THE LOAFER’S PARADISE
He who travels à force de bras may regulate his sight-seeing as exactly
as the moneyed tourist by clinging to one fixed plan—to fall penniless
and be forced to seek employment only in those cities with which he
would become well acquainted. In all north Africa no spot offered more
attractions for an extended stay than Cairo. Once arrived there,
whatever the fates had in store for me, I should be on chosen ground. At
all hazards I must reach Cairo before I “went broke.”
On my second morning in Alexandria, I repaired to the railway station,
only to find that I had delayed my departure a bit too long. The
third-class fare to the capital was low, but, unfortunately, just three
piastres more than I possessed. Should I take train as far as possible
and finish the journey on foot and penniless, or should I save the money
on hand for food en route and tramp the entire distance?
Pondering the question, I dropped into a bench on the Place Mohammed
Ali, and fell to whittling a stick. A countryman, strolling by, paused
to stare, and sitting down on the far end of the bench, watched me
intently. Now a Frank is no more of a novelty in Alexandria than in
Kansas City, even though in ragged garb; for, given a great port
anywhere on the earth’s surface, you will find Jack Tar, at least,
rambling penniless and forlorn through her streets. Either the native
was astonished to see a man work, even with his hands, when he was not
paid to do so, or the knife had attracted his attention. Inch by inch,
he slid along the bench.
“Very good knife, kwice cateer,” he murmured.
Two months in the Arab world had given me vocabulary enough for simple
conversations. “Aywa,” I answered, tossing away the stick and closing
the knife.
The fellah gave a gasp of delight.
“But it shuts up, like a door,” he cried.
I opened and closed it several times for his edification; then slid down
in my seat, my thoughts elsewhere.
“You sell it?” grinned the Arab.
“Eh!” I gasped, straightening up in astonishment, “you—”
“I’ll give you five piastres,” wheedled the peasant, “gkamsa tarifa.”
“Take it!” I cried, and, grasping the coin he held out to me, I dashed
away to the station.
A half-hour later I was speeding southward across the fertile delta of
the Nile. What a contrast was this land to that I had so lately left
behind! Every few miles the train halted at a bustling city; between
them mound-like fellaheen villages and well-cultivated fields raced
northward. Inside the car—of American pattern—prosperous, well-groomed
natives perused the latest newspapers and smoked world-famous cigarettes
with the blasé air of Parisian commuters. Even the half-blind victims of
ophthalmia leaned back in their seats in the perfect contentment of
well-fed creatures. An eyeless pre-adamite in one corner roared with
laughter at the sallies of his companions. Far more at ease was he, for
all his affliction, than I, with neither friend nor acquaintance in the
length and breadth of the continent.
The Oriental panorama grew dim. One could with difficulty distinguish in
this ultra-flat country, where every object stood out sharply against
the horizon, between a distant village and a reclining water-buffalo,
nearer at hand. The western sky turned ruddy a moment, dulled to a
brown, and the darkness that falls so quickly in tropical countries left
me to stare at my own face beyond the window. An impressive reflection
indeed! A figure to inspire prospective employers with confidence! The
lights that were springing up across the plain were of no village where
inhabitants welcomed strangers with open arms. Every click of the wheels
brought me nearer the metropolis of Africa, a great city, of which I
knew little more than the name, and where I should soon be set adrift in
the darkness with the ludicrous sum of ten cents in my pocket! Perhaps
in all Cairo there was not another penniless adventurer of my race? Even
if there were, and a “vagabond’s retreat” somewhere among these long
rows of streets that flashed by as those of London in approaching St.
Pancras, small chance had I of finding it. For, were my Arabic as fluent
as my English, no policeman could direct me to so unconventional a
quarter.
The train halted in a vast, domed station. A mighty press of humanity
swept me through the waiting-rooms and out upon a brightly-lighted
square. There the screaming throng of hackmen, porters, donkey boys, and
hotel runners drove me to take refuge behind a station pillar. I swung
my knapsack over my shoulder and gazed, utterly undecided, across the
human sea.
Suddenly a voice sounded above the roar:—“Heh! Landsmann, wohin?” I
stared eagerly about me, for this simple greeting, properly accented, is
the password of the German tramp wherever he wanders. Under a
neighboring arc-light stood a young man of ruddy, sunburned countenance,
in a stout, if somewhat ragged, suit and a cloth cap. At my sign of
recognition, he dived into the crowd and fought his way to my side.
“Ah!” he shouted, in German, “I knew only one of the boys would blow in
with a knapsack and a corduroy suit! Where are you turning up from? Just
got in from Zagazig myself. Been down there grubbing up some cash. How
long have you been away? Business any good down at the coast? Don’t
believe it is. Cairo’s the place for easy winnings. Bet you blew in
without a piastre? Give ’em the stony face on the train? I did, though a
fellow down in Zagazig ticketed me. Gave me the cash, the wise one, and
of course I planted it and stared them off.”
Had I not already served an apprenticeship in German slang, I should
have come off with a very indistinct notion of the recent activities of
my new acquaintance. I broke in as soon as possible to assure him that I
had never dared to hope that civilization was so up-to-date in Egypt
that one could “beat his way” on the railroads, and to protest that I
could doubly deny his charge of having “eingeblasen” without a piastre.
“It’s my first trip to Cairo,” I concluded. “I bought my own ticket—”
“What!” roared the German, “Ticketed yourself! Lieber Gott, aber du bist
roh! Tick—But then,” he continued, in a hushed voice, “now I think of
it, so did I! Schafskopf, ja! I paid good money to come to Cairo the
first time! Höllespein, what a greenhorn I was!”
As he talked, we had left behind the howling throng. No need to ask
where he was leading me.
“There’s an Asile in Cairo,” he put in, “but you’re too late to-night.
You’ll meet all die Kamaraden where we’re going, for they’re most of
them ausgespielt with the churchman and can’t talk the Asile tickets out
of him.”
We crossed a rectangular square where street cars clanged their way
through a multitude, and turned down a street flanked by
brightly-lighted shops.
[Illustration: A winged dahabiyeh of the Nile]
[Illustration: Sais or carriage runners of Cairo, clearing the streets
for their master]
“It’s the Moosky,” said the German. “Good old lane. Many a piastre I’ve
picked up in her.”
He dodged into a side alley, jogged over a street, and entered the
headquarters of “die Kameraden.” It was a wine shop with connecting
kitchen, on the lower floor of a four-story building; just such a
rendezvous as one finds in Germany. A shuffling Jew was drawing beer and
wine for several groups of noisy faranchees at the tables, to the
accompaniment of a continual jabber in Yiddish to which the tipplers
replied, now and then, in German. A long-unwashed female wandered in
from the back room with a steaming plate of meat and potatoes.
“Der Jude has lodgings,” said my companion, pointing at the ceiling.
“Three small piastres. You can still eat a small piastre worth.”
Great impression two and a half cents would have made on an all-day
appetite! Almost before I realized it, I had called for a supper that
took my last copper.
