Letters from Egypt, Lucy Duff Gordon [best color ebook reader .txt] 📗

Remember, I only speak of Arabs. I believe the Turkish ideas are different, as is their whole hareem system, and Egypt is not the rule for all Muslims.

_Saturday_, 12_th_.--I dined last night with Mustapha, who again had the dancing-girls for some Englishmen to see. Seleem Effendi got the doctor, who was of the party, to prescribe for him, and asked me to translate to him all about his old stomach as coolly as possible. He, as usual, sat by me on the divan, and during the pause in the dancing called 'el Maghribeeyeh,' the best dancer, to come and talk. She kissed my hand, sat on her heels before us, and at once laid aside the professional _galliardise_ of manner, and talked very nicely in very good Arabic and with perfect propriety, more like a man than a woman; she seemed very intelligent. What a thing we should think it for a worshipful magistrate to call up a girl of that character to talk to a lady!

Yesterday we had a strange and unpleasant day's business. The evening before I had my pocket picked in Karnac by two men who hung about me, one to sell a bird, the other one of the regular 'loafers' who hang about the ruins to beg, and sell water or curiosities, and who are all a lazy, bad lot, of course. I went to Seleem, who wrote at once to the Sheykh-el-Beled of Karnac to say that we should go over next morning at eight o'clock to investigate the affair, and to desire him to apprehend the men. Next morning Seleem fetched me, and Mustapha came to represent English interests, and as we rode out of Luxor the Sheykh-el-Ababdeh joined us, with four of his tribe with their long guns, and a lot more with lances. He was a volunteer, and furious at the idea of a lady and a stranger being robbed. It is the first time it has happened here, and the desire to beat was so strong that I went to act as counsel for the prisoner. Everyone was peculiarly savage that it should have happened to me, a person well known to be so friendly to _el Muslimeen_. When we arrived we went into a square enclosure, with a sort of cloister on one side, spread with carpets where we sat, and the wretched fellows were brought in chains. To my horror, I found they had been beaten already. I remonstrated, 'What if you had beaten the wrong men?' '_Maleysh_! (Never mind!) we will beat the whole village until your purse is found.' I said to Mustapha, 'This won't do; you must stop this.' So Mustapha ordained, with the concurrence of the Maohn, that the Sheykh-el-Beled and the _gefiyeh_ (the keeper of the ruins) should pay me the value of the purse. As the people of Karnac are very troublesome in begging and worrying, I thought this would be a good lesson to the said Sheykh to keep better order, and I consented to receive the money, promising to return it and to give a napoleon over if the purse comes back with its contents (3.5 napoleons). The Sheykh-el-Ababdeh harangued the people on their ill-behaviour to Hareemat, called them _haramee_ (rascals), and was very high and mighty to the Sheykh-el-Beled. Hereupon I went away to visit a Turkish lady in the village, leaving Mustapha to settle. After I was gone they beat eight or ten of the boys who had mobbed me, and begged with the two men. Mustapha, who does not like the stick, stayed to see that they were not hurt, and so far it will be a good lesson to them. He also had the two men sent over to the prison here, for fear the Sheykh-el-Beled should beat them again, and will keep them here for a time. So far so good, but my fear now is that innocent people will be squeezed to make up the money, if the men do not give up the purse. I have told Sheykh Yussuf to keep watch how things go, and if the men persist in the theft and don't return the purse, I shall give the money to those whom the Sheykh-el-Beled will assuredly squeeze, or else to the mosque of Karnac. I cannot pocket it, though I thought it quite right to exact the fine as a warning to the Karnac _mauvais sujets_. As we went home the Sheykh-el-Ababdeh (such a fine fellow he looks) came up and rode beside me, and said, 'I know you are a person of kindness; do not tell this story in this country. If Effendina (Ismail Pasha) comes to hear, he may "take a broom and sweep away the village."' I exclaimed in horror, and Mustapha joined at once in the request, and said, 'Do not tell anyone in Egypt. The Sheykh-el-Ababdeh is quite true; it might cost many lives.' The whole thing distressed me horribly. If I had not been there they would have beaten right and left, and if I had shown any desire to have anyone punished, evidently they would have half killed the two men. Mustapha behaved extremely well. He showed sense, decision, and more feelings of humanity than I at all expected of him. Pray do as I begged you, try to get him paid. Some of the Consuls in Cairo are barely civil, and old Mustapha has all the bother and work of the whole of the Nile boats (eighty-five this winter), and he is boundlessly kind and useful to the English, and a real protection against cheating, etc.


