Letters from Egypt, Lucy Duff Gordon [best color ebook reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Lucy Duff Gordon
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it. I hope you approve?
Janet's visit was quite an _Eed_ (festival), as the people said. When I got up on the morning she was expected, I found the house decked with palm branches and lemon blossoms, and the holy flags of Abu-l-Hajjaj waving over my balcony. The mosque people had brought them, saying all the people were happy to-day, because it was a fortunate day for me. I suppose if I had had a mind to _testify_, I ought to have indignantly torn down the banners which bore the declaration, 'There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet.' But it appeared to me that if Imaams and Muezzins could send their banners to decorate a Christian house, the Christian might manage to endure the kindness. Then there was fantasia on horseback, and all the notables to meet the boat, and general welcome and jubilation. Next day I went on with Henry and Janet in the steamer, and had a very pleasant time to Assouan and back, and they stayed another day here, and I hired a little dahabieh which they towed down to Keneh where they stayed a day; after which Sheykh Yussuf and I sailed back again to Luxor. As bad luck would have it we had hot weather just the week they were up here: since then it has been quite cool.
Janet has left me her little black and tan terrier, a very nice little dog, but I can't hope to rival Omar in his affections. He sleeps in Omar's bosom, and Omar spoils and pets him all day, and boasts to the people how the dog drinks tea and coffee and eats dainty food, and the people say Mashallah! whereas I should have expected them to curse the dog's father. The other day a scrupulous person drew back with an air of alarm from Bob's approach, whereupon the dog stared at him, and forthwith plunged into Sheykh Yussuf's lap, from which stronghold he 'yapped' defiance at whoever should object to him. I never laughed more heartily, and Yussuf went into _fou rire_. The mouth of the dog only is unclean, and Yussuf declares he is a very well-educated dog, and does not attempt to lick; he pets him accordingly, and gives him tea in his own saucer, only _not_ in the cup.
I am to inherit another little blackie from Ross's agency at Keneh: the funniest little chap. I cannot think why I go on expecting so-called savages to be different from other people. Mabrook's simple talk about his village, and the animals and the victuals; and how the men of a neighbouring village stole him in order to sell him for a gun (the price of a gun is a boy), but were prevented by a razzia of Turks, etc. who killed the first aggressors and took all the children--all this he tells just as an English boy might tell of bird-nesting--delights me. He has the same general notion of right and wrong; and yet his tribe know neither bread nor any sort of clothes, nor cheese nor butter, nor even drink milk, nor the African beer; and it always rains there, and is always deadly cold at night, so that without a fire they would die. They have two products of civilization--guns and tobacco, for which they pay in boys and girls, whom they steal. I wonder where the country is, it is called Sowaghli, and the next people are Mueseh, on the sea-coast, and it is not so hot as Egypt. It must be in the southern hemisphere. The new _negrillon_ is from Darfoor. Won't Maurice be amused by his attendants, the Darfoor boy will trot after him, as he can shoot and clean guns, tiny as he is Maurice seems to wish to come and I hope Alexander will let him spend the winter here, and I will take him up to the second Cataract; I really think he would enjoy it.
My boat will not return I think for another six weeks. Mr. Eaton and Mr. Baird were such nice people! their dragoman, a Maltese, appeared to hate the Italians with ferocity. He said all decent people in Malta would ten times rather belong to the Mahommedans than to the Italians--after all blood tells. He was a very respectable young man, and being a dragoman and the son of a dragoman, he has seen the world, and particularly the Muslims. I suppose it is the Pope that makes the Italians so hateful to them.
The post here is dreadful, I would not mind their reading one's letters if they would only send them on. Omar begs we to say that he and his children will pray for you all his life, please God, not for the money only but still more for the good words and the trusting him. But he says, 'I can't say much _politikeh_, Please God she shall see, only I kiss her hand now.' You will hear from Janet about her excursion. What I liked best was shooting the Cataract in a small boat; it was fine fantasia.
April 19, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.
LUXOR,
_April_ 19, 1867.