By the time I finished eating, the “comrades” were demanding the
biography of “der Ankömmling.” As all the party spoke German, I gave an
abbreviated account of myself in that language.
“And what countryman are you?” asked a youth at a neighboring table.
“Ich bin Amerikaner.”
The entire party, the Jew included, burst into uproarious laughter so
suddenly that two black urchins, peering in upon us, took to their
heels.
“Amerikaner! Ja! Ja!” shrieked the merrymakers, “Freilich! We are all
Americans. But what are you when you tell the truth to your good
comrades? Amerikaner! Ha! Ha!—”
The cane of the first speaker beat a tattoo on the table and the mirth
subsided. Plainly, he was a man of authority in the gathering.
“Now, then,” he cried, as though I were entitled by the rules of “the
union” to enter two answers, “what country _are_ you from?”
I repeated my first assertion.
“So you are an American, rheally?” he demanded, suddenly, in clear
English, though with a marked accent.
A long reply in my own tongue upset his conviction that I should not be
able to understand him. The others, however, grinned skeptically and
fell to chattering again, glancing up from time to time to mutter,
“Amerikaner! Ja, gewiss.” I scraped up a half-pipe of tobacco from the
corners of a pocket, and fell asleep over the fumes.
A whining voice sounded in my ear:—“H’raus, Hop! Will mich
einschliessen!” I opened my eyes to find the Jew bending over me. The
room was nearly empty. Of the few “comrades” who remained one was the
youth who had addressed me in English. I caught up my bundle and turned
towards the door.
“Du bist, aber, ganz kaput?” demanded the young man, “have you no
money?”
“No.”
He rose and followed after me.
“If you are ein richtiger Amerikaner,” he said, “I can show you where to
pick up the price of a lodging.”
I nodded. The youth called to the Hebrew to leave his door unlocked, and
led the way down the Moosky, across the square, and along a street that
flanked a wooded park.
“Esbekieh Gardens, those,” he said. “I’m taking you to the American
Mission Hospital. There are eight American preachers there, but your
best chance now is Reverend ——. He lives in the third story, first door
to the right of the stairway. You will find him studying. He studies
until two in the morning. Knock on the door once. He won’t answer; but
push it open and begin a hard-luck story right away. Now don’t tell him
that you’ve just come to Egypt, nor that you’re a sailor; and, if he
asks you if you speak German, say no. Tell him you are a civil engineer,
or a plate-layer, or a mason, and that you’ve just walked down from
Central Africa—your clothes fit that—and that you could get no work
there, or—or that you got sick; yes, that’s better, for he’s an old wise
one and knows there’s plenty of work up the river. Tell him you speak
only English and that you are an American—that is if you _are_—and he
will give you ten piastres. If you’re not sure you can talk English
without a foreign accent—I can’t tell whether you do or not—well, I
wouldn’t disturb the old man. He doesn’t like Germans.”
The youth pointed out a door of the Mission and slipped into the blacker
night of one of her pillars. I stepped inside, and, mounting to the
first landing, sat down to think matters over. The night air of January
was too cold to sleep out of doors even should I succeed in hiding where
the patrol could not rout me out. But to come at midnight to disturb an
aged missionary with a stereotyped tale of woe! Yet I knew the bitter
hopelessness of looking for work after a night in the streets, and “a
deep breath for breakfast.” Work? Why, of course! Just the point! I must
find work before I left Cairo; why could I not ask for a small loan and
pay it back?
I continued up the stairs and knocked on the door that had been
indicated. There was no response, but a tiny thread of light showed on
the threshold. I stepped inside. In the far corner of a small room, a
white-haired man closed, over a finger, the book he was reading, and
turned the light of a student lamp full upon me. I began my story—not
the one the German had plotted—and stated my case briefly. To my dismay,
the word “borrow” fell flat.
“I rarely,” said the old man, in a voice that would have chorded well
with the last key of a piano, “I rarely give money to a man who has just
come to the country. What business has he here without sufficient funds
to establish himself? I have never given money to sailors. I know their
ways too well. But after long months of daily visits from ‘Americans’
who speak English as if they had learned it in the slums of Berlin, I am
glad to see a real American again; though sorry to find that he is
without money, and still more so that he is a sailor. Here is a
half-dollar”—handing me a ten-piastre piece—“I hope you will not drink
quite all of it up. What state are you from?”
“Michigan. You understand I am only borrowing this until I can find
work—”
“Young man,” said the missionary, rising to his feet, “you already have
the money—the amount I give, if I give at all. No additions to your tale
will cause me to offer more. Why, then, attempt to raise false hopes
within my breast? So you are from Michigan? I am from Pittsburg. Good
night,” and without giving me time for reply, he sat down and lost
himself in the pages of his book.
“You were gone a long time,” said the German, as I emerged from the
doorway. “You couldn’t show _him_ you were an American?”
I held out the coin in my hand.
“Ei! Gott!” cried my companion, “you got it? You are an American, then,
a genuine American! It’s the test I always apply. He can tell an
American at his first three words.”
“But why didn’t the crowd believe me?” I demanded.
“Ach!” burst out the youth, “Here in Cairo all the boys are Americans.
We have Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Norwegians, all sorts in
the union, and everyone is an ‘American’—except among the comrades. And
not three of them ever saw the United States! It is because, of all the
foreigners in Egypt, the Americans are the easiest and the most
generous. Then you know what a bad reputation Germans have as
beggars—all turning out on their Wanderjahre? The Germans here will help
us. Yes! But how? By giving us a loaf of bread, or an old pair of shoes,
or two piastres. Bah! But the Americans! They give pounds and whole
suits, and they don’t ask to hear the whole story of your past life.
Americans? Why, there are dozens of American missionaries, judges,
merchants, engineers, and ei! Gott! the tourists! There’s your rich
harvest, mein Freund! Why, a year I’ve been in Cairo learning English
and picking the roosters. I’ve been up to see that greybeard four times!
I dressed differently every time and practised every story for weeks
until I got the accent right. Three times I got ten piastres, but the
fourth he asked me questions, and, as I hadn’t practised the answers, I
talked wild English and tangled myself up. Then I tried to get out of it
by saying I was a Pennsylvania Dutchman. The old man started in on
geography, and when I told him Pennsylvania was on the Gulf of Mexico he
took his cane and chased me out. I’ve studied maps of the United States
since then, though. He couldn’t catch me again. I know every city.”
“Yes,” he went on, as we turned into the now deserted Moosky, “all die
Kunde try to be Americans. Aber Gott! The fools! They are too pig-headed
ever to learn to talk English with an American accent. But you! Du
glücklicher Kerl! You can live in Cairo until you grow a beard!”
I paid my lodging and followed the German up a narrow, winding stairway
at the back of the shop. On the third story he pushed open a door much
like the drop of a home-made rabbit trap, which gave admittance to a
small room where four of six beds were already occupied. It needed only
one long-drawn breath to prove that the “bedclothes” had not seen the
washtub during several generations of “the boys,” and that a can of
insect powder could be used to great advantage. But he who is both
penniless and hypercritical should remain at home. I took the bed beside
that of the German and was soon asleep.
