Lucie Duff Gordon
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, LUXOR, Sunday, June 12, 1864.
Dearest Alick,
Three letters have I received from you within a few days, for the post of the Saeed is not that of the Medes and Persians. I have had an abominable toothache, which quite floored me, and was aggravated by the Oriental custom, namely, that all the beau monde of Thebes would come and sit with me, and suggest remedies, and look into my mouth, and make quite a business of my tooth. Sheykh Yussuf laid two fingers on my cheek and recited verses from the Koran, I regret to say with no effect, except that while his fingers touched me the pain ceased. I find he is celebrated for soothing headaches and other nervous pains, and I daresay is an unconscious mesmeriser. The other day our poor Maōhn was terrified by a communication from Ali Bey (Moudir of Keneh) to the effect that he had heard from Alexandria that someone had reported that the dead cattle had lain about the streets of Luxor and that the place was pestilential. The British mind at once suggested a counter-statement, to be signed by the most respectable inhabitants. So the Cadi drew it up, and came and read it to me, and took my deposition and witnessed my signature, and the Maōhn went his way rejoicing, in that ‘the words of the Englishwoman’ would utterly defeat Ali Bey. The truth was that the worthy Maōhn worked really hard, and superintended the horrible dead cattle business in person, which is some risk and very unpleasant. To dispose of three or four hundred dead oxen every day with a limited number of labourers is no trifle, and if a travelling Englishman smells one a mile off he calls us ‘lazy Arabs.’ The beasts could not be buried deep enough, but all were carried a mile off from the village. I wish some of the dilettanti who stop their noses at us in our trouble had to see or to do what I have seen and done.
June 17.—We have had four or five days of such fearful heat with a Simoom that I have been quite knocked up, and literally could not write. Besides, I sit in the dark all day, and am now writing so—and at night go out and sit in the verandah, and can’t have candles because of the insects. I sleep outside till about six a.m., and then go indoors till dark again. This fortnight is the hottest time. To-day the drop falls into the Nile at its source, and it will now rise fast and cool the country. It has risen one cubit, and the water is green; next month it will be blood colour. My cough has been a little troublesome again, I suppose from the Simoom. The tooth does not ache now. Alhamdulillah! for I rather dreaded the muzeyinn (barber) with his tongs, who is the sole dentist here. I was amused the other day by the entrance of my friend the Maōhn, attended by Osman Effendi and his cawass and pipe-bearer, and bearing a saucer in his hand, wearing the look, half sheepish, half cocky, with which elderly gentlemen in all countries announce what he did, i.e., that his black slave-girl was three months with child and longed for olives, so the respectable magistrate had trotted all over the bazaar and to the Greek corn-dealers to buy some, but for no money were they to be had, so he hoped I might have some and forgive the request, as I, of course, knew that a man must beg or even steal for a woman under these circumstances. I called Omar and said, ‘I trust there are olives for the honourable Hareem of Seleem Effendi—they are needed there.’ Omar instantly understood the case, and ‘Praise be to God a few are left; I was about to stuff the pigeons for dinner with them; how lucky I had not done it.’ And then we belaboured Seleem with compliments. ‘Please God the child will be fortunate to thee,’ say I. Omar says, ‘Sweeten my mouth, oh Effendim, for did I not tell thee God would give thee good out of this affair when thou boughtest her?’ While we were thus rejoicing over the possible little mulatto, I thought how shocked a white Christian gentleman of our Colonies would be at our conduct to make all this fuss about a black girl—‘he give her sixpence’ (under the same circumstances I mean) ‘he’d see her d---d first,’ and my heart warmed to the kind old Muslim sinner (?) as he took his saucer of olives and walked with them openly in his hand along the street. Now the black girl is free, and can only leave Seleem’s house by her own good will and probably after a time she will marry and he will pay the expenses. A man can’t sell his slave after he has made known that she is with child by him, and it would be considered unmanly to detain her if she should wish to go. The child will be added to the other eight who fill the Maōhn’s quiver in Cairo and will be exactly as well looked on and have equal rights if he is as black as a coal.
A most quaint little half-black boy a year and a half old has taken a fancy to me and comes and sits for hours gazing at me and then dances to amuse me. He is Mahommed our guard’s son by a jet-black slave of his and is brown-black and very pretty. He wears a bit of iron wire in one ear and iron rings round his ankles, and that is all—and when he comes up little Achmet, who is his uncle, ‘makes him fit to be seen’ by emptying a pitcher of water over his head to rinse off the dust in which of course he has been rolling—that is equivalent to a clean pinafore. You would want to buy little Said I know, he is so pretty and so jolly. He dances and sings and jabbers baby Arabic and then sits like a quaint little idol cross-legged quite still for hours.
I am now writing in the kitchen, which is the coolest place where there is any light at all. Omar is diligently spelling words of six letters, with the wooden spoon in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth, and Sally is lying on her back on the floor. I won’t describe our costume. It is now two months since I have worn stockings, and I think you would wonder at the fellaha who ‘owns you,’ so deep a brown are my face, hands and feet. One of the sailors in Arthur’s boat said: ‘See how the sun of the Arabs loves her; he has kissed her so hotly that she can’t go home among English people.’
June 18.—I went last night to look at Karnak by moonlight. The giant columns were
overpowering. I never saw anything so solemn. On our way back we met the
Sheykh-el-Beled, who ordered me an escort of ten men home. Fancy me on my humble donkey,
guarded most superfluously by ten tall fellows, with oh! such spears and venerable
matchlocks. At Mustapha’s house we found a party seated before the door, and joined it.
There was a tremendous Sheykh-el-Islam from Tunis, a Maghribee, seated on a carpet in
state receiving homage. I don’t think he liked the heretical woman at all. Even the
Maōhn did not dare to be as ‘politeful’ as usual to me, but took the seat above me,
which I had respectfully left vacant next to the holy man. Mustapha was in a stew,
afraid not to do the respectful to me, and fussing after the Sheykh. Then Yussuf came
fresh from the river, where he had bathed and prayed, and then you saw the real
gentleman. He salaamed the great Sheykh, who motioned to him to sit before him, but
Yussuf quietly came round and sat below me on the mat, leaned his elbow on my cushion,
and made more demonstration of regard for me than ever, and when I went came and helped
me on my donkey. The holy Sheykh went away to pray, and Mustapha hinted to Yussuf to go
with him, but he only smiled, and did not stir; he had prayed an hour before down at the
Nile. It was as if a poor curate had devoted himself to a rank papist under the eye of a
scowling Shaftesbury Bishop. Then came Osman
Effendi, a young Turk, with a poor devil accused in a distant village of stealing a
letter with money in it addressed to a Greek money-lender. The discussion was quite
general, the man, of course, denying all. But the Nazir had sent word to beat him. Then
Omar burst out, ‘What a shame to beat a poor
man on the mere word of a Greek money-lender who eats the people; the Nazir shouldn’t
help him.’ There was a Greek present who scowled at Omar, and the Turk gaped at him in horror. Yussuf said, with his quiet smile,
‘My brother, thou art talking English,’ with a glance at me; and we all laughed, and I
said, ‘Many thanks for the compliment.’ All the village is in good spirits; the Nile is
rising fast, and a star of most fortunate character has made its appearance, so Yussuf
tells me, and portends a good year and an end to our afflictions. I am much better