So, second-class, by P. & O. to Egypt, with a nurse for the children,
a new wardrobe in the new cabin-trunks and a good-looking motor-car in
the hold. Lawrence had written to me:
Egypt, being so near Europe, is not a savage country. The Egyptians
... you need not dwell among. Indeed, it will be a miracle if an
Englishman can get to know them. The bureaucrat society is exclusive,
and lives smilingly unaware of the people. Partly because so many
foreigners come there for pleasure, in the winter; and the other
women, who live there, must be butterflies too, if they would consort
with the visitors.
I thought the salary attractive. It has just been raised. The work
may be interesting, or may be terrible, according to whether you get
keen on it, like Hearn, or hate it, like Nichols. Even if you hate
it, there will be no harm done. The climate is good, the country
beautiful, the things admirable, the beings curious and disgusting;
and you are stable enough not to be caught broadside by a mere
dislike for your job. Execute it decently, as long as you draw the
pay, and enjoy your free hours (plentiful in Egypt) more freely.
Lloyd will be a good friend.
Roam about—Palestine. The Sahara oases. The Red Sea province. Sinai
(a jolly desert). The Delta Swamps. Wilfred Jennings Bramly’s
buildings in the Western Desert. The divine mosque architecture of
Cairo town.
Yet, possibly, you will not dislike the job. I think the coin spins
evenly. The harm to you is little, for the family will benefit by
a stay in the warm (Cairo isn’t warm, in winter) and the job won’t
drive you into frantic excesses of rage. And the money will be
useful. You should save a good bit of your pay after the expense of
the first six months. I recommend the iced coffee at Groppi’s.
And so, my blessing.
I had a married half-brother and half-sister in Cairo who had both
been there since I was a little boy. My brother, a leading Government
official (at a salary less than my own), and his wife viewed my
coming to Egypt, I heard, with justifiable alarm. They had heard of
my political opinions. My sister, to whom I was devoted, had no such
suspicions and wrote a letter of most affectionate welcome. Siegfried
came to see me off. He said: ‘Do you know who’s on board? “The
Image!” He’s still in the regiment, going to join the battalion in
India. Last time I saw him he was sitting in the bottom of a dug-out
gnawing a chunk of bully-beef like a rat.’ The Image had been at my
last preparatory school and had won a scholarship at the same time as
myself; and we had been at Wrexham and Liverpool together; and he had
been wounded with the Second Battalion at High Wood at the same time
as myself; and now we were travelling out East together. A man with
whom I had nothing in common; there was no natural reason why we should
have been thrown so often in each other’s company. The ship touched
at Gibraltar, where we disembarked and bought figs and rode round the
town. I remembered the cancelled War Office telegram and thought what
a fool I had been to prefer Rhyl. At Port Said a friend of my sister’s
helped us through the Customs; I was feeling very sea-sick, but I knew
that I was in the East because he began talking about Kipling and
Kipling’s wattles of Lichtenburg, and whether they were really wattles
or some allied plant. And so to Cairo, looking out of the windows
all the way, delighted at summer fields in January.
My sister-in-law advised us against the more exclusive residential
suburb of Gizereh, where she had just taken a flat herself, so with
her help we found one at Heliopolis, a few miles east of Cairo. We
found the cost of living very high, for this was the tourist season.
But I was able to reduce the grocery bill by taking advantage of the
more reasonable prices of the British army canteen; I presented myself
as an officer on the pension list. We had two Sudanese servants, and,
contrary to all that we had been warned about native servants, they
were temperate, punctual, respectful, and never, to my knowledge, stole
a thing beyond the remains of a single joint of mutton. It seemed queer
to me not to look after the children or do housework, and almost too
good to be true to have as much time as I needed for my writing.
The University was an invention of King Fuad’s, who had always been
anxious to be known as a patron of the arts and sciences. There had
been a Cairo University before this one, but it had been nationalistic
in its policy and, not being directed by European experts or supported
by the Government, had soon come to an end. The new University had
been planned ambitiously. There were faculties of science, medicine
and letters, with a full complement of highly-paid professors;
only one or two of these were Egyptian, the rest being English,
Swedish, French and Belgian. The medicine and science faculties were
predominantly English, but the appointments to the faculty of letters
were predominantly French. They had been made in the summer months
when the British High Commissioner was out of Egypt, or he would no
doubt have discountenanced them. Only one of the French and Belgian
professors had any knowledge of English, and none of them had
any knowledge of Arabic. Of the two hundred Egyptian students, who
were mostly the sons of rich merchants and landowners, fewer than
twenty had more than a smattering of French—just enough for shopping
purposes—though they had all learned English in the secondary schools.
All official university correspondence was in Arabic. I was told
that it was classical Arabic, in which no word is admitted that is
of later date than Mohammed, but I could not tell the difference.
The ‘very learned Sheikh’ Graves had to take his letters to the post
office for interpretation. My twelve or thirteen French colleagues
were men of the highest academic distinction. But two or three English
village-schoolmasters would have been glad to have undertaken their
work at one-third of their salaries and done it far better. The
University building had been a harem-palace of the Khedive. It was
French in style, with mirrors and gilding.