I awoke next morning to find my guide of the night before sitting on his
bed at a dry-goods box before the single window, sipping black coffee
from a tin can and eating a boiled egg and a slab of bread with one
hand, and slowly penning a letter with the other. Having seen enough of
him already to be convinced that he was a man of considerable education,
I was surprised to find that he wielded a pen with such apparent
difficulty.
“It’s this English script that troubles me,” he remarked, as if in
answer to my unexpressed question. “When you have written all your life
in German script, it is hard to change.”
“Then you’re writing English?” I cried.
He motioned to the letter before him as he swallowed the last of the
coffee:—“Of course! A man can’t eat if he doesn’t work. There’s a New
York millionaire just come to town. His name is Leigh Hunt, and I’m
writing to ask him for employment. He won’t have any, of course, but he
may send me a pound or two. I found it too hard to learn to speak
English without a foreign accent, so I write instead.”
He reached inside the box that served as table and tossed a dozen
unstamped letters on my bed. All were addressed to Englishmen or
Americans, among them people of international reputation.
“Read them according to the dates,” said the youth, “and see if my
English hasn’t improved. I copied them all and sent out the copies. All
but two sent me money. One wrote me to come and see him to-day. The
other I haven’t heard from. You don’t spell ‘poverty’ with a capital, do
you?”
As he had spoken but one sentence in English since our meeting, I was
surprised to note the fluent use of that language in his letters. None
of them contained actual errors; and only a peculiar turning of a
phrase, here and there, which a reader off his guard might easily have
overlooked, betrayed the nationality of the writer. The stories they
told were proof of an inventive imagination. A dozen “hard-luck tales,”
no one of which resembled the others, were all signed by different
Americanized names, over different addresses. Here a youth from
Baltimore, who had come to Egypt to open a store, had been robbed of all
he possessed. There a civil engineer from New York had been forced to
leave his work on the Berber-Suakim line and hasten down to Cairo to
attend a sick wife and four small children. An aged stone mason, who had
been injured while working on the barrage at Assuan, prayed for
assistance to get back to his home in Cincinnati. A California
prospector, just returned from an unsuccessful expedition into the
Uganda protectorate, was lying ill and penniless in a miserable
lodging-house.
Nor did the resourceful German confine himself to his own sex. The last
letter was an appeal to a well-known American lady from a young girl who
had come from Boston to act as stenographer to a tourist firm that had
not materialized, and who sought assistance before starvation should
drive her to ruin.
“How about this Boston story?” I asked.
“Best of the lot,” replied the youth. “Sent me two pounds and a letter
full of wise advice—for females.”
“But didn’t she ask to see you?”
“Bah! Most of them are too busy enjoying themselves. They prefer to send
a bank note and forget the matter. Once in a while, one of them sends
for me and, if I think he is not too clever—most millionaires aren’t,
you know—I go to see him, and generally get something on the
Pennsylvania Dutch story.”
“Where do you get the names?”
“Mostly from this,” said the youth, reaching into the box once more and
pulling out a Paris edition of the New York Herald. “If a millionaire
starts for Egypt, or lands here, or catches cold, or bruises his toe,
the Herald knows it—and never forgets the address. Then there is a
society paper published here in Cairo—”
“Do you write German letters, too?”
“Not many. I used to, when I first came to Africa, but it’s a poor game.
I began to study English when I came to Cairo, a year ago. My first
letters must have been bad, for I got no answers. But they make me a
living now, and an occasional spree.”
“How much time does your letter writing take?”
“Four hours. I used to write at all times. Then I read of an author who
wrote, rain or shine, from nine till one, and I find it a good idea. But
to-day I’m going to break the rule and show you where you can talk the
pounds out of some rich Americans. Why,” he cried, enthusiastically,
“there hasn’t been a real American working the crowd since I’ve been
here. We’ll go into partnership. I know all the ropes and you can do the
writing and interviewing; and, when we get Cairo pumped out, we’ll go up
the Nile! I know every white man from here to Cape Town. I’ve covered
Africa from one end to the other—with an American partner, too. But he
was a real Pennsylvania Dutchman and had a little accent. You’ll do much
better. Africa’s all good; though Cairo’s the best, for there’s no
vagrancy law here. We’ll make an easy living together or my name isn’t
Otto Pia.”
“Ever think of going to America?”
[Illustration: An Arab gardener on the estate of the American consul of
Cairo, for whom I worked two weeks]
[Illustration: Otto Pia, the German beggar-letter writer of Cairo]
“Never,” he cried, “unless I was drunk. Never again a white man’s
country for me! Here, a white wanderer is an isolated case of
misfortune, far from his native shore. At home, he is only a common
tramp, one among thousands, and the man who would give him pounds here
would give him to the police there. That’s why few of die Kunde who come
here—if they have brains enough to weave Märchen—ever go back. Do you
know the secret of getting the sympathy of the rich? It’s to make them
think we’re much worse off here than at home and to keep before them the
idea that we cannot find work. For that reason I am a plate-layer in
Cairo; for plate-layers are only needed far up the Nile. If I’m up the
Nile, I’m a stenographer, or a waiter, or anything else that there is
sure to be no work for. No, mein Freund, never your United States for
me! And you’ll not go back either, when I’ve showed you how easy it is
to pick the roosters here. A tramp, you know, is like a prophet—’er gilt
nichts in seinem Vaterlande.’”
“While you’re dressing and thinking up a few good Märchen,” he went on,
turning to his writing, “I’ll copy this letter. Then I’ll show you a few
of the easiest marks.”
I protested, however, that I had come to Cairo to work rather than to
weave “fairy tales.”
“Work?” he shouted, throwing aside his pen and springing to his feet, “A
fellow who can write and talk English—and German, too, wants to _work_
in Cairo? Why, mein lieber Kerl, you—you—” but the words stuck in his
astonished throat.
I descended to the street and set out to visit such European contractors
as I could locate. Long after dark, foot-sore and half-famished, covered
with the dust of Cairo, I returned to the rendezvous and sat down at one
of the tables. It was quite evident that die Kunde were neither
foot-sore nor hungry, and their garments were as immaculate as
second-hand garments can be made. The “wise ones” had loafed in the
cafés and gardens, had written a letter or told a hard-luck story
somewhere, and turned up at night with money enough to make merry
through the whole evening. I, having tramped all day, from one address
to another, turned up with—an appetite.
Otto Pia watched me, with a half-smile on his countenance, for some time
after I had entered. Then he raised his cane and rapped on the table for
silence.
“Ei! Gute Kamaraden!” he cried, “I have something to show you! Guk’ mal!
Here is a comrade who is an American—do you hear—a real American, not a
patched-up one; and this real American—in Cairo—wants to _work_!”
“_Work?_” roared the chorus, “_Work_ in Cairo—and a real American—Lieber
Gott—Ist’s denn ein Esel?—”
I ate a meager supper and crawled away to bed. On the following day, I
tramped even greater distances, and returned to the wine shop with only
the price of a lodging left from the missionary’s donation. Pia rose and
took a seat beside me.
