Notes from Egypt

Dearest Alick,

I arrived here on the morning of the 11th. I am a beast not to have written, but I caught cold after four days and have really not been well, so forgive me, and I will narrate and not apologize. We came up best pace, as the boat is a flyer now, only fourteen days to Thebes, and to Keneh only eleven. Then we had bad winds, and my men pulled away at the rope, and sang about the Reis el-Arousa (bridegroom) going to his bride, and even Omar went and pulled the rope. We were all very merry, and played practical jokes on a rascal who wanted a pound to guide me to the tombs: we made him run miles, fetch innumerable donkeys, and then laughed at his beard. Such is boatmen fun. On arriving at Luxor I heard a charivari of voices, and knew I was ‘at home,’ by the shrill pipe of the little children, el Sitt, el Sitt. Visitors all day of course, at night comes up another dahabieh, great commotion, as it had been telegraphed from Cairo (which I knew before I left, and was to be stopped). So I coolly said, ‘Oh Mustapha, the Indian saint (Walee) is in thine eye, seeing that an Indian is all as one with an Englishman.’ ‘How did I know there was an Indian and a Walee?’ etc. Meanwhile the Walee had a bad thumb, and some one told his slave that there was a wonderful English doctress, so in the morning he sent for me, and I went inside the hareem. He was very friendly, and made me sit close beside him, told me he was fourth in descent from Abd el-Kader Gylamee of Bagdad, but his father settled at Hyderabad, where he has great estates. He said he was a Walee or saint, and would have it that I was in the path of the darweeshes; gave me medicine for my cough; asked me many questions, and finally gave me five dollars and asked if I wanted more? I thanked him heartily, kissed the money politely, and told him I was not poor enough to want it and would give it in his name to the poor of Luxor, but that I would never forget that the Indian Sheykh had behaved like a brother to an English woman in a strange land. He then spoke in great praise of the ‘laws of the English,’ and said many more kind things to me, adding again, ‘I tell thee thou art a Darweesh, and do not thou forget me.’ Another Indian from Lahore, I believe the Sheykh’s tailor, came to see me—an intelligent man, and a Syrian doctor; a manifest scamp. The people here said he was a bahlawar (rope-dancer). Well, the authorities detained the boat with fair words till orders came from Keneh to let them go up further. Meanwhile the Sheykh came out and performed some miracles, which I was not there to see, perfuming people’s hands by touching them with his, and taking English sovereigns out of a pocketless jacket, and the doctor told wonders of him. Anyhow he spent £10 in one day here, and he is a regular darweesh. He and all the Hareem were poorly dressed and wore no ornaments whatever. I hope Seyd Abdurachman will come down safe again, but no one knows what the Government wants of him or why he is so watched. It is the first time I ever saw an Oriental travelling for pleasure. He had about ten or twelve in the hareem, among them his three little girls, and perhaps twenty men outside, Indians, and Arabs from Syria, I fancy.

Next day I moved into the old house, and found one end in ruins, owing to the high Nile and want of repair. However there is plenty more safe and comfortable. I settled all accounts with my men, and made an inventory in Arabic, which Sheykh Yussuf wrote for me, which we laughed over hugely. How to express a sauce-boat, a pie-dish, etc. in Arabic, was a poser. A genteel Effendi, who sat by, at last burst out in uncontrollable amazement; ‘There is no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?’ (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. ‘Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of it). But thou shouldst see the merchants of Escandarieh, (Alexandria ), three tablecloths, forty dishes, to each soul seven plates of all sorts, seven knives and seven forks and seven spoons, large and small, and seven different glasses for wine and beer and water.’ ‘It is the will of God,’ replied the Effendi, rather put down: ‘but,’ he added, ‘it must be a dreadful fatigue to them to eat their dinner.’ Then came an impudent merchant who wanted to go down with his bales and five souls in my boat for nothing. But I said, ‘Oh man, she is my property, and I will eat from her of thy money as of the money of the Franks.’ Whereupon he offered £1, but was bundled out amid general reproaches for his avarice and want of shame. So all the company said a Fattah for the success of the voyage, and Reis Mohammed was exhorted to ‘open his eyes,’ and he should have a tarboosh if he did well.

Then I went to visit my kind friend the Maōhn’s wife, and tell her all about her charming daughter and grandchildren. I was, of course, an hour in the streets salaaming, etc. ‘Sheerafteenee Beledna, thou hast honoured our country on all sides.’ ‘Blessings come with thee,’ etc.

Everything is cheaper than last year, but there is no money to buy with, and the taxes have grown beyond bearing, as a fellah said, ‘a man can’t (we will express it “blow his nose,” if you please; the real phrase was less parliamentary, and expressive of something at once ventose and valueless) without a cawass behind him to levy a tax on it.’ The ha’porth of onions we buy in the market is taxed on the spot, and the fish which the man catches under my window. I paid a tax on buying charcoal, and another on having it weighed. People are terribly beaten to get next year’s taxes out of them, which they have not the money to pay.