British officials at the Ministry of Education told me that I must keep
the British flag flying in the faculty of letters. This embarrassed
me. I had not come to Egypt as an ambassador of Empire, and yet I did
not intend to let the French indulge in semi-political activities at
my expense. The dean, M. Grégoire, was a Belgian, an authority on
Slav poetry. He was tough, witty, and ran his show very plausibly. He
had acquired a certain slyness and adaptability during the war when,
as a civilian in Belgium under German occupation, he had edited an
underground anti-German publication. The professor of French Literature
had lost a leg in France. He greeted me at first in a patronizing way:
I was his young friend rather than his dear colleague. But as soon
as he learned that I also had bled in the cause of civilization
and France I became his most esteemed chum. The Frenchmen lectured,
but with the help of Arabic interpreters, which did not make either
for speed or accuracy. I found that I was expected to give two
lectures a week, but the dean soon decided that if the students were
ever to dispense with the interpreters they must be given special
instruction in French—which reduced the time for lectures, so that I
had only one a week to give. This one was pandemonium. The students
were not hostile, merely excitable and anxious to show their regard
for me and liberty and Zaghlul Pasha and the well-being of Egypt,
all at the same time. I often had to shout at the top of my loudest
barrack-square voice to restore order. They had no textbooks of any
sort; there were no English books in the University library, and it
took months to get any through the French librarian. This was January
and they were due for an examination in May. They were most anxious
to master Shakespeare, Byron, and Wordsworth in that time. I had no
desire to teach Wordsworth and Byron to anyone, and I wished to protect
Shakespeare from them. I decided to lecture on the most rudimentary
forms of literature possible. I chose the primitive ballad and its
development into epic and the drama. I thought that this would at least
teach them the meaning of the simpler literary terms. But English was
not easy for them, though they had learned it for eight years or so
in the schools. Nobody, for instance, when I spoke of a ballad-maker
singing to his harp, knew what a harp was. I told them it was what
King David played upon, and drew a picture of it on the blackboard;
at which they shouted out: ‘O, _anur_.’ But they thought it beneath
their dignity to admit the existence of ballads in Egypt; though I had
myself seen the communal ballad-group in action at the hind legs of
the Sphinx, where a gang of fellaheen was clearing away the sand.
One of the gang was a chanty-man: his whole job was to keep the others
moving. The fellaheen did not exist for the students; they thought of
them as animals. They were most anxious to be given printed notes of my
lectures with which to prepare themselves for the examinations. I tried
to make the clerical staff of the faculty duplicate some for me, but in
spite of promises I never got them done. My lectures in the end became
a dictation of lecture-notes for lectures that could not be given—this,
at any rate, kept the students busy.
They were interested in my clothes. My trousers were the first Oxford
trousers that they had seen in Egypt; their own were narrow at the
ankles. So I set a new fashion. One evening I went to dine with the
rector of the University. Two of my students, sons of Ministers,
happened also to be invited. They noticed that I was wearing white silk
socks with my evening dress. Later I heard from the vice-rector, Ali
Bey Omar, whom I liked best of the University officials, that a day
or two later he had seen the same students at a Government banquet,
wearing white silk socks. When they looked round on the distinguished
assembly they found that they were the only white socks present. Ali
Bey Omar gave a pantomime account of how they tried to loosen their
braces surreptitiously and stroke down their trousers to hide their
shame.
For some weeks I missed even my single hour a week, because the
students went on strike. It was Ramadan, and they had to fast for a
month between sunrise and sunset. Between sunset and sunrise they
ate rather more than usual in compensation, and this dislocation of
their digestive processes had a bad effect on their nerves. I have
forgotten the pretext for the strike: it was some trouble about
the intensive French instruction. The fact was that they wanted leisure
at home to read up their notes of the earlier work of the term in
preparation for the examination. The Professor of Arabic, who was one
of the few Egyptians with a reputation as an orientalist, published
a book calling attention to pre-Islamic sources of the Koran. His
lectures, delivered in Arabic, demanded more exertion from them than
any of the others, so when the examination came round most of them
absented themselves from the Arabic paper on religious grounds. To
an orthodox Mohammedan the Koran, being dictated by God, can have no
pre-Islamic sources.
I came to know only two of my students fairly well; one was a Greek,
the other a Turk. The Turk was an intelligent, good-natured young
man, perhaps twenty years old. He was very rich, and had a motor-car
in which he twice took me for a drive to the Pyramids. He talked both
French and English fluently, being about the only one (except for
twelve who had attended a French Jesuit college) who could do so. He
told me one day that he would not be able to attend my next lecture as
he was going to be married. I asked him whether this was the first or
second part of the ceremony; he said it was the first. When he returned
he told me that he had not yet been allowed to see the face of his
wife, because her family was orthodox; he would only see it at the
second ceremony. But his sister had been at school with her and said
that she was pretty and a good sort; and her father was a friend of
his father’s. Later, the second ceremony took place, and he confessed
himself perfectly satisfied. I learned that it seldom happened that
when the veil was lifted the bridegroom refused the bride, though he
had the right to do so; she had a similar right. Usually the
couple contrived to meet before even the first ceremony, The girl
would slip the man a note saying: ‘I shall be at Maison Cicurel at the
hat-counter at three-thirty to-morrow I afternoon if you want to see
me. It will be quite in order for me to lift my veil to try on a hat.