“Lot of work you found, eh?” he began. “Didn’t any of them offer you
money?”
“Most of them,” I answered.
“And you didn’t take it?” cried the German, “Why, you—you—you’re a
disgrace to the union.
“I know how you feel though,” he went on, “I was the same once. When I
ran away from Germany—to escape the army—I wouldn’t take a cent I hadn’t
earned; and I starved a month in Pietermaritzburg, looking for work as
you are here, before I got over my silly notions. Ach! I was an ass! I
tell you it’s no use. You won’t find work—especially in those rags. If
you _will_ work, let me take you where you can get some clothes first.”
It was all too evident that he was right. Weather-beaten garments might
pass muster in the wilderness of Palestine, but they were wholly out of
place in the Paris of Africa. Twice that day, those who had refused me
employment had offered to fit me out in their cast-off clothing. I
concluded to profit by the experience of Pia.
The German abandoned the composition of pathetic short stories for an
hour next morning to conduct me to the Secretary of the “Cairo Aid
Society,” a minister of the Church of England. Having pointed out the
rectory, he left me without a sign of recognition, and marched
unfalteringly down the street until he vanished behind the next row of
houses. I mounted the broad steps and pressed the electric button. A
jet-black Arab opened the door.
“I want to see the Reverend ——,” I began.
“Very sorry, but Reverend —— not in,” replied the servant, with a flash
of ivory teeth in a very friendly smile.
“When will he be in?”
“Ah! Reverend —— gone to Iskanderia. No can tell. Come back maybe three
day, maybe week,” and the black face grew so sorrowful with pity that I
hastened to leave, lest tears should begin to flow.
The German was awaiting me about four steps from the spot where he had
disappeared at a brisk walk.
“You’re back soon,” he said, “what luck?”
“He is not in.”
“Not in? Höllespein! Certainly he’s in! He never goes out before noon.
Do you think I’m a bungler at my profession? I know the hours of every
padre in Cairo, exactly, always! Who told you he was not in?”
“His servant.”
“Was! Ein verdammter Schwartze? Herr Gott, aber du bist roh! Two days
looking for work, and you don’t know yet that every nigger servant will
tell you his master is out? Not in!”—and he burst forth in his
peculiarly silent, yet uproarious laughter.
A new light had broken in upon me. This, then, was the reason that of
some forty white men whom I had called on for employment, a bare dozen
had been at home? I left my companion to conquer his risibility alone,
and, hastening back to the rectory, brought the servant to the door with
a vicious ring.
“I’ve heard the Reverend —— _is_ in. I want to see him.”
There was no smile on the ebony face now. Even through the mask of black
skin one could see anger welling up, the blind rage of the Mussulman
against the hated unbeliever.
“I say Reverend —— not in!” snarled the servant, in hoarse sotto voce,
“Go away.”
With a string of English oaths that spoke better of his linguistic
abilities than the influence of his master, he shut the door, quickly,
yet noiselessly.
I pressed a finger against the electric button and kept it there. A
quick muffled patter of footsteps sounded inside, a whispered
imprecation came through the keyhole. My finger was growing numb. I
relieved it with a thumb without breaking the circuit.
“Go away,” growled the servant, fiercely, half opening the door, “go
way, damn you, I cut your neck”—and his speech did not end there. I
relieved my thumb with another finger. The murderous gleam in the Arab’s
eyes blazed forth more fiercely, then by a stern command of the will
changed to an appeal.
“My God, stop!” he begged.
“Is your master in Iskanderia?”
A cry of rage trembled on his lips and was forced back.
“No,” he snapped, throwing open the door.
I stepped inside and followed him along the hall. At the entrance to a
well-stocked library he turned to me with a hoarse whisper:—“Damn you!
Why for you ring bell? I make you full of holes—”
A light step sounded in the passage and a grey-haired English lady
stepped towards us.
“Yes, sir,” continued the Arab, without a pause, “master see you right
away, sir. Step inside, please, sir.”
“Maghmoód,” said the lady, “who was ringing the door bell so long?”
“Think button get stuck, lady, when gentleman push,” replied the Arab,
beaming upon me, “Shall I bring chocolate, lady?”
I sat down in the library and was joined almost at once by a sturdy,
well-groomed old gentleman—a Briton by every token.
“Have trouble in getting in?” he demanded abruptly, before I had spoken.
“Why—er—the servant thought at first you were not in,” I admitted.
“That rascal!” cried the minister, “I have dismissed ten servants since
I became secretary of the Society, for no other fault. Maghmoód knows
that it is my duty to keep open house during the morning; yet for some
reason I cannot fathom, an Arab domestic cannot bear the thought of
seeing his master give assistance of any kind to Europeans in
unfortunate circumstances. It is a servant problem that has often been
discussed among English residents; yet even the plumber and the
carpenter continue to be shut out from houses where they have been sent
for, unless they are well acquainted with native tricks.
“Now as to your case”—he needed no enlightenment as to my errand,
evidently—“you need clothes, of course. Ordinarily, I have several suits
on hand, sent by Englishmen in the city; but there has been such a run
of German tramps that I have nothing left. I shall have something before
long, surely. Meanwhile, I will give you a four-day ticket to the Asile
Rudolph, our Society building. What is your trade?”
“I have worked as carpenter, mason, blacksmith, stevedore—”
“Good! Good!” said the rector. “You should find work easily. If you
don’t, come back when your ticket runs out. I shall call Maghmoód up on
the carpet. Good-day, my man.”
I hastened to join the German.
“That’s good as a beginning,” he said, as I displayed the ticket, “It
shows you are on the trail, and you can work him for tickets for two or
three weeks. But I must get back to my desk. Follow this avenue to the
parade grounds; where you saw the Khedive’s guard drilling, you know.
The Asile is close by.”
[Illustration: An Arab café in Old Cairo]
In a side street in which sprawled and squalled native infants
uncountable, I tugged at a bell rope protruding from a stern brick wall,
and was admitted by a bare-legged Arab to the courtyard of the Asile
Rudolph. The superintendent, seated before the “office,” called for my
ticket. He was a sprightly Englishman, in the autumn of life, long a
captain in the Black Sea service, and still known to all as “Cap
Stevenson.” Around two sides of the court were the kitchen and
sleeping-rooms of the male inmates. Opposite the entrance towered the
Women’s Asile, a blank wall except for one window opening, through which
the English matron thrust her head at frequent intervals to berate the
captain, in a caustic falsetto, for the hilarity of his charges.
Among my new companions, some two score of ragged, care-free fellows who
had already gathered around the tables in the open air dining-room, the
German vagabond predominated. The French, Italian, and Greek tongues
were frequently heard, there were two or three castaways from the
British Isles; but as long as I remained at the Asile I was the sole
representative of the western hemisphere.
