad as a present, and to tell my fortune with date
stones. I laughed, and so she contented herself with telling Omar about his family, which he believed implicitly. She is a
clever woman evidently, and a great sibyl here. No doubt she has faith in her own
predictions. She told Mme. Mounier (who is a Levantine) that she would never have a
child, and was forbidden the house accordingly, and the prophecy has ‘come true.’
Superstition is wonderfully infectious here. The fact is that the Arabs are so intensely
impressionable, and so cowardly about inspiring any ill-will, that if a man looks
askance at them it is enough to make them ill, and as calamities are not infrequent,
there is always some mishap ready to be laid to the charge of somebody’s ‘eye.’ Omar would fain have had me say nothing about the
theft of my purse, for fear the Karnak people should hate me and give me the eye. A part
of the boasting about property, etc., is politeness, so that one may not be supposed to
be envious of one’s neighbours’ nice things. My Sakka (water carrier) admired my
bracelet yesterday, as he was watering the verandah floor, and instantly told me of all
the gold necklaces and earrings he had bought for his wife and daughters, that I might
not be uneasy and fear his envious eye. He is such a good fellow. For two shillings a
month he brings up eight or ten huge skins of water from the river a day, and never begs
or complains, always merry and civil. I shall enlarge his backsheesh. There are a lot of
camels who sleep in the yard under my verandah; they are pretty and smell nice, but they
growl and swear at night abominably. I wish I could draw you an Egyptian farm-yard, men,
women and cattle; but what no one can draw is the amber light, so brilliant and so soft,
not like the Cape diamond sunshine at all, but equally beautiful, hotter and less
dazzling. There is no glare in Egypt like in the South of France, and, I suppose, in
Italy.
Thursday.—I went yesterday afternoon to the island again to see the crops, and show
Sally my friend farmer Omar’s house and Mustapha’s village. Of course we had to eat, and
did not come home till the moon had long risen. Mustapha’s brother Abdurachman walked
about with us, such a noble-looking man, tall, spare, dignified and active, grey-bearded
and hard-featured, but as lithe and bright-eyed as a boy, scorning any conveyance but
his own feet, and quite dry while we ‘ran down.’ He was like Boaz, the wealthy gentleman
peasant—nothing except the Biblical characters gave any idea of the rich fellah. We
sat and drank new milk in a ‘lodge in a garden of cucumbers’ (the ‘lodge’ is a neat hut
of palm branches), and saw the moon rise over the mountains and light up everything like
a softer sun. Here you see all colours as well by moonlight as by day; hence it does not
look as brilliant as the Cape moon, or even as I have seen in Paris, where it throws
sharp black shadows and white light. The night here is a tender, subdued, dreamy sort of
enchanted-looking day. My Turkish acquaintance from Karnak has just been here; he
boasted of his house in Damascus, and invited me to go with him after the harvest here,
also of his beautiful wife in Syria, and then begged me not to mention her to his wives
here.
It is very hot now; what will it be in June? It is now 86° in my shady room at noon; it
will be hotter at two or three. But the mornings and evenings are delicious. I am
shedding my clothes by degrees; stockings are unbearable. Meanwhile my cough is almost
gone, and the pain is quite gone. I feel much stronger, too; the horrible feeling of
exhaustion has left me; I suppose I must have salamander blood in my body to be made
lively by such heat. Sally is quite well; she does not seem at all the worse at present.
Saturday.—This will go to-morrow by some travellers, the last winter swallows. We
went together yesterday to the Tombs of the Kings on the opposite bank. The mountains
were red-hot, and the sun went down into Amenti all on fire. We met Mr. Dümmichen, the
German, who is living in the temple of Dayr el-Bahree, translating inscriptions, and
went down Belzoni’s tomb. Mr. Dümmichen translated a great many things for us which were
very curious, and I think I was more struck with the beauty of the drawing of the
figures than last year. The face of the Goddess of the Western shore, Amenti, Athor, or
Hecate, is ravishing as she welcomes the King to her regions; death was never painted so
lovely. The road is a long and most wild one—truly through the valley of the shadow of
death—not an insect nor a bird. Our moonlight ride home was beyond belief beautiful. The
Arabs who followed us were immensely amused at hearing me interpret between German and
English, and at my speaking Arabic; they asked if I was dragoman of all the languages in
the world. One of them had droll theories about ‘Amellica’ (America), as they pronounce
it always. Was the King very powerful that the country was called ‘Al Melekeh’ (the
Kings)? I said, ‘No: all are Kings there: you would be a King like the rest.’ My friend
disapproved utterly: ‘If all are Kings they must all be taking away every man the
other’s money’—a delightful idea of the kingly vocation.
When we landed on the opposite shore, I told little Achmet to go back in the
ferry-boat, in which he had brought me over my donkey; a quarter of an hour after I saw
him by my side. The guide asked why he had not gone as I told him. ‘Who would take care
of the lady?’ the monkey is Rainie’s size. Of course he got tired, and on the way home I
told him to jump up behind me en croupe after the Fellah fashion. I thought the Arabs
would never have done laughing and saying Wallah and Mashallah. Sheykh Yussuf talked
about the excavations, and is shocked at the way the mummies are kicked about. One boy
told him they were not Muslims as an excuse, and he rebuked him severely, and told him
it was haraam (accursed) to do so to the children of Adam. He says they have learned
it very much of Mariette Bey, but I suspect it was always so with the fellaheen. To-day
a tremendous wind is blowing; excellent for the corn. At Mustapha’s farm they are
preparing for the harvest, baking bread and selecting a young bull to be killed for the
reapers. It is not hot to-day; only 84° in a cool room. The dust is horrid with this
high wind; everything is gritty, and it obscures the sun. I am desired to eat a raw
onion every day during the Khamseen for health and prosperity. This too must be a
remnant of ancient Egypt. How I do long to see you and the children. Sometimes I feel
rather down-hearted, but it is no good to say all that. And I am much better and
stronger. I stood a long ride and some scrambling quite well last evening.