EGYPTIAN DONKEY-BOYS.
Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play:
No sense have they of ills to come,
No care beyond to-day.—GRAY.
The donkey-boys, the gamins of Egypt, are a quick-witted and amusing
variety of the species. They are never sulky, or stupid. A joke is
not lost upon them, and it is pleasing to see their supple features
lighting up at its recognition. They often originate something of the
kind themselves. The detection of their attempted exactions, and little
villanies, is to them a source of merriment that is inexhaustible.
They have picked up some English. What they have acquired they teach each
other, and are always on the look-out to add, from the talk they have
with their customers, a word or two more to their small store. I was
sometimes asked by the bare-legged urchin running by my side to teach him
English. At Benihassan, having one of these volunteer scholars who was
asking the English for all the objects we passed, I found it was some
time before he could pronounce the _ns_ at the end of the word beans,
with a single emission of breath. We were passing through a bean-field.
He endeavoured to get over his difficulty by the introduction of a vowel,
making the word beanis. I had observed that the Arabs at the Pyramids
dealt with the word sphinx in precisely the same way, disintegrating the
_x_, and introducing an _i_, thus making it sphinkis. So the captain of
our boat, being unable to utter the letters _cl_ without the intervention
of a vowel, changed the name of one of our party from Clark into Kellark.
The English expression best known and most used in Egypt is ‘All right.’
With some this represents the whole language, and, with the requisite
variations in tone and gesticulation, does duty on all occasions. I heard
one evening a sailor on board the boat giving another sailor a lesson in
our noble tongue. The whole lesson consisted of the two phrases, ‘All
right,’ and ‘D⸺d rogue.’
At Karnak the donkey-boy, who happened one day to be with me, asked me
to teach him something. I told him he must first say something himself
in English, that I might be able to adjust my instruction to his
proficiency. Without a moment’s hesitation he gave the following specimen
of his attainments in the language. It may also be taken as a specimen
of the progress his youthful wits had made in the civilized art of
flattery. ‘English man come see Karnak say, “Very fine! glorious!” French
man come see Karnak say, “G— d⸺.”’ Had I been a Frenchman, the national
imprecation would have been assigned to its rightful owner.
The following day the youngster whose beast I was riding to the same
place, after having endeavoured to palm off upon me some Brummagem
scarabs, took from his bosom a half-fledged dove, and holding it up by
its wings said with a merry grin, ‘Deso bono antico.’ Italians abound in
Egypt, and many of the natives in the towns have picked up these three
Italian words. ‘Bono’ and ‘non bono’ are in universal use.
At Thebes, where the rides to the catacombs of the Kings, and in the
opposite direction to the tombs of the Queens, are long, and in the hot
desert, you will probably be attended, in addition to the donkey-boy, by
a girl with a water-jar on her head. The endurance of these little bodies
surprises one. The same girl accompanied me two days consecutively,
from about 10 A.M. till 4 P.M., running, bare-footed, over the pointed
and angular broken stones of the desert, in the blazing sun, keeping
up with the donkey, and holding all the time the water-jar on her head
with one hand. She had opportunities for resting when we were inspecting
tombs, and when we were taking our luncheon. To an European she would
have appeared about fourteen years of age, perhaps she was eleven.
She would have made a very pretty water-colour figure, with her clear
yellow ivory-smooth skin, large liquid black eyes, snow-white teeth,
coral lips and necklace of the same; the brown gooleh on her head, and
her hand raised to support it. She might have stood for her portrait,
either at the moment when, replacing the water-jar on her head with one
hand, she was holding out the other, with an imploring smile on her
face, for backsheesh; or as, with a grateful and satisfied smile, she
was depositing the piastre in her bosom. Her smooth, yellow complexion
had in it more of the crocus than of the nut, probably because she had
more of old Egyptian than of Arabic blood in her veins, through, perhaps,
some sword-converted descendant of those Copts, who had constructed their
church in one of the courts of the neighbouring temple-palace of Medinet
Habou. As to the water she carried, it had been dipped out of the muddy
river, and having been churned all day on her head in the sun, could
have possessed no merit beyond that of moistening a parched mouth and
throat. As to myself, I had no need of the little body’s water-jar. On
these occasions happy is the man whom nature has so compounded, or his
manner of life so trained, that he can go a dozen hours together without
feeling, or fancying himself, tired, hungry, or thirsty. Those who are
always craving for a bottle of beer, and are only made more heated by the
draught, are not so much their own masters as they might have been.