An Arab servant bawled out from the depths of the kitchen, and, as we
filed by the door, handed each of us a bowl of steaming soup and an
ample slab of bread. There was no French parsimoniousness about the
Asile Rudolph. Each bowl held a liberal quart—of something more than
discolored dishwater, too—and down at the bottom were three cubes of
meat. Never did a bowl appear during all the days that I wondered at the
audacity of the society’s butcher without exactly three such cubes, of
exactly the same size. To my companions they were the daintiest of
morsels. The best-dressed vagabond never dreamed of tasting his soup
until he had fished out this basic flesh and laid it on the table before
him to gloat over until he had finished his liquid refreshment. Once
gorged with soup, he sliced the cubes carefully, dipped the strips in
rock salt, and slowly munched them, one by one, in his eyes the far-away
look of keen enjoyment. As for myself, when I attempted to cut up my
first cube, it bounded away over my head and before I could turn around
to follow its flight had disappeared into the pocket of some
quicker-witted guest. I dismembered the second morsel with the
assistance of a fellow-boarder, and inflicted upon my teeth a piece of
convenient size. An hour later, I deposited the still undamaged delicacy
outside a factory gate at the further end of the city. When I turned out
to renew my search it was gone.
Thoughtful guests of the Society made provision during the noon-hour of
plenty for the twenty-four hours to come; for morning and evening
brought only coffee or tea, and bread. There was, however, something
more than bed and board in store for the lucky possessor of one of the
Reverend ——’s tickets—a shower bath! It was closed during the day, but I
was by no means the last to finish the evening meal, and, once inside
the wooden closet, it was only the protest that the stream could be used
to even better advantage among my companions that saved me from a watery
grave.
I began my fourth day’s search by applying at the office of the chief
owners of modern Egypt—Thomas Cook and Son. There is hardly a walk in
life, from the architect to the donkey-boy, that is not represented
among the employees of that great tourist agency. Somewhere in those
cosmopolitan ranks, I might find my place. I proffered my services to
the company as a sailor on their Nile steamers, as an unskilled workman
in any of their enterprises, as a man with a trade in the Bulak factory
where their floating palaces are constructed. Nothing came of it. In
desperation, I struck out in a struggle directly against the economic
law of labor, and, instead of dropping lower with each refusal, sought
to climb higher.
It was true, admitted the manager, that the company was in need of
clerks. It was still more in need of interpreters, and, to all
appearance, I was qualified for either position. “But—but—I’m sorry, old
chap,” and he looked sternly at my heelless slippers and ragged
corduroys, “but really, you won’t do, don’t you know. I can give you a
note to a well-known contractor—”
I accepted it with pleasure; for the name of Cook and Son, embossed at
the top of a letter of introduction, has great weight in Egypt. The
contractor to whom the note was addressed gave me—another. The addressee
of the second gave me a third. Two, three, four days, I spent in
delivering notes to the European residents of Cairo and waging battle
against her Islamite servant body. Night after night I returned to the
Asile with one stereotyped answer in my head:—
“I really haven’t anything I can put you at now. I’ll give you a letter
to ——. Are you on the rocks? Well, here, perhaps this dollar will help
you out. You don’t want it? Well, I’ll keep you in mind.”
The employers were divided into two classes: those who offered money as
the easiest means of getting rid of an unwelcome visitor, and those who
had been “on the rocks” themselves and protested against my refusal to
accept alms in the words of the water-works superintendent:—“Take it,
man, there is no harder work than looking for work; why not be paid for
it?” The strangest fact of all, one that impresses itself on the
out-of-work the world over, was the conviction of each that I should
easily find employment. “Why, to be sure,” exclaimed a superintendent of
shops in Bulak, “_we_ haven’t anything to offer just now; but a man with
your list of trades will certainly find work in Cairo in a few hours,
without the slightest trouble.” It would have been hard to convince him
that I had heard that same statement in a half-dozen languages a score
of times a day for a week past. Gradually the assertion of “the
comrades,” that he who would work in the Egyptian capital was an ass,
took on new force.
Rich or penniless, however, he who does not enjoy the winter season in
Cairo must be either an invalid, a prisoner, or an incurable pessimist.
Here one does not need to add to every projected plan, “weather
permitting.” The sojourner in the land of Egypt knows, as he goes to his
rest at night, that, whatever misfortune to-morrow may bring, it will be
lightened by joyous sunshine. Nor need the sans-sous lack entertainment
in this city of the Nile. One had but to stroll to the vicinity of the
Esbekieh Gardens to hear a band concert, to see some quaint native
performance, or to find some excitement afoot. At all hours of the day
those fortunate beings whose names graced the pages of Pia’s society
papers displayed their charms to the watching throng. At frequent
intervals the Khedive and his bodyguard thundered by. Now and then the
bellow of Cairo’s champion saïs heralded the approach of the Khedive’s
master, Lord Cromer. Nay, entertainment there was never lacking—merely
food.
When my ticket ran out on the morning of the fourth day, I did not apply
at once for another. The evening before, the Greek proprietor of a
famous cigarette factory had promised me a position, had even explained
to me my probable duties as general porter in the establishment. But
when I had inveigled my way into the inner sanctum for the second time,
it was only to learn that a compatriot of the proprietor had applied
earlier in the morning, and was already at work. Not to be outdone by
his fellow-faranchees, the Greek offered me—a letter of introduction.
The hour of public audiences at the rectory was passed. The day,
moreover, was Saturday, a half-holiday among contractors. In the hope of
earning a night’s lodging by some errand, I joined the howling mob of
guides, interpreters, street-hawkers, and fakirs, before Shepherd’s
Hotel. I was the sole Frank in the gathering. Die Kameraden, whatever
their nationality, would have been transfixed with horror had they seen
one of their own patrician class competing with “niggers” for
employment. As a last resort, had “the business” been utterly outrooted
in Cairo, the members of “the union” might have consented to busy
themselves with some genteel occupation; but had gaunt starvation
squatted on his haunches in their path, they would never have stooped to
the work of natives.
My presence was soon noised through all the screaming multitude, and I
was cleverly “pocketed” by a dozen snake swallowers and sword jugglers,
and gradually forced towards the outskirts of the crowd. When I resorted
to force and beat my way to the front rank, I was little better off than
before. For two hours I watched the natives about me selling, begging,
running errands, or marching away to guide a tourist party through the
city; without once seeing a beckoning finger in answer to my own offers
of service. At frequent intervals, a lady appeared on the hotel piazza,
ran her eyes slowly over the front ranks, stared at me a moment, and,
summoning some one-eyed rascal beside me, sent him across the city with
a perfumed note. The ladies, certainly, were not to be blamed. It was so
much more romantic; there was so much more local color in one’s doings,
don’t you know, if one’s errands were run by a Cairene in flowing robes,
rather than by a tramp such as one could see at home any day in St.
Charles or Madison Square! What if one paid an exorbitant price for such
services? It was to a picturesque figure, don’t you know, whose English
was excruciatingly funny.