DEAREST ALICK,
I have been much amused lately by a new acquaintance, who, in romances of the last century, would be called an 'Arabian sage.' Sheykh Abdurrachman lives in a village half a day's journey off, and came over to visit me and to doctor me according to the science of Galen and Avicenna. Fancy a tall, thin, graceful man, with a grey beard and liquid eyes, absorbed in studies of the obsolete kind, a doctor of theology, law, medicine and astronomy. We spent three days in arguing and questioning; I consented to swallow a potion or two which he made up before me, of very innocent materials. My friend is neither a quack nor superstitious, and two hundred years ago would have been a better physician than most in Europe. Indeed I would rather swallow his physic now than that of many a M.D. I found him like all the learned theologians I have known, extremely liberal and tolerant. You can conceive nothing more interesting and curious than the conversation of a man learned and intelligent, and utterly ignorant of all our modern Western science. If I was pleased with him, he was enchanted with me, and swore by God that I was a Mufti indeed, and that a man could nowhere spend time so delightfully as in conversation with me. He said he had been acquainted with two or three Englishmen who had pleased him much, but that if all Englishwomen were like me the power must necessarily be in our hands, for that my _akl_ (brain, intellect) was far above that of the men he had known. He objected to our medicine that it seemed to consist in palliatives, which he rather scorned, and aimed always at a radical cure. I told him that if he had studied anatomy he would know that radical cures were difficult of performance, and he ended by lamenting his ignorance of English or some European language, and that he had not learned our _Ilm_ (science) also. Then we plunged into sympathies, mystic numbers, and the occult virtues of stones, etc., and I swallowed my mixture (consisting of liquorice, cummin and soda) just as the sun entered a particular house, and the moon was in some favourable aspect. He praised to me his friend, a learned Jew of Cairo. I could have fancied myself listening to Abu Suleyman of Cordova, in the days when we were the barbarians and the Arabs were the learned race. There is something very winning in the gentle, dignified manners of all the men of learning I have seen here, and their homely dress and habits make it still more striking. I longed to photograph my Sheykh as he sat on the divan pulling MSS. out of his bosom to read me the words of _El-Hakeem Lokman_, or to overwhelm me with the authority of some physician whose very name I had never heard.
The hand of the Government is awfully heavy upon us. All this week the people have been working night and day cutting their unripe corn, because three hundred and ten men are to go to-morrow to work on the railroad below Siout. This green corn is, of course, valueless to sell and unwholesome to eat; so the magnificent harvest of this year is turned to bitterness at the last moment. From a neighbouring village all the men are gone, and seven more are wanted to make up the _corvee_. The population of Luxor is 1,000 males of all ages, so you can guess how many strong men are left after three hundred and ten are taken.
I don't like to think too much about seeing you and Maurice next winter for fear I should be disappointed. If I am too sick and wretched I can hardly wish you to come because I know what a nuisance it is to be with one always coughing and panting, and unable to do like other people. But if I pick up tolerably this summer I shall indeed be glad to see you and him once more.
This house is falling sadly to decay, which produces snakes and scorpions. I sent for the _hawee_ (snake-catcher) who caught a snake, but who can't conjure the scorpions out of their holes. One of my fat turkeys has just fallen a victim, and I am in constant fear for little Bob, only he is always in Omar's arms. I think I described to you the festival of Sheykh Gibrieel: the dinner, and the poets who improvised; this year I had a fine piece of declamation in my honour. A real calamity is the loss of our good Maohn, Seleem Effendi. The Mudir hailed him from his steamer to go to Keneh directly, with no further notice. We hoped some good luck for him, and so it would have been to a Turk. He is made overseer over the poor people at the railway work, and only gets two pounds five shillings per month additional, he has to keep a horse and a donkey, and to buy them and to hire a sais, and he does _not_ know how to squeeze the fellaheen. It is true 'however close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again,' which means that even the poorest devils at the works can be beaten into giving a little more; but our dear Seleem, God bless him, will be ruined and made miserable by his promotion. I had a very woeful letter from him yesterday.
May 15, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.
LUXOR,
_May_ 15, 1867.