You will recognize me by my purple parasol.’
I inquired about the rights of Mohammedan women in Egypt. Apparently
divorce was simple; the man only had to say in the presence of a
witness: ‘I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you,’ and she was
divorced. On the other hand she was entitled to take her original
dowry back with her, with the interest that had accrued on it during
her married life. Dowries were always heavy and divorces comparatively
rare. It was considered very low-class to have more than one wife;
that was a fellaheen habit. I was told a story of an Egyptian who
was angry with his wife one morning because the breakfast-coffee was
badly made. He shouted out: ‘I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce
you.’ ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, ‘now you’ve done it. The servants have
heard what you said. I must go back to my father with my ten thousand
pounds and my sixty camels.’ He apologized for his hasty temper. ‘We
must be remarried,’ he said, ‘as soon as possible.’ She reminded him
that the law prevented them from marrying again unless there were an
intermediate marriage. So he called in a very old man who was watering
the lawn and ordered him to marry her. He was to understand that it
was a marriage of form only. So the gardener married the woman and,
immediately after the ceremony, returned to his watering-pot. Two days
later the woman died, and the gardener inherited the money and the
camels.
The Greek invited me to tea once. He had three beautiful sisters
named Pallas, Aphrodite, and Artemis. They gave me tea in the garden
with European cakes that they had learned to make at the American
college. Next door a pale-faced man stood on a third-floor balcony
addressing the world. I asked Pallas what he was saying: ‘Oh,’ she
said, ‘don’t mind him; he’s a millionaire, so the police leave him
alone. He’s quite mad. He lived ten years in England. He’s saying now
that they’re burning him up with electricity, and he’s telling the
birds all his troubles. He says that his secretary accuses him of
stealing five piastres from him, and it isn’t true. Now he’s saying
that there can’t be a God because God wouldn’t allow the English to
steal the fellaheen’s camels for the war and not return them. Now he’s
saying that all religions are very much the same, and that Buddha is
as good as Mohammed. But really,’ she said, ‘he’s quite mad. He keeps
a little dog in his house, actually in his very room, and plays with
it and talks to it as though it were a human being.’ (Dogs are unclean
in Egypt.) She told me that in another twenty years the women of Egypt
would be in control of everything. The feminist movement had just
started, and as the women of Egypt were by far the most active and
intelligent part of the population, great changes were to be expected.
She said that neither she nor her sisters would stand her father’s
attempts to keep them in their places. Her brother showed me his
library. He was doing the arts-course as a preliminary to law. Besides
his legal textbooks he had Voltaire, Rousseau, a number of saucy French
novels in paper covers, Shakespeare’s works and Samuel Smiles’ _Self
Help_, a book which I had never met before. He asked my advice about
his career, and I advised him to go to a European university because an
arts degree at Cairo would be of little advantage to him.
I did not pay an official call at the Residency at first, though
my brother urged it as etiquette; I decided not to until I had seen
how things were at the University. I had not realized before to what
extent the British were in power in Egypt. I had been told that Egypt
was an independent kingdom, but it seemed that my principal allegiance
was not to the King who had given me my appointment and paid me my
salary, but to the British High Commissioner. Infantry, cavalry, and
air squadrons were a reminder of his power. The British officials could
not understand the Egyptians’ desire to be rid of them. They considered
Egypt most ungrateful for all the painful and difficult administrative
work that they had put into it since the ’eighties, raising it from
a bankrupt country to one of the richest in the world. None of them
took Egyptian nationalism seriously; there was no Egyptian nation they
said. The Greeks, Turks, Syrians, and Armenians who called themselves
Egyptians had no more right in the country than the British. Before the
British occupation they had bled the fellaheen white. The fellaheen
were the only true Egyptians, and it was not they who called for
freedom. Freedom was mere politics, a symptom of the growing riches
of the country and the smatterings of Western education that they had
brought with them. The reduction of the British official class in the
last few years was viewed with disgust. ‘We did all the hard work and
when we go everything will run down; it’s running down already. And
they’ll have to call us back, or if not us, the dagoes, and we don’t
see why they should benefit.’ They did not realize how much the vanity
of the Egyptians—probably the vainest people in the world—was hurt by
the constant sight of British uniform.
Egypt now considered itself a European nation. At the same time
it attempted to take the place of Turkey as the leading power of
Islam. This led to many anomalies. On the same day that the University
students made the protest against the professor of Arabic’s irreligious
views, the students of El Azhar, the great Cairo theological college,
struck against having to wear the Arab dress of kaftan and silk
headdress and appeared in European dress and tarbouche. The tarbouche
was the national hat; even British officials wore it. I myself had
a tarbouche. Being red it attracted the heat of the sun; and it was
stuffy inside and did not protect the back of the head. It would have
been difficult to find a hat more unsuitable for the climate.