It is half disgusting, half pathetic, this ebb and flow of the
population of Egypt at the crook of a tourist finger. From the door, on
which every eye was fixed, emerged the blatant figure of a pompous
pork-packer, or the half-baked offspring of a self-made ancestry. With a
wild howl the mob rose en masse and surged forward, threatening to break
my ribs against the foot of the piazza. If the pork packer scowled, the
throng fell back like a receding tide. If the half-baked offspring
raised an eyebrow, the multitude swept on, tossing me far up the steps
into the arms of “buttons,” on guard against the besiegers below.
He was a coarse-grained cockney, this “buttons,” and, in carrying out
his orders to repel boarders, he was neither a respecter of persons nor
of his mother tongue. A score of times I was pushed down the steps I had
not chosen to ascend, with a violence and profanity out of all keeping
with racial brotherhood.
[Illustration: An abandoned mosque outside the walls of Cairo, and a
caravan off for Suez across the desert]
But every dog has his day. A sallow youth issued from the hotel and
called for a man to carry a letter. “Buttons” was already raising a hand
to point out a pock-marked Arab who had departed on four commissions
since my arrival, when the tidal wave of humanity set me on the piazza.
I shouted to the sallow youth just as “buttons” fell upon me. The youth
nodded. It was a long-sought opportunity. I reversed rôles with the
cockney and landed him in a picturesque spread-eagle on the heads of the
backsheesh-seeking multitude. Had he not been wont to use his influence
in favor of a very limited number of the throng, he would have been more
immaculate in appearance, when he was dug out by his pock-marked
confederate and restored to his coign of vantage. Meanwhile I had
received the letter and a five piastre piece in payment, and had
departed on my errand.
The coin paid my evening meal and a lodging for two nights in “the
union,” and left me coppers enough for a native breakfast. Sunday was no
time either to “forage,” or to visit rectors of the church of England.
In company with Pia, who would under no circumstances use his inventive
pen on the Sabbath, I visited those few corners of Cairo to which my
search had not yet led me; the Mohammedan University of El Azkar, the
citadel, and the ruined mosques beyond the walls.
When all other resources fail him, the Anglo-Saxon wanderer has one
unfailing friend in the East—Tommy Atkins. However penniless and
forlorn he may be, the glimpse of a red jacket and a monkey cap on a
lithe, erect figure, hurrying through the foreign throng, is certain
to give him new heart. Thomas has become a familiar sight in Cairo
since the days of the Arabi rebellion. Down by the Kasr-el-Nil bridge,
out in the shadows of the pencil-like minarets of Mohammed Ali’s
mosque, in parade grounds scattered through the city, he may be found
any afternoon perspiringly chasing a football or setting up his
wickets in the screaming sunlight, to the astonishment and delight of
a never-failing audience of apathetic natives. He doesn’t pose as a
philanthropist—simple T. Atkins—nor as a man of iron-bound
morality—rather prides himself, in fact, on his incorrigible
wickedness. But the case has yet to be recorded in which he has not
given up his last shilling more whole heartedly than the smug tourist
would part with his cigar band.
Thomas, however, has no overwhelming love for “furriners—Dutchmen,
dagoes, and such like.” It would be out of keeping with his profession.
That was why Pia, after pointing out to me the least public entrance to
the cavalry barracks, on this Sunday noon, strolled on down the street.
The officers’ dinner was already steaming when I was welcomed by the six
privates of that day’s mess squad. By the time it had been served, I was
lending the cooks able assistance in disposing of the plentiful
remnants, amid the stories and laughter of a red-coats’ messroom. Even
the bulging pockets with which I departed were less cheering than the
last bellow from the barrack’s kitchen:—“Drop in to mess any day, Yank,
till you land something. No bloody need to let your belly cave in while
there’s a khaki suit in Cairo.”
I was admitted to the library of the Reverend —— the following morning
without so much as a hinted challenge from Maghmoód. The good rector was
more distressed than surprised that I had not yet found work.
“The difficulty is right here,” he cried, as he made out a second Asile
ticket. “No one will hire you in those rags, if you have a dozen trades.
I must pick you up something that looks less disreputable. Come on
Wednesday. I shall surely have something to offer.”
I fished out the note of the Greek cigarette maker and bore greetings
from one European resident to another for two days more. On the third, I
returned to the rectory and received a bundle of astonishing bulk.
“These things may not all fit you,” said the rector, “but it is all we
have been able to collect.”
Red-eyed with hope, I hurried back to the Asile and opened the package.
Just what I should have represented in the garments that came to view I
have not yet concluded. On top was a pair of trousers, in excellent
condition, but of that screaming pattern of unabashed checks in which
our cartoonists are accustomed to garb bookmakers and Tammany
politicians. In texture, they were just the thing—for Arctic explorers,
and they resigned in despair some four inches above my Nazarene
slippers. Next came a white shirt, with a mighty expanse of board-like
bosom—and without a single button; then the low-cut vest of a dress
suit, and, lastly, a minister’s long frock coat, with wide, silk-faced
lapels.
The first shock over, I bore the treasure back to the rectory. But the
good padre refused to unburden me. “Oh, I don’t want them around the
house!” he protested, “If you can’t wear them, sell them.” Even the
proprietor of “the union,” however, refused to come to my rescue. With
much cajoling, I lured an unsophisticated newcomer at the Asile inside
the vest and trousers, and intrusted the other garments to the
safe-keeping of Cap Stevenson.
The endless stream of notes, having its source at the office of Cook and
Son, flowed on unchecked. If my object had been merely to gain intimate
acquaintance with the Cairenes of all classes, I could not have chosen a
better method. No tourist, with his howling bodyguard of guides and
dragomans, ever peeped into half the strange corners to which my
wanderings led me. My command of Arabic, too, increased by leaps and
bounds; for the necessity of giving expression of my innermost thoughts
to the servant body of Cairo required an ever-increasing vocabulary.
The two-hundredth letter of introduction—if my count be not at
fault—took me to that ultra-fashionable world across the Nile. The
director of the Jockey Club read the latest epistle carefully, and, with
sportsman-like fairness, gave me another. The delivery thereof required
my presence in the great Gezireh Hotel. For once I was not even
challenged by the army of servants; the very audacity of my entrance
into those Elysian Fields left the astonished domestics standing in
petrified rows behind me. The superintendent was most kind. He gave me,
even without the asking, a letter of introduction! The curse of Cain on
him who invented the written character! My entire Cairene experience had
been bounded by this endless chain of notes through all the cycle of her
cosmopolitan inhabitants.
The new missive carried me back to Shepherd’s Hotel, and for once I
escaped employment by a hair’s breadth. The portly Swiss manager was
inclined to overlook the shortcomings in my attire. He needed a cellar
boy, could use another porter, or “you may do as a bell-boy,” he mused,
with half-closed eyes, “if—”
What vision was this? Might I aspire even to displace mine ancient
enemy, in all the splendor of two close rows of bright, brass buttons,
and pace majestically back and forth with the sang-froid of a lion
tamer, above the common horde I had so lately quitted? What folly to
keep silent concerning those acquirements that especially fitted me to
serve a cosmopolitan clientèle, while fickle fortune was holding forth
this golden prize! I broke in upon the manager’s brown study with a
deluge of German. He opened wide his eyes. I addressed him in French. He
sputtered with astonishment. I continued in Italian. He waved his hands
above his head like a swimmer about to go down for the third time. I
added a savoring of Spanish and Arabic for good measure, and he clutched
weakly at a hotel pillar.