The Nubian M.P.’s passed the other day in three boats, towed by a steamer, very frightened and sullen. I fell in with some Egyptians on my way, and tried the European style of talk. ‘Now you will help to govern the country, what a fine thing for you,’ etc. I got such a look of rueful reproach. ‘Laugh not thou at our beards O Effendim! God’s mercy, what words are these? and who is there on the banks of the Nile who can say anything but hader (ready), with both hands on the head, and a salaam to the ground even to a Moudir; and thou talkest of speaking before Effendina! Art thou mad, Effendim?’ Of all the vexations none are more trying than the distinctions which have been inflicted on the unlucky Sheykhs el-Beled. In fear and trembling they ate their Effendina’s banquet and sadly paid the bill: and those who have had the Nishan (the order of the Mejeedee) have had to disburse fees whereat the Lord Chamberlain’s staff’s mouths might water, and now the wretched delegates to the Egyptian Chambers (God save the mark) are going down with their hearts in their shoes. The Nubians say that the Divan is to be held in the Citadel and that the road by which the Memlook Beys left it is not stopped up, though perhaps it goes underground nowadays. {315}

November 27.—The first steamer full of travellers has just arrived, and with it the bother of the ladies all wanting my saddle. I forbade Mustapha to send for it, but they intimidate the poor old fellow, and he comes and kisses my hand not to get him into trouble with one old woman who says she is the relation of a Consul and a great lady in her own country. I am what Mrs. Grote called ‘cake’ enough to concede to Mustapha’s fears what I had sworn to refuse henceforth. Last year five women on one steamer all sent for my saddle, besides other things—campstools, umbrellas, beer, etc., etc. This year I’ll bolt the doors when I see a steamer coming. I hear the big people are so angry with the Indian saint because he treated them like dirt everywhere. One great man went with a Moudir to see him, and asked him to sell him a memlook (a young slave boy). The Indian, who had not spoken or saluted, burst forth, ‘Be silent, thou wicked one! dost thou dare to ask me to sell thee a soul to take it with thee to hell?’ Fancy the surprise of the ‘distinguished’ Turk. Never had he heard such language. The story has travelled all up the river and is of course much enjoyed.

Last night Sheykh Yussuf gave an entertainment, killed a sheep, and had a reading of the Sirat er-Russoul (Chapter on the Prophet). It was the night of the Prophet’s great vision, and is a great night in Islam. I was sorry not to be well enough to go. Now that there is no Kadee here, Sheykh Yussuf has lots of business to settle; and he came to me and said, ‘Expound to me the laws of marriage and inheritance of the Christians, that I may do no wrong in the affairs of the Copts, for they won’t go and be settled by the priest out of the Gospels, and I can’t find any laws, except about marriage in the Gospels.’ I set him up with the text of the tribute money, and told him to judge according to his own laws, for that Christians had no laws other than those of the country they lived in. Poor Yussuf was sore perplexed about a divorce case. I refused to ‘expound,’ and told him all the learned in the law in England had not yet settled which text to follow.

Do you remember the German story of the lad who travelled um das Grüseln zu lernen? Well, I, who never grüselte before, had a touch of it a few evenings ago. I was sitting here quietly drinking tea, and four or five men were present, when a cat came to the door. I called ‘biss, biss,’ and offered milk, but pussy, after looking at us, ran away. ‘Well dost thou, oh Lady,’ said a quiet, sensible man, a merchant here, ‘to be kind to the cat, for I dare say he gets little enough at home; his father, poor man, cannot cook for his children every day.’ And then in an explanatory tone to the company, ‘That is Alee Nasseeree’s boy Yussuf—it must be Yussuf, because his fellow twin Ismaeen is with his mule at Negadeh.’ Mir grüselte, I confess, not but what I have heard things almost as absurd from gentlemen and ladies in Europe; but an ‘extravagance’ in a kuftan has quite a different effect from one in a tail coat. ‘What my butcher’s boy who brings the meat—a cat?’ I gasped. ‘To be sure, and he knows well where to look for a bit of good cookery, you see. All twins go out as cats at night if they go to sleep hungry; and their own bodies lie at home like dead meanwhile, but no one must touch them, or they would die. When they grow up to ten or twelve they leave it off. Why your boy Achmet does it. Oh Achmet! do you go out as a cat at night?’ ‘No,’ said Achmet tranquilly, ‘I am not a twin—my sister’s sons do.’ I inquired if people were not afraid of such cats. ‘No, there is no fear, they only eat a little of the cookery, but if you beat them they will tell their parents next day, “So-and-so beat me in his house last night,” and show their bruises. No, they are not Afreets, they are beni Adam (sons of Adam), only twins do it, and if you give them a sort of onion broth and camel’s milk the first thing when they are born, they don’t do it at all.’ Omar professed never to have heard of it, but I am sure he had, only he dreads being laughed at. One of the American missionaries told me something like it as belonging to the Copts, but it is entirely Egyptian, and common to both religions. I asked several Copts who assured me it was true, and told it just the same. Is it a remnant of the doctrine of transmigration? However the notion fully accounts for the horror the people feel at the idea of killing a cat.

A poor pilgrim from the black country was taken ill yesterday at a village six miles from here, he could speak only a few words of Arabic and begged to be carried to the Abab’deh. So the Sheykh el-Beled put him on a donkey and sent him and his little boy, and laid him in Sheykh Hassan’s house. He called for Hassan and begged him to take care of the child, and to send him to an uncle somewhere in Cairo. Hassan said, ‘Oh you will get well Inshallah, etc., and take the boy with you.’ ‘I cannot take him into the grave with me,’ said the black pilgrim. Well in the night he died and the boy went to Hassan’s mat and said, ‘Oh Hassan, my father is dead.’ So the two Sheykhs and several men got up and went and sat with the boy till dawn, because he refused to lie down or to leave his father’s corpse. At daybreak he said, ‘Take me now and sell me, and buy new cloth to dress my father for the tomb.’ All the Abab’deh cried when they heard it, and Hassan went and bought the cloth, and some sweet stuff for the boy who remains with him. Such is death on the road in Egypt. I tell it as Hassan’s slave told it to me, and somehow we all cried again at the poor little boy rising from his dead father’s side to say, ‘Come now sell me to dress my father for the tomb.’ These strange black pilgrims always interest me. Many take four years to Mecca and home, and have children born to them on the road, and learn a few words of Arabic.