I
Among the many hangers-on at the Hotel de l'Europe at
Luxor--donkey-boys, porters, guides, antiquity dealers--was one, a young
man named Mustapha, who proved a general favourite.
I spent three winters at Luxor, partly for my health, partly for
pleasure, mainly to make artistic studies, as I am by profession a
painter. So I came to know Mustapha fairly well in three stages, during
those three winters.
When first I made his acquaintance he was in the transition condition
from boyhood to manhood. He had an intelligent face, with bright eyes, a
skin soft as brown silk, with a velvety hue on it. His features were
regular, and if his face was a little too round to quite satisfy an
English artistic eye, yet this was a peculiarity to which one soon
became accustomed. He was unflaggingly good-natured and obliging. A
mongrel, no doubt, he was; Arab and native Egyptian blood were mingled
in his veins. But the result was happy; he combined the patience and
gentleness of the child of Mizraim with the energy and pluck of the son
of the desert.
Mustapha had been a donkey-boy, but had risen a stage higher, and
looked, as the object of his supreme ambition, to become some day a
dragoman, and blaze like one of these gilded beetles in lace and chains,
rings and weapons. To become a dragoman--one of the most obsequious of
men till engaged, one of the veriest tyrants when engaged--to what
higher could an Egyptian boy aspire?
To become a dragoman means to go in broadcloth and with gold chains when
his fellows are half naked; to lounge and twist the moustache when his
kinsfolk are toiling under the water-buckets; to be able to extort
backsheesh from all the tradesmen to whom he can introduce a master; to
do nothing himself and make others work for him; to be able to look to
purchase two, three, even four wives when his father contented himself
with one; to soar out of the region of native virtues into that of
foreign vices; to be superior to all instilled prejudices against
spirits and wine--that is the ideal set before young Egypt through
contact with the English and the American tourist.
We all liked Mustapha. No one had a bad word to say of him. Some pious
individuals rejoiced to see that he had broken with the Koran, as if
this were a first step towards taking up with the Bible. A free-thinking
professor was glad to find that Mustapha had emancipated himself from
some of those shackles which religion places on august, divine humanity,
and that by getting drunk he gave pledge that he had risen into a sphere
of pure emancipation, which eventuates in ideal perfection.
As I made my studies I engaged Mustapha to carry my easel and canvas, or
camp-stool. I was glad to have him as a study, to make him stand by a
wall or sit on a pillar that was prostrate, as artistic exigencies
required. He was always ready to accompany me. There was an
understanding between us that when a drove of tourists came to Luxor he
might leave me for the day to pick up what he could then from the
natural prey; but I found him not always keen to be off duty to me.
Though he could get more from the occasional visitor than from me, he
was above the ravenous appetite for backsheesh which consumed his
fellows.
He who has much to do with the native Egyptian will have discovered
that there are in him a fund of kindliness and a treasure of good
qualities. He is delighted to be treated with humanity, pleased to be
noticed, and ready to repay attention with touching gratitude. He is by
no means as rapacious for backsheesh as the passing traveller supposes;
he is shrewd to distinguish between man and man; likes this one, and
will do anything for him unrewarded, and will do naught for another for
any bribe.
The Egyptian is now in a transitional state. If it be quite true that
the touch of England is restoring life to his crippled limbs, and the
voice of England bidding him rise up and walk, there are occasions on
which association with Englishmen is a disadvantage to him. Such an
instance is that of poor, good Mustapha.
It was not my place to caution Mustapha against the pernicious
influences to which he was subjected, and, to speak plainly, I did not
know what line to adopt, on what ground to take my stand, if I did. He
was breaking with the old life, and taking up with what was new,
retaining of the old only what was bad in it, and acquiring of the new
none of its good parts. Civilisation--European civilisation--is
excellent, but cannot be swallowed at a gulp, nor does it wholly suit
the oriental digestion.
That which impelled Mustapha still further in his course was the
attitude assumed towards him by his own relatives and the natives of his
own village. They were strict Moslems, and they regarded him as one on
the highway to becoming a renegade. They treated him with mistrust,
showed him aversion, and loaded him with reproaches. Mustapha had a high
spirit, and he resented rebuke. Let his fellows grumble and objurgate,
said he; they would cringe to him when he became a dragoman, with his
pockets stuffed with piastres.