Gradually, strength returned to his trembling limbs. He rubbed his
astonished gorge with a ham-like hand and dislodged an imprisoned
shriek:—“Aber, mein lieber Kerl! Speaking all those langvages and out of
a job—and in rhags! Why—you—you—you must haf been up to some crhooked
business, yes?” He glanced fearfully about him at the silver ornaments
of the office. “I—I—I am very sorry, we haf not now a single vacancy.
But—but you vill not haf the least trouble—mit so viel’ Sprachen—in
getting a position, not the slightest! I gif you a note—to Cook and
Son.”
I wandered sadly away across the city and stumbled upon the American
legation. Long battle won me admittance to the office of the secretary.
Beyond that I could not force my way. The secretary heard my case, and,
eager to be off to some afternoon function, thrust an official sheet
into his typewriter and set forth in a “to-whom-it-may-concern” the
half-dozen trades I mentioned; and several others to which I had never
aspired. A second sheet he ruined with a score of addresses, and bade me
be gone. If there was any corner of Cairo from Heliopolis to Masr el
Attika which I had not already visited, these documents soon repaired
the oversight. Two days the new task required, and it brought no reward,
save one. The head of the Egyptian railway system promised me a pass to
the coast when I chose to leave the country. I did not choose at once,
and, returning on the third day to the legation, fought my way into the
sanctum of the consul-general himself.
“If you are looking for work of a specific character,” said that
gentleman, “I can do no more than has already been done—give you more
addresses. If you are merely looking for _work_, I can give you
employment at once.”
I pleaded indifference to qualifying adjectives.
The consul chose a card from his case, turned it over, and wrote on the
back:—“Tom;—Let Franck do it.”
“Take this,” he said, “to my residence; it is opposite that of Lord
Cromer, near the Nile, and give it to my butler.”
“Tom,” the commander-in-chief of the servant body of a vast
establishment, proved to be a young American of the pleasantest type. I
came upon him dancing blindly around the ballroom of Mr. Morgan’s
residence, and shouting himself hoarse with the Arabic variation of “Get
a move on!” The consul, it transpired, was to give a dinner, with
dancing, to the lights of society wintering in the city. In the two days
that remained before the eventful evening the ballroom floor must be
properly waxed. Twelve native workmen, lured thither by the
extraordinary wage of twenty-five cents a day, had been holding down the
aforementioned floor since early morning. About them was spread powdered
wax. In their hands were long bottles. Above them towered the dancing
butler.
“Put some strength into it,” he bellowed, by way of variation, as I
stepped across the room towards him. For the three succeeding strokes,
the dozen bottles, moving in unison, to the chant of a thirteenth
“workman” who had been hired to squat in a far corner and furnish vocal
inspiration, nearly crushed the powdered wax under them. But this
unseemly display of energy was of short duration.
I delivered the cabalistic message. The Arabs bounded half across the
room at sound of the shriek emitted by its addressee:—“I’ll fire ’em!”
bellowed Tom. “I’ll fire ’em _now_. An American? I’m delighted, old man!
Get on the job while I kick these niggers down the stairs. Had any
experience at this game?”
I recalled a far-off college gymnasium, and nodded.
“Take you’re own gait, only so you get it done,” cried the butler,
charging the fleeing Arabs.
I discarded the bottle process and rigged up an apparatus after the
fashion of a handled holly-stone. By evening, the polishing was half
completed. When I turned my attention to the dust-streaked windows, late
the next afternoon, the ballroom floor was in a condition that boded ill
for any but sure-footed dancers. The outbreak of festivities found me
general assistant to the culinary department, separated only by a
Japanese screen from the contrasting class of society; represented by
such guests as Lord Cromer and his youthful Lady, the ex-Empress
Eugenie, the Crown Prince of Sweden, and the brother of the Khedive.
Deeply did I regret the lack of inventiveness that forced me to report
to the sleepless inmates of the Asile to which Cap Stevenson admitted me
long after closing hours, that the conversation of so distinguished a
gathering had been commonplace, the dancing unanimated, and the flirting
unseemly.
By arrangement with Tom, I continued to “do it” long after the day of
the ball. The fare at the servants’ table was beyond criticism, but I
declined a blanket and a straw-strewn stall in the consul’s stable, and
retained my cot at the Asile at a daily cost of two piastres. As my
earnings grew, I repaired, one night, to the American Mission Hospital,
mounted to the third story, knocked on the first door to the right,
pushed it open, and astonished an aged missionary from Pittsburg out of
a night’s labor. One idle hour, too, I examined again the garments I had
left with Cap Stevenson and found them less useless than I had once
imagined. The shirt, being tied together, front and back, with string,
awoke the envy of all the “comrades.” For the bosom was of many layers,
and, as each one became soiled, I had but to strip it off, and behold!—a
clean shirt. When I had laid the bundle away again, it contained only
the minister’s frock coat.
Cap Stevenson had made a scientific study of the genus vagabundus that
enabled him to gauge with surprising precision the demands that would be
made on the Asile from day to day. There fell into my hands, one
evening, a Cairo newspaper, containing the following item:—
SUEZ, _February 2d, 1905_.
The French troop-ship ——, outward bound to Madagascar with five
hundred recruits, reports that while midway between Port Saïd and
Ismaïlia, in her passage of the canal, five recruits who had been
standing at the rail suddenly sprang overboard and swam for the
shore. One was carried under and crushed by the ship’s screw. The
others landed and were last seen hurrying away into the desert. All
concerned were Germans.
I entered the office to point out the item to the superintendent.
“Aye,” said Cap, “I’ve seen it. That’s common enough. They’ll be here
for dinner day after to-morrow.”
They arrived exactly at the hour named, the four of them, weather-beaten
and bedraggled from their swim and the tramp across the desert, but
supplied with the Reverend ——’s tickets. Two of the quartet were very
engaging fellows with whom I was soon on intimate terms. One of this
pair had spent some months in Egypt years before, after using the same
means to make the passage from Europe.
On the Friday after their arrival, this man of experience met me at the
gate of the Asile as I returned from my day’s labor.
“Heh! Amerikaner,” he began, “do you get a half holiday to-morrow?”
“Sure,” I answered.
“I’m going to take Hans out for a moonlight view of the Pyramids. It’s
full moon and all the tourist companies are sending out tally-ho
parties. Want to go along?”
I did, of course. The next afternoon I left the Asile in company with
the pair. At the door of the office, I halted to pay my night’s lodging.
[Illustration: Spinners in the sun outside the walls of Cairo]
[Illustration: Guests of the Asile Rudolph, Cairo. François, champion
beggar, in the center, in the cape he wore as part of his “system”]
“Never mind that,” said Adolph, the man of experience, “we’ll sleep out
there.”
“Eh?” cried Hans and I.
Adolph pushed open the outer gate, and we followed.