March 16, 1864: Mr. Tom Taylor

_To Mr. Tom Taylor_.

_March_ 16, 1864.

DEAR TOM,

I cannot tell you how delighted I was to hear that all had gone well with Laura and your little daughter. _Mashallah_! God bless her! When I told Omar that a friend 'like my brother,' as Arabs say, had got a baby, he proposed to illuminate our house and fire off all the pistols in the premises. Pray give my kind love and best wishes to Laura.

I am living here a very quiet, dreamy sort of life in hot Thebes, visiting a little among my neighbours and learning a little Arabic from a most sweet, gentle young Sheykh who preaches on Fridays in the mosque of Luxor. I wish I could draw his soft brown face and graceful, brown-draped figure; but if I could, he is too devout I believe, to permit it. The police magistrate--el-Maohn--Seleem Effendi, is also a great friend of mine, and the Kadee is civil, but a little scornful to heretical Hareem, I think. It is already very hot, and the few remaining traveller's dahabiehs are now here on their way down the river; after that I shall not see a white face for many months, except Sally's.

Sheykh Yussuf laughed so heartily over a print in an illustrated paper, from a picture of Hilton's, of Rebekah at the well, with the old _Vakeel_ of Sidi Ibraheem (Abraham's chief servant) _kneeling_ before the girl he was sent to fetch like an old fool without his turban, and Rebekah and the other girls in queer fancy dresses, and the camels with snouts like pigs. 'If the painter could not go to Es-Sham (Syria) to see how the Arab (Bedaween) really look,' said Sheykh Yussuf, 'why did he not paint a well in England with girls like English peasants? At least it would have looked natural to English people, and the _Vakeel_ would not seem so like a _majnoon_ (a madman) if he had taken off a hat.' I cordially agreed with Yussuf's art criticism. Fancy pictures of Eastern things are hopelessly absurd, and fancy poems too. I have got hold of a stray copy of Victor Hugo's '_Orientales_,' and I think I never laughed more in my life.

The corn is now full-sized here, but still green; in twenty days will be harvest, and I am to go to the harvest-home to a fellah friend of mine in a village a mile or two off. The crop is said to be unusually fine. Old Nile always pays back the damage he does when he rises so very high. The real disaster is the cattle disease, which still goes on, I hear, lower down. It has not at present spread above Minieh, but the destruction has been fearful.

I more and more feel the difficulty of quite understanding a people so unlike ourselves--the more I know them, I mean. One thing strikes me, that like children, they are not conscious of the great gulf which divides educated Europeans from themselves; at least, I believe it is so. We do not attempt to explain our ideas to them, but I cannot discover any such reticence in them. I wonder whether this has struck people who can talk fluently and know them better than I do? I find they appeal to my sympathy in trouble quite comfortably, and talk of religious and other feelings apparently as freely as to each other. In many respects they are more unprejudiced than we are, and very intelligent, and very good in many ways; and yet they seem so strangely childish, and I fancy I detect that impression even in Lane's book, though he does not say so.

If you write to me, dear Tom, please address me care of Briggs and Co., Cairo. I shall be so glad to hear of you and yours. Janet is going to England. I wish I were going too, but it is useless to keep trying a hopeless experiment. At present I am very comfortable in health as long as I do nothing and the weather is warm. I suffer little pain, only I feel weak and weary.

I have extensive practice in the doctoring line; bad eyes, of course, abound. My love to Watts, and give greetings to any other of my friends. I grieve over Thackeray much, and more over his girls' lonely sort of position.

I think you would enjoy, as I do, the peculiar sort of social equality which prevails here; it is the exact contrary of French _egalite_. There are the great and powerful people, much honoured (outwardly, at all events), but nobody has _inferiors_. A man comes in and kisses my hand, and sits down _off_ the carpet out of respect; but he smokes his pipe, drinks his coffee, laughs, talks and asks questions as freely as if he were an Effendi or I were a fellahah; he is not my inferior, he is my poor brother. The servants in my friends' houses receive me with profound demonstrations of respect, and wait at dinner reverently, but they mix freely in the conversation, and take part in all amusements, music, dancing-girls, or reading of the Koran. Even the dancing-girl is not an outcast; she is free to talk to me, and it is highly irreligious to show any contempt or aversion. The rules of politeness are the same for all. The passer-by greets the one sitting still, or the one who comes into a room those who are already there, without distinction of rank. When I have greeted the men they always rise, but if I pass without, they take no notice of me. All this is very pleasant and graceful, though it is connected with much that is evil. The fact that any man may be a Bey or a Pasha to-morrow is not a