Notes from Egypt

Dearest Mutter,

I have just finished a letter to Alick to go by a steamer to-day. You will see it, so I will go on with the stories about the riots. Here is a thing happening within a few weeks and within sixty miles, and already the events assume a legendary character. Achmet et-Tayib is not dead and where the bullets hit him he shows little marks like burns. The affair began thus: A certain Copt had a Muslim slave-girl who could read the Koran and who served him. He wanted her to be his Hareem and she refused and went to Achmet et-Tayib who offered money for her to her master. He refused it and insisted on his rights, backed by the Government, and thereupon Achmet proclaimed a revolt and the people, tired of taxes and oppressions, said ‘we will go with thee.’ This is the only bit of religious legend connected with the business. But Achmet et-Tayib still sits in the Island, invisible to the Turkish soldiers who are still there.

Now for a little fact. The man who told me fourteen hundred had been beheaded was Hassan Sheykh of the Abab’deh who went to Gau to bring up the prisoners. The boat stopped a mile above Luxor, and my Mohammed, a most quiet respectable man and not at all a romancer went up in her to El-Moutaneh. I rode with him along the Island. When we came near the boat she went on as far as the point of the Island, and I turned back after only looking at her from the bank and smelling the smell of a slave-ship. It never occurred to me, I own, that the Bey on board had fled before a solitary woman on a donkey, but so it was. He told the Abab’deh Sheykh on board not to speak to me or to let me on board, and told the Captain to go a mile or two further. Mohammed heard all this. He found on board ‘one hundred prisoners less two’ (ninety-eight). Among them the Moudir of Souhaj, a Turk, in chains and wooden handcuffs like the rest. Mohammed took him some coffee and was civil to him. He says the poor creatures are dreadfully ill-used by the Abab’deh and the Nubians (Berberi) who guard them.

It is more curious than you can conceive to hear all the people say. It is just like going back four or five centuries at least, but with the heterogeneous element of steamers, electric telegraphs and the Bey’s dread of the English lady’s pen—at least Mohammed attributed his flight to fear of that weapon. It was quite clear that European eyes were dreaded, as the boat stopped three miles above Luxor and its dahabiehs, and had all its things carried that distance.

Yussuf and his uncle want to take me next year to Mecca, the good folks in Mecca would hardly look for a heretical face under the green veil of a Shereefateh of Abu-l-Hajjaj. The Hajjees (pilgrims) have just started from here to Cosseir with camels and donkeys, but most are on foot. They are in great numbers this year. The women chanted and drummed all night on the river bank, and it was fine to see fifty or sixty men in a line praying after their Imám with the red glow of the sunset behind them. The prayer in common is quite a drill and very stately to see. There are always quite as many women as men; one wonders how they stand the march and the hardships.

My little Achmet grows more pressing with me to take him. I will take him to Alexandria , I think, and leave him in Janet’s house to learn more house service. He is a dear little boy and very useful. I don’t suppose his brother will object and he has no parents. Achmet ibn-Mustapha also coaxes me to take him with me to Alexandria , and to try again to persuade his father to send him to England to Mr. Fowler. I wish most heartily I could. He is an uncommon child in every way, full of ardour to learn and do something, and yet childish and winning and full of fun. His pretty brown face is quite a pleasure to me. His remarks on the New Testament teach me as many things as I can teach him. The boy is pious and not at all ill taught, he is much pleased to find so little difference between the teaching of the Koran and the Aangeel. He wanted me, in case Omar did not go with me, to take him to serve me. Here there is no idea of its being derogatory for a gentleman’s son to wait on one who teaches him, it is positively incumbent. He does all ‘menial offices’ for his mother, hands coffee, waits at table or helps Omar in anything if I have company, nor will he eat or smoke before me, or sit till I tell him—it is like service in the middle ages.