“Suppose you’ll pay our lodging at the Mena House?” grinned Hans, as we
crossed the Kasr-el-Nil bridge.
“Don’t worry,” replied Adolph.
We pushed through the throng of donkey boys beyond the bridge and,
ignoring the electric line that connects Cairo with the pyramids of
Gizeh, covered the eight miles on foot. Darkness fell soon after our
arrival, and with it rose an unveiled moon. The tourists were out in
force. Adolph led the way in and out among the ancient monuments and
pointed out the most charming views with the discernment of an
antiquarian. The desert night soon turned cold. The tourist parties
strolled away to the great hotel below the hill, and Hans fell to
shivering.
“Where’s this fine lodging you’re telling about?” he chattered.
“Komm’ mal her,” said Adolph.
He picked his way over the tumbled blocks towards the third pyramid,
climbed a few feet up its northern face, and disappeared in a black
hole. We followed, and, doubled up like balls, slid down, down, down a
sharply inclined tunnel, some three feet square, into utter darkness. As
our feet touched a stone floor, Adolph struck a match. The flame showed
two small vaults and several huge stone sarcophagi.
“Beds waiting for us, you see?” said Adolph. “Probably you’ve chatted
with the fellows who used to sleep here? They’re in the British Museum,
in London.”
He dropped the match and climbed into one of the coffins. I chose
another and found it as comfortable as a stone bed can be, though a bit
short. Our sleeping chamber was warm, somewhat too warm in fact, and
Hans, given to snoring, awoke echoes that resounded through the vaults
like the beating of forty drums. But the night passed quickly, and, when
our sense of time told us that morning had come, we crawled upward on
hands and knees through the tunnel and out into a sunlight that left us
blinking painfully for several moments.
A throng of tourists and Arabian rascals was surging about the
monuments. A quartet of khaki-clad Britishers kicked their heels on the
forehead of the Sphinx, puffing at their pipes as they exchanged the
latest garrison jokes. We fought our way through the clinging Arabs,
climbed to the summit of the pyramid of Cheops, took in the regulation
“sights,” and strolled back to Cairo.
Many a strange bit of human driftwood floated ashore in the Asile
Rudolph, but their stories would take too long in the telling. Yet no
account of that winter season in Cairo would be complete without mention
of “François.” François was, of course, a Frenchman, a Parisian, in
fact, and, contrary to the usual rule, it was he, and not a German, who
won and still holds the mendicant championship of Egypt. To all who
spoke French, he was known as the most loquacious and jolly lodger at
the Asile. The Reverend —— had long since turned him away from the door
of the rectory; but François would not be driven from his accustomed
bed, and paid his two piastres nightly.
As a young man the Frenchman had worked faithfully at his trade; he
admitted it with shame. Three years in the army, however, had awakened
within him an uncontrollable Wanderlust, and during the twenty-three
years since his discharge, he had tramped through every country of
Europe. He was a man of meager education and by no means the native
ability of Pia and many of the German colony. But long years before his
arrival in Egypt, he had evolved “un système” to which his fame as a
mendicant was due. The first part of this system concerned his personal
appearance. He was pale of complexion, though in reality very robust,
and he had trained his shoulders into a droop that suggested the last
stages of consumption. His garb, in general, was that of a French
workman, but over this he wore a cloak with a long cape that gave him an
aspect not unlike a monk, and, combined with his drooping shoulders and
sallow, long-drawn face, created a figure so forlorn as to attract
attention in any clime. Nothing, François asserted, had contributed so
much to his success as this cloak. Rain or shine, from the Highlands of
Scotland to the shores of the Black Sea, in the depth of winter or in
midsummer, he had clung to this garb for twenty years, replacing in that
time a dozen cloaks by others of identical design. Even in Egypt he
refused to appear in public without this superfluous outer garment, and,
though the African sun had turned the threadbare cape almost as yellow
as the desert sands, he was not to be separated from it until he had
picked up another in some charitable institution of the city.
The second part of François’s system was extremely simple. The method
which Pia so successfully manipulated was too complicated for a man of
little schooling; yet François rarely made a verbal appeal for alms. On
a score of cards, which he carried ever ready in a pocket of his cloak,
was written in as many languages this petition:—
“I am ill and in misery. Please help me.”
The French card was his own production. The others he had collected from
time to time as he made friends in the various countries he had visited.
For, with all his wanderings, François knew hardly a word of any
language but his own.
I set out with the French champion, one Sunday afternoon, to visit the
mosque of Sultan Hassan. Not far from the Asile gate, he caught sight of
a well-dressed man, whose appearance stamped him as a German. François
shuffled his cards with a hasty hand, chose the one in the corner of
which was written, in tiny letters, the word “allemand,” and set off at
a trot. Arrived within a few paces of his intended victim, he fell into
a measured tread, thrust out the card, and waited with sorrowful face
and hanging head. The German returned the card with a five-piastre
piece.
Cairo is nothing if not cosmopolitan, and it is doubtful if every one of
the cards did not make its appearance at least once during the
afternoon. American tourists, English officers, French entrepreneurs,
Greek priests, Italian merchants, Turkish clerks, Indian travelers, even
the Arab scribes sitting imperturbable beside their umbrella-shaded
stands,—all had the misery of François called to their attention.
Whether it was out of gratitude for a sight of the familiar words of his
native tongue, or out of pity for the abject creature who coughed so
distressingly and pointed to his ears like a deaf mute whenever a
question was put to him, rare was the man who did not give something.
François collected more than a hundred piastres during that single
promenade. Yet before we set out he had called me aside and drawn from
an inner pocket a purse that contained twenty-six English sovereigns in
gold!
But it was his method of dispensing his income that made the Frenchman
an enigma to his confidants. François neither drank nor smoked; he
rarely, if ever, indulged even in the mildest dissipation. Not far from
the Asile, he stopped at a café for his petit déjeuner of chocolate and
rolls and his morning paper; and, had he met the Khedive himself out for
a stroll, François would not have appealed to him before that breakfast
was over. He was strictly a union man, was François, in his hours of
labor.
But his daily expenditures were for bed and breakfast only. There were
scores of French chefs in Cairo, ever ready to welcome whomever knew the
kitchen door and the language of the cuisine. If his shoes wore out,
there were several French shops in the vicinity of the Esbekieh Gardens.
If he were in need of nothing more costly than a bar of soap, François
begged one of the first druggist he came upon. The sovereigns which
cosmopolitan Cairo thrust upon him were spent almost entirely for
souvenirs for his relatives in Paris. The most costly albums of Cairene
views, fine brass ware, dainty ornaments of native manufacturer were
packed in the bazaars and shipped away to those fortunate brothers,
sisters, and cousins of François in the French capital. Only once in
twenty-three years had he visited them, but few were the towns and
cities of all Europe the arts and manufactures of which were not
represented in that Parisian household. As a supplement to his gifts,
there came semi-annually a letter from François, announcing some new
success in his career as a traveling salesman.
[Illustration: An Arab market-day at the village of Gizeh]