There was in our hotel, the second winter, a young fellow of the name of
Jameson, a man with plenty of money, superficial good nature, little
intellect, very conceited and egotistic, and this fellow was Mustapha's
evil genius. It was Jameson's delight to encourage Mustapha in drinking
and gambling. Time hung heavy on his hands. He cared nothing for
hieroglyphics, scenery bored him, antiquities, art, had no charm for
him. Natural history presented to him no attraction, and the only
amusement level with his mental faculties was that of hoaxing natives,
or breaking down their religious prejudices.
Matters were in this condition as regarded Mustapha, when an incident
occurred during my second winter at Luxor that completely altered the
tenor of Mustapha's life.
One night a fire broke out in the nearest village. It originated in a
mud hovel belonging to a fellah; his wife had spilled some oil on the
hearth, and the flames leaping up had caught the low thatch, which
immediately burst into a blaze. A wind was blowing from the direction of
the Arabian desert, and it carried the flames and ignited the thatch
before it on other roofs; the conflagration spread, and the whole
village was menaced with destruction. The greatest excitement and alarm
prevailed. The inhabitants lost their heads. Men ran about rescuing from
their hovels their only treasures--old sardine tins and empty marmalade
pots; women wailed, children sobbed; no one made any attempt to stay the
fire; and, above all, were heard the screams of the woman whose
incaution had caused the mischief, and who was being beaten unmercifully
by her husband.
The few English in the hotel came on the scene, and with their
instinctive energy and system set to work to organise a corps and subdue
the flames. The women and girls who were rescued from the menaced
hovels, or plucked out of those already on fire, were in many cases
unveiled, and so it came to pass that Mustapha, who, under English
direction, was ablest and most vigorous in his efforts to stop the
conflagration, met his fate in the shape of the daughter of Ibraim the
Farrier.
By the light of the flames he saw her, and at once resolved to make that
fair girl his wife.
No reasonable obstacle intervened, so thought Mustapha. He had amassed a
sufficient sum to entitle him to buy a wife and set up a household of
his own. A house consists of four mud walls and a low thatch, and
housekeeping in an Egyptian house is as elementary and economical as the
domestic architecture. The maintenance of a wife and family is not
costly after the first outlay, which consists in indemnifying the father
for the expense to which he has been put in rearing a daughter.
The ceremony of courting is also elementary, and the addresses of the
suitor are not paid to the bride, but to her father, and not in person
by the candidate, but by an intermediary.
Mustapha negotiated with a friend, a fellow hanger-on at the hotel, to
open proceedings with the farrier. He was to represent to the worthy man
that the suitor entertained the most ardent admiration for the virtues
of Ibraim personally, that he was inspired with but one ambition, which
was alliance with so distinguished a family as his. He was to assure the
father of the damsel that Mustapha undertook to proclaim through Upper
and Lower Egypt, in the ears of Egyptians, Arabs, and Europeans, that
Ibraim was the most remarkable man that ever existed for solidity of
judgment, excellence of parts, uprightness of dealing, nobility of
sentiment, strictness in observance of the precepts of the Koran, and
that finally Mustapha was anxious to indemnify this same paragon of
genius and virtue for his condescension in having cared to breed and
clothe and feed for several years a certain girl, his daughter, if
Mustapha might have that daughter as his wife. Not that he cared for the
daughter in herself, but as a means whereby he might have the honour of
entering into alliance with one so distinguished and so esteemed of
Allah as Ibraim the Farrier.
To the infinite surprise of the intermediary, and to the no less
surprise and mortification of the suitor, Mustapha was refused. He was a
bad Moslem. Ibraim would have no alliance with one who had turned his
back on the Prophet and drunk bottled beer.
Till this moment Mustapha had not realised how great was the alienation
between his fellows and himself--what a barrier he had set up between
himself and the men of his own blood. The refusal of his suit struck the
young man to the quick. He had known and played with the farrier's
daughter in childhood, till she had come of age to veil her face; now
that he had seen her in her ripe charms, his heart was deeply stirred
and engaged. He entered into himself, and going to the mosque he there
made a solemn vow that if he ever touched wine, ale, or spirits again he
would cut his throat, and he sent word to Ibraim that he had done so,
and begged that he would not dispose of his daughter and finally reject
him till he had seen how that he who had turned in thought and manner of
life from the Prophet would return with firm resolution to the right
way.