I fell in with an amusing specimen of the Arab village girl, at
Benihassan. I had been to the tombs that are known by the name of
this place. They are cut in the rock of the hill-side, and are as
interesting and instructive as any to be found elsewhere in Egypt, both
architecturally and pictorially. They contain some arched ceilings,
though not of construction, but excavated in that form, and sixteen-sided
piers, each face being slightly concaved, and closely resembling the
Doric style. The illustrations, on the walls, of Egyptian life in the
remote days of the primæval monarchy, to which these paintings belong,
are varied and curious. They have unfortunately been somewhat injured,
not so much, however, by time, as from the tombs having been used for
human habitation. As I was riding back from an inspection of these
antique monuments, an Arab girl, not of the crocus, but of the nut-brown
tint, attached herself to me, and was very pressing for backsheesh.
Having for some time held out against her petition, she suddenly
sprang forward a few paces, and threw herself on the ground, exactly
in the donkeys path, and became violently convulsed with a storm of
uncontrollable agony. In her convulsions she shrieked, and threw dust
on her head. I rode on, apparently without taking any notice of the
victim of overwhelming disappointment. In a few moments she was up again,
and again at my side with the same petition. A few moments later she
enacted a second time the scene of distracted agony. But finding that
one’s flinty heart was not moved in the way expected by these harrowing
performances,
With Nature’s mother-wit, and arts _well_ known before,
for the remainder of the way she ran alongside, still holding out her
hand, but now all open sunshine and winsome smiles. Her whole simple
being was so entirely bent to the one point of getting a piastre, that
the little exhibition had an interest one was unwilling to terminate.
Those who have hitherto seen only the muddy-red skins, and leathery
mulattoes of the western world, will be surprised at finding the soft,
smooth browns and yellows of the east so pleasing. They may almost come
to think that these are the most natural complexions both for man and
woman; and that in this matter the white of our lilies is—but such a
heresy is inconceivable—rather the defect than the perfection of colour.
The Cairo donkey-boy shows some sense of fun in the names he keeps in
store for his donkey. If the man whose custom he desires to secure
appears to be an American, the donkey will, perhaps, be recommended under
the name of Yankee Doodle: ‘No donkey, sir, like it in all the world.’ If
an Englishman, it may become Madame Rachel: ‘a donkey that is beautiful
for ever.’ This will be inappropriate to the gender of the beast; but
that is a matter of no consequence. If a Frenchman—the French are very
unpopular in Egypt—it will assume the name of Bismarck: ‘a very strong
donkey that can go anywhere.’ This must be meant to repel a badly-paying
customer, or it may be used to attract a German.
The unmercifulness of these boys to their donkeys—travellers would
do well to discourage it—arises partly from a wish that the present
engagement should be got through as quickly as possible, in order that
the boy and donkey may be ready for another, and partly from a wish that
you should think so well of the donkey’s pace as to be induced to hire it
again. You see what is passing in their little minds, by their frequently
asking you whether the donkey is not a good one. Should they carry their
way of making their poor beasts appear good too far for your humanity,
it may be allowable to administer to them the means for understanding
that you think the donkey ill-used, and the boy bad, and that, for this
purpose, it is the stick that is good. Theoretically, they may not
disagree with you, for they hear at home a saying that the stick came
down from heaven—by which is inculcated on the youthful mind the lesson
that it is a great gain to get off a payment that is demanded of one, by
submitting, instead, to the bastinado.
With this single exception of unmercifulness, I have nothing to say
against these juvenile Mustaphas and Mahommeds. They are always smiling,
and never tired. I had one run by my side from Bellianéh to Abydos and
back, which, I suppose, must be seventeen miles. They will gladly do you
any little service they can, carrying anything for you, or running a long
way to get you what you may want—of course, for a few piastres. When
we had got on board the steamer at Ismailia, and were on the point of
starting for Port Saïd, my companion found that he had left his binocular
at the hotel. He told a donkey-boy, who happened to be at hand, to ride
off, as fast as he could go, to the hotel, and ask for the instrument.
The boy went, and brought it back as quickly as his donkey could carry
him. Had he been dishonestly inclined, he might have ridden home with
it, for he knew that the steamer was on the point of starting. With this
probable piece of honesty in my mind, on the following day, while rowing
about the harbour of Port Saïd, I asked the Arab boatman what his father
had taught him. Had he taught him to be honest? ‘Yes, he had.’ Had he
taught him to speak the truth? ‘No, he had not.’ And small blame to him
for the omission, seeing that deception and endurance are the only means
the people have for meeting the never-ending exactions of every one in
authority.