Lucie Duff Gordon
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, April, 1865.
DEAREST ALEXANDER,
Yesterday was the Bairam I rejoice to say and I have lots of physic to make up, for all the stomachs damaged by Ramadan.
I have persuaded Mr. Fowler the engineer who was with Lord Dudley to take my dear little pupil Achmet son of Ibn Mustapha to learn the business at Leeds instead of idling in his father’s house here. I will give the child a letter to you in case he should go to London. He has been reading the gospels with me at his own desire. I refused till I had asked his father’s consent, and Sheykh Yussuf who heard me begged me by all means to make him read it carefully so as to guard him against the heretical inventions he might be beset with among the English ‘of the vulgar sort.’ What a poser for a missionary!
I sent down the poor black lad with Arakel Bey. He took leave of me with his ugly face all blubbered like a sentimental hippopotamus. He said ‘for himself, he wished to stay with me, but then what would his boy, his little master do—there was only a stepmother who would take all the money, and who else would work for the boy?’ Little Achmet was charmed to see Khayr go, of whom he chose to be horribly jealous, and to be wroth at all he did for me. Now the Sheykh-el-Beled of Baidyeh has carried off my watchman, and the Christian Sheykh-el-Hara of our quarter of Luxor has taken the boy Yussuf for the Canal. The former I successfully resisted and got back Mansoor, not indeed incolumes for he had been handcuffed and bastinadoed to make me pay 200 piastres, but he bore it like a man rather than ask me for the money and was thereupon surrendered. But the Copt will be a tougher business—he will want more money and be more resolved to get it. Veremus. I must I suppose go to the Nazir at the Canal—a Turk—and beg off my donkey boy.
[Picture: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, from sketch by G. F. Watts, R.A.]
I saw Hassan Sheykh-el-Abab’deh
Yesterday was Bairam, and lots of Hareem came in their best clothes to wish me a happy year and enjoyed themselves much with sweet cakes, coffee, and pipes. Kursheed’s wife (whom I cured completely) looked very handsome. Kursheed is a Circassian, a fine young fellow much shot and hacked about and with a Crimean medal. He is cawass here and a great friend of mine. He says if I ever want a servant he will go with me anywhere and fight anybody—which I don’t doubt in the least. He was a Turkish memlook and his condescension in wishing to serve a Christian woman is astounding. His fair face and clear blue eyes, and brisk, neat, soldier-like air contrast curiously with the brown fellaheen. He is like an Englishman only fairer and like them too fond of the courbash. What would you say if I appeared in Germany attended by a memlook with pistols, sword, dagger, carbine and courbash, and with a decided and imperious manner the very reverse of the Arab softness—and such a Muslim too—prays five times a day and extra fasts besides Ramadan. ‘I beat my wife’ said Kursheed, ‘oh! I beat her well! she talked so, and I am like the English, I don’t like too many words.’ He was quite surprised that I said I was glad my master didn’t dislike talking so much.
I was talking the other day with Yussuf about people trying to make converts and I said that eternal bêtise, ‘Oh they mean well.’ ‘True, oh Lady! perhaps they do mean well, but God says in the Noble Koran that he who injures or torments those Christians whose conduct is not evil, merely on account of religion, shall never smell the fragrance of the Garden (paradise). Now when men begin to want to make others change their faith it is extremely hard for them not to injure or torment them and therefore I think it better to abstain altogether and to wish rather to see a Christian a good Christian and a Muslim a good Muslim.’
No wonder a most pious old Scotchman told me that the truth which undeniably existed in the Mussulman faith was the work of Satan and the Ulema his meenesters. My dear saint of a Yussuf a meenester of Satan! I really think I have learnt some ‘Muslim humility’ in that I endured the harangue, and accepted a two-penny tract quite mildly and politely and didn’t argue at all. As his friend ‘Satan’ would have it, the Fikees were reading the Koran in the hall at Omar’s expense who gave a Khatmeh that day, and Omar came in and politely offered him some sweet prepared for the occasion. I have been really amazed at several instances of English fanaticism this year. Why do people come to a Mussulman country with such bitter hatred ‘in their stomachs’ as I have seen three or four times. I feel quite hurt often at the way the people here thank me for what the poor at home would turn up their noses at. I think hardly a dragoman has been up the river since Rashedee died but has come to thank me as warmly as if I had done himself some great service—and many to give some little present. While the man was ill numbers of the fellaheen brought eggs, pigeons, etc. etc. even a turkey, and food is worth money now, not as it used to be. I am quite weary too of hearing ‘Of all the Frangee I never saw one like thee.’ Was no one ever at all humane before? For remember I give no money—only a little physic and civility. How the British cottagers would ‘thank ye for nothing’—and how I wish my neighbours here could afford to do the same.
After much wrangling Mustapha has got back my boy Yussuf but the Christian Sheykh-el-Hara has made his brother pay £2 whereat Mohammed looks very rueful. Two hundred men are gone out of our village to the works and of course the poor Hareem have not bread to eat as the men had to take all they had with them. I send you a very pretty story like Tannhäuser.
There was once a man who loved a woman that lived in the same quarter. But she was true to her husband, and his love was hopeless, and he suffered greatly. One day as he lay on his carpet sick with love, one came to him and said, O, such-a-one, thy beloved has died even now, and they are carrying her out to the tomb. So the lover arose and followed the funeral, and hid himself near the tomb, and when all were gone he broke it open, and uncovered the face of his beloved, and looked upon her, and passion overcame him, and he took from the dead that which when living she had ever denied him.
But he went back to the city and to his house in great grief and anguish of mind, and his sin troubled him. So he went to a Kadee, very pious and learned in the noble Koran, and told him his case, and said, ‘Oh my master the Kadee, can such a one as I obtain salvation and the forgiveness of God? I fear not.’ And the Kadee gave him a staff of polished wood which he held in his hand, and said ‘Who knoweth the mercy of God and his justice, but God alone—take then this staff and stick it in the sand beside the tomb where thou didst sin and leave it the night, and go next morning and come and tell me what thou shalt find, and may the Lord pardon thee, for thy sin is great.’
And the man went and did as the Kadee had desired, and went again at sunrise, and behold the staff had sprouted and was covered with leaves and fruit. And he returned and told the Kadee what had happened, and the Kadee replied, ‘Praise be to God, the merciful, the compassionate.’