DEAREST ALICK,
All the Christendom of Upper Egypt is in a state of excitement, owing to the arrival of the Patriarch of Cairo, who is now in Luxor. My neighbour, Mikaeel, entertains him, and Omar has been busily decorating his house and arranging the illumination of his garden, and to-day is gone to cook the confectionery, he being looked upon as the person best acquainted with the customs of the great. Last night the Patriarch sent for me, and I went to kiss his hand, but I won't go again. It was a very droll caricature of the thunders of the Vatican. Poor Mikaeel had planned that I was
Janet's visit was quite an _Eed_ (festival), as the people said. When I got up on the morning she was expected, I found the house decked with palm branches and lemon blossoms, and the holy flags of Abu-l-Hajjaj waving over my balcony. The mosque people had brought them, saying all the people were happy to-day, because it was a fortunate day for me. I suppose if I had had a mind to _testify_, I ought to have indignantly torn down the banners which bore the declaration, 'There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet.' But it appeared to me that if Imaams and Muezzins could send their banners to decorate a Christian house, the Christian might manage to endure the kindness. Then there was fantasia on horseback, and all the notables to meet the boat, and general welcome and jubilation. Next day I went on with Henry and Janet in the steamer, and had a very pleasant time to Assouan and back, and they stayed another day here, and I hired a little dahabieh which they towed down to Keneh where they stayed a day; after which Sheykh Yussuf and I sailed back again to Luxor. As bad luck would have it we had hot weather just the week they were up here: since then it has been quite cool.
Janet has left me her little black and tan terrier, a very nice little dog, but I can't hope to rival Omar in his affections. He sleeps in Omar's bosom, and Omar spoils and pets him all day, and boasts to the people how the dog drinks tea and coffee and eats dainty food, and the people say Mashallah! whereas I should have expected them to curse the dog's father. The other day a scrupulous person drew back with an air of alarm from Bob's approach, whereupon the dog stared at him, and forthwith plunged into Sheykh Yussuf's lap, from which stronghold he 'yapped' defiance at whoever should object to him. I never laughed more heartily, and Yussuf went into _fou rire_. The mouth of the dog only is unclean, and Yussuf declares he is a very well-educated dog, and does not attempt to lick; he pets him accordingly, and gives him tea in his own saucer, only _not_ in the cup.
I am to inherit another little blackie from Ross's agency at Keneh: the funniest little chap. I cannot think why I go on expecting so-called savages to be different from other people. Mabrook's simple talk about his village, and the animals and the victuals; and how the men of a neighbouring village stole him in order to sell him for a gun (the price of a gun is a boy), but were prevented by a razzia of Turks, etc. who killed the first aggressors and took all the children--all this he tells just as an English boy might tell of bird-nesting--delights me. He has the same general notion of right and wrong; and yet his tribe know neither bread nor any sort of clothes, nor cheese nor butter, nor even drink milk, nor the African beer; and it always rains there, and is always deadly cold at night, so that without a fire they would die. They have two products of civilization--guns and tobacco, for which they pay in boys and girls, whom they steal. I wonder where the country is, it is called Sowaghli, and the next people are Mueseh, on the sea-coast, and it is not so hot as Egypt. It must be in the southern hemisphere. The new _negrillon_ is from Darfoor. Won't Maurice be amused by his attendants, the Darfoor boy will trot after him, as he can shoot and clean guns, tiny as he is Maurice seems to wish to come and I hope Alexander will let him spend the winter here, and I will take him up to the second Cataract; I really think he would enjoy it.
My boat will not return I think for another six weeks. Mr. Eaton and Mr. Baird were such nice people! their dragoman, a Maltese, appeared to hate the Italians with ferocity. He said all decent people in Malta would ten times rather belong to the Mahommedans than to the Italians--after all blood tells. He was a very respectable young man, and being a dragoman and the son of a dragoman, he has seen the world, and particularly the Muslims. I suppose it is the Pope that makes the Italians so hateful to them.
The post here is dreadful, I would not mind their reading one's letters if they would only send them on. Omar begs we to say that he and his children will pray for you all his life, please God, not for the money only but still more for the good words and the trusting him. But he says, 'I can't say much _politikeh_, Please God she shall see, only I kiss her hand now.' You will hear from Janet about her excursion. What I liked best was shooting the Cataract in a small boat; it was fine fantasia.
April 19, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.
LUXOR,
_April_ 19, 1867.
