Notes from Egypt

Dearest Alick,

We returned to Luxor the evening before last just after dark. The salute which Omar fired with your old horse-pistols brought down a lot of people, and there was a chorus of Alhamdulilah Salaameh ya Sitt, and such a kissing of hands, and ‘Welcome home to your place’ and ‘We have tasted your absence and found it bitter,’ etc., etc. Mustapha came with letters for me, and Yussuf beaming with smiles, and Mahommed with new bread made of new wheat, and Suleyman with flowers, and little Achmet rushing in wildly to kiss hands. When the welcome had subsided, Yussuf, who stayed to tea, told me all the cattle were dead. Mustapha lost thirty-four, and has three left; and poor farmer Omar lost all—forty head. The distress in Upper Egypt will now be fearful. Within six weeks all our cattle are dead. They are threshing the corn with donkeys, and men are turning the sakiahs (water-wheels) and drawing the ploughs, and dying by scores of overwork and want of food in many places. The whole agriculture depended on the oxen, and they are all dead. At El-Moutaneh and the nine villages round Halim Pasha’s estate 24,000 head have died; four beasts were left when we were there three days ago.

We spent two days and nights at Philae and Wallahy! it was hot. The basalt rocks which enclose the river all round the island were burning. Sally and I slept in the Osiris chamber, on the roof of the temple, on our air-beds. Omar lay across the doorway to guard us, and Arthur and his Copt, with the well-bred sailor Ramadan, were sent to bivouac on the Pylon. Ramadan took the hareem under his special and most respectful charge, and waited on us devotedly, but never raised his eyes to our faces, or spoke till spoken to. Philae is six or seven miles from Assouan, and we went on donkeys through the beautiful Shellaleeh (the village of the cataract), and the noble place of tombs of Assouan. Great was the amazement of everyone at seeing Europeans so out of season; we were like swallows in January to them. I could not sleep for the heat in the room, and threw on an abbayeh (cloak) and went and lay on the parapet of the temple. What a night! What a lovely view! The stars gave as much light as the moon in Europe, and all but the cataract was still as death and glowing hot, and the palm-trees were more graceful and dreamy than ever. Then Omar woke, and came and sat at my feet, and rubbed them, and sang a song of a Turkish slave. I said, ‘Do not rub my feet, oh brother—that is not fit for thee’ (because it is below the dignity of a free Muslim altogether to touch shoes or feet), but he sang in his song, ‘The slave of the Turk may be set free by money, but how shall one be ransomed who has been paid for by kind actions and sweet words?’ Then the day broke deep crimson, and I went down and bathed in the Nile, and saw the girls on the island opposite in their summer fashions, consisting of a leathern fringe round their slender hips—divinely graceful—bearing huge saucer-shaped baskets of corn on their stately young heads; and I went up and sat at the end of the colonnade looking up into Ethiopia, and dreamed dreams of ‘Him who sleeps in Philae,’ until the great Amun Ra kissed my northern face too hotly, and drove me into the temple to breakfast, and coffee, and pipes, and kief. And in the evening three little naked Nubians rowed us about for two or three hours on the glorious river in a boat made of thousands of bits of wood, each a foot long; and between whiles they jumped overboard and disappeared, and came up on the other side of the boat. Assouan was full of Turkish soldiers, who came and took away our donkeys, and stared at our faces most irreligiously. I did not go on shore at Kom Ombos or El Kab, only at Edfou, where we spent the day in the temple; and at Esneh, where we tried to buy sugar, tobacco, etc., and found nothing at all, though Esneh is a chef-lieu, with a Moudir. It is only in winter that anything is to be got for the travellers. We had to ask the Nazir in Edfou to order a man to sell us charcoal. People do without sugar, and smoke green tobacco, and eat beans, etc., etc. Soon we must do likewise, for our stores are nearly exhausted.

We stopped at El-Moutaneh, and had a good dinner in the Mouniers’ handsome house, and they gave me a loaf of sugar. Mme. Mounier described Rachel’s stay with them for three months at Luxor, in my house, where they then lived. She hated it so, that on embarking to leave she turned back and spat on the ground, and cursed the place inhabited by savages, where she had been ennuyée a mort. Mme. Mounier fully sympathized with her, and thought no femme aimable could live with Arabs, who are not at all galants. She is Levantine, and, I believe, half Arab herself, but hates the life here, and hates the Muslims. As I write this I laugh to think of galanterie and Arab in one sentence, and glance at ‘my brother’ Yussuf, who is sleeping on a mat, quite overcome with the Simoom (which is blowing) and the fast which he is keeping to-day, as the eve of the Eed-el-Kebir (great festival). This is the coolest place in the village. The glass is only 95½° now (eleven a.m.) in the darkened divan. The Kádee, and the Maōhn, and Yussuf came together to visit me, and when the others left he lay down to sleep. Omar is sleeping in the passage, and Sally in her room. I alone don’t sleep—but the Simoom is terrible. Arthur runs about all day, sight-seeing and drawing, and does not suffer at all from the heat. I can’t walk now, as the sand blisters my feet.

Tuesday, May 17.—Yesterday the Simoom was awful, and last night I slept on the terrace, and was very hot. To-day the north wind sprang up at noon and revived us, though it is still 102° in my divan. My old ‘great-grandfather’ has come in for a pipe and coffee; he was Belzoni’s guide, and his eldest child was born seven days before the French under Bonaparte marched into Luxor. He is superbly handsome and erect, and very talkative, but only remembers old times, and takes me for Mme. Belzoni. He is grandfather to Mahommed, the guard of this house, and great-grandfather to my little Achmet. His grandsons have married him to a tidy old woman to take care of him; he calls me ‘My lady grand-daughter,’ and Omar he calls ‘Mustapha,’ and we salute him as ‘grandfather.’ I wish I could paint him; he is so grand to look at. Old Mustapha had a son born yesterday—his tenth child. I must go and wish him joy, after which I will go to Arthur’s boat and have a bathe; the sailors rig me out a capital awning. We had a good boat, and a capital crew; one man Mahommed, called Alatee (the singer), sang beautifully, to my great delight, and all were excellent fellows, quiet and obliging; only his servant was a lazy beast, dirty and conceited—a Copt, spoiled by an Italian education and Greek associates, thinking himself very grand because he was a Christian. I wondered at the patience and good-nature with which Omar did all his work and endured all his insolence. There was one stupendous row at Assouan, however. The men had rigged out a sort of tent for me to bathe in over the side of the boat, and Ramadan caught the Copt trying to peep in, and half strangled him. Omar called him ‘dog,’ and asked him if he was an infidel, and Macarius told him I was a Christian woman, and not his Hareem. Omar lost his temper, and appealed to the old reis and all the sailors, ‘O Muslims, ought not I to cut his throat if he had defiled the noble person of the lady with his pig’s eyes? God forgive me for mentioning her in such a manner.’ Then they all cursed him for a pig and an infidel, and threatened to put him ashore and leave him for his vile conduct towards noble Hareem. Omar sobbed with passion, saying that I was to him like the ‘back of his mother,’ and how ‘dare Macarius take my name in his dirty mouth,’ etc. The Copt tried to complain of being beaten afterwards, but I signified to him that he had better hold his tongue, for that I understood Arabic, upon which he sneaked off.