DEAREST ALICK,
I have been much amused lately by a new acquaintance, who, in romances of the last century, would be called an 'Arabian sage.' Sheykh Abdurrachman lives in a village half a day's journey off, and came over to visit me and to doctor me according to the science of Galen and Avicenna. Fancy a tall, thin, graceful man, with a grey beard and liquid eyes, absorbed in studies of the obsolete kind, a doctor of theology, law, medicine and astronomy. We spent three days in arguing and questioning; I consented to swallow a potion or two which he made up before me, of very innocent materials. My friend is neither a quack nor superstitious, and two hundred years ago would have been a better physician than most in Europe. Indeed I would rather swallow his physic now than that of many a M.D. I found him like all the learned theologians I have known, extremely liberal and tolerant. You can conceive nothing more interesting and curious than the conversation of a man learned and intelligent, and utterly ignorant of all our modern Western science. If I was pleased with him, he was enchanted with me, and swore by God that I was a Mufti indeed, and that a man could nowhere spend time so delightfully as in conversation with me. He said he had been acquainted with two or three Englishmen who had pleased him much, but that if all Englishwomen were like me the power must necessarily be in our hands, for that my _akl_ (brain, intellect) was far above that of the men he had known. He objected to our medicine that it seemed to consist in palliatives, which he rather scorned, and aimed always at a radical cure. I told him that if he had studied anatomy he would know that radical cures were difficult of performance, and he ended by lamenting his ignorance of English or some European language, and that he had not learned our _Ilm_ (science) also. Then we plunged into sympathies, mystic numbers, and the occult virtues of stones, etc., and I swallowed my mixture (consisting of liquorice, cummin and soda) just as the sun entered a particular house, and the moon was in some favourable aspect. He praised to me his friend, a learned Jew of Cairo. I could have fancied myself listening to Abu Suleyman of Cordova, in the days when we were the barbarians and the Arabs were the learned race. There is something very winning in the gentle, dignified manners of all the men of learning I have seen here, and their homely dress and habits make it still more striking. I longed to photograph my Sheykh as he sat on the divan pulling MSS. out of his bosom to read me the words of _El-Hakeem Lokman_, or to overwhelm me with the authority of some physician whose very name I had never heard.
The hand of the Government is awfully heavy upon us. All this week the people have been working night and day cutting their unripe corn, because three hundred and ten men are to go to-morrow to work on the railroad below Siout. This green corn is, of course, valueless to sell and unwholesome to eat; so the magnificent harvest of this year is turned to bitterness at the last moment. From a neighbouring village all the men are gone, and seven more are wanted to make up the _corvee_. The population of Luxor is 1,000 males of all ages, so you can guess how many strong men are left after three hundred and ten are taken.
I don't like to think too much about seeing you and Maurice next winter for fear I should be disappointed. If I am too sick and wretched I can hardly wish you to come because I know what a nuisance it is to be with one always coughing and panting, and unable to do like other people. But if I pick up tolerably this summer I shall indeed be glad to see you and him once more.
This house is falling sadly to decay, which produces snakes and scorpions. I sent for the _hawee_ (snake-catcher) who caught a snake, but who can't conjure the scorpions out of their holes. One of my fat turkeys has just fallen a victim, and I am in constant fear for little Bob, only he is always in Omar's arms. I think I described to you the festival of Sheykh Gibrieel: the dinner, and the poets who improvised; this year I had a fine piece of declamation in my honour. A real calamity is the loss of our good Maohn, Seleem Effendi. The Mudir hailed him from his steamer to go to Keneh directly, with no further notice. We hoped some good luck for him, and so it would have been to a Turk. He is made overseer over the poor people at the railway work, and only gets two pounds five shillings per month additional, he has to keep a horse and a donkey, and to buy them and to hire a sais, and he does _not_ know how to squeeze the fellaheen. It is true 'however close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again,' which means that even the poorest devils at the works can be beaten into giving a little more; but our dear Seleem, God bless him, will be ruined and made miserable by his promotion. I had a very woeful letter from him yesterday.
May 15, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.
LUXOR,
_May_ 15, 1867.
DEAREST ALICK,
All the Christendom of Upper Egypt is in a state of excitement, owing to the arrival of the Patriarch of Cairo, who is now in Luxor. My neighbour, Mikaeel, entertains him, and Omar has been busily decorating his house and arranging the illumination of his garden, and to-day is gone to cook the confectionery, he being looked upon as the person best acquainted with the customs of the great. Last night the Patriarch sent for me, and I went to kiss his hand, but I won't go again. It was a very droll caricature of the thunders of the Vatican. Poor Mikaeel had planned that I was
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