OF A CAIRO CAFÉ AND OTHER MATTERS
I had not far to go along the filled-in canal before a partly pulled
down housefront enabled me to see the court of a once important
dwelling. It was similar in plan to many I have seen; but it was
the only instance I have met of a vaulted _takhtabosh_. A wooden
screen partly shut it off from the yard, and an opening in one of
the panels served as a doorway. Whether this screen belonged to
the original building I cannot say; but it certainly added greatly
to its picturesque appearance. The recess was now converted into a
coffee-shop, while the rest of the house was let out in tenements to
poor people.
It is never safe to leave a good subject to a later period, if it can
possibly be helped. Some arrangement of line or colour, often hard to
define, may be just what gives the subject its charm. Something may
have disturbed this, or some touch of colour may have gone, before a
second visit, and it leaves the painter wondering as to what he could
have seen in the place to have made him wish to paint it. I started
sketching in the café at once, hoping that some customers might arrive
to suggest a grouping of figures. Should these customers be queer ones,
I could trust to Mahmood to keep them from disturbing me at my work.
I had not long to wait before a half-dozen men came in. They seemed
sufficiently interested in something not to take much notice of me.
They squatted down on their heels, forming a ring, and two of them each
pulled a game-cock from under their cloaks and pitched them on to the
ground. The Cairene is usually very noisy during his entertainments;
but in this case few words were spoken, though the men watched the
varying success of their birds with intense interest. I was too
occupied in taking notes of the men and the action of the cocks to
feel any interest in the sport, and by the time one of the birds was
at its last gasp, and lay bleeding on the ground, I felt a sufficient
disgust for the whole thing to decide me not to make it the subject of
a picture.
I saw them refer to Mahmood as to who I might be, for Koranic law
forbids all betting, and I believe cock-fighting is contrary to police
regulations. They seemed satisfied that I was harmless enough, and they
departed as quietly as they had come.
The sport must be a very popular one, for these birds, with their combs
closely cut and with plucked necks, may be seen in almost any street in
the poorer parts of the town. Whether the ancient Egyptians indulged
in cock-fighting, I have never been able to ascertain. I can recall no
wall inscriptions depicting the sport, neither does Wilkinson refer
to it in his _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_. It was
probably introduced into Egypt during the Ptolemies or, at the latest,
during the Roman occupation. Quail-fighting is common in Upper Egypt,
though I have personally never witnessed it.
The sun soon made my place untenable, so I decided to return in the
afternoon, when I might also expect to find more customers to suggest
some figure arrangement suitable to my picture. It was a grand place
for Mahmood--cups of coffee at two for a penny. I could treat him to as
many as he liked, and please the _Kahwegee_ at the same time. I confess
to a good many cups myself, for coffee made in Turkish fashion is most
seductive. The cups are very small, and there is only a sip of liquid
before reaching the grounds, which are allowed to settle at the bottom.
But it is a delicious sip, and it is also very stimulating. The habit
of afternoon tea acquired in England is hard to break, and to make a
journey into the modern quarters to indulge it would have cut seriously
into my work, and I found in one of these little cups of coffee an
excellent substitute. Paint where one wishes, a coffee-shop is sure to
be within easy reach, and the _Kahwegee_ will always for a trifle bring
coffee, a chair, and a glass of water, and place them next to one’s
easel. Now that the native quarters are supplied with pure water, one
can drink the latter with safety. Coffee drinking is often carried to
excess in Egypt, with deleterious effects to nerves and digestion; but
its victims are less objectionable neighbours to the sketcher than the
fuddled European, who may bore him with questions and breathe on him
the odour of his complaint.
It is said that drunkenness is on the increase amongst the natives, and
it is true that tipsy men are occasionally seen. They are chiefly the
loafers who hang about the European quarters, where modest coffee-shops
hardly exist, and where nearly every other house retails some or other
intoxicant. Beer or spirits are hardly obtainable in the purely native
parts of Cairo.
[Illustration: A CAIRENE CAFÉ]
Towards evening this quaint little café would liven up. The wooden
bench which served as a _mastaba_ might seat an _álim_ (as any one who
can read is often called), who would drone out the news from the daily
paper to a group of listeners, and the sound of the chequers slammed
on a backgammon-board would make an accompanying click, click, from
inside the recess. This game has been borrowed from the _Firangi_, and
is still called by its French name of ‘tric-trac.’ It is immensely
popular amongst the effendi class, and is gradually being adopted by
those of a humbler station. The more primitive _mankaleh_ is still
played in Cairo, and is still universal in the villages where tric-trac
has not yet found its way. I have been shown how to play it, but space
will not allow of a lengthy description of its details. It is played on
an oblong board with twelve hollows in two rows of six each, each row
forming an opposing camp. There are seventy-two cowries, or, failing
these, small pebbles, and it is according to the manner in which these
are distributed into the hollows that makes the game. An elaborate
account of the various modes of playing it is given in Lane’s _Modern
Egyptians_. It is reported as having obtained in Pharaonic times, but
this has never been satisfactorily confirmed.
Turkish draughts is also a popular game, and to my thinking much more
amusing than the way we play it in England. That this game was known
(or a form of it) amongst the ancients is certain, and most visitors
to Medinet Habú will have been shown the presentment of Rameses III.
playing it with his queen.
Games of chance, as well as betting, are forbidden by the Koran. A
point is, however, usually stretched in allowing the loser to pay for
the cups of coffee. In _mankaleh_ the player backs his skill more than
his luck, whereas in backgammon the throw of the dice brings in a large
element of chance. A strict Mohammedan will therefore abstain from the
latter game.
As the day declined, more customers would drop in, and by the time the
lamps were lit I often regretted that my hotel _table d’hôte_ called me
away to the Ismaeliyeh quarter.
The light from the primitive lamps piercing a blue atmosphere of smoke,
and falling on the groups of figures intent on their games, left a
picture in my mind which I hoped might not be dimmed by the more
commonplace aspect of an up-to-date hotel.
Perhaps, after all, it is as well that circumstances oblige me to
reside away from that part which I regard as the true Cairo. Putting
aside matters of health, it is a loss to be cut off from one’s
countrymen, or those of other countries whose mode of life resembles
one’s own. Unless a man can take his wife with him, he may pass months
without seeing a woman’s face, or exchanging a word with one of his
opposite sex. This has been my experience in Upper Egypt and while
camping in the desert, where the woman will hide away from a strange
man, and where her voice will never be heard except she be screaming at
one of her children, or in altercation with a neighbour. The servants
are always males, and the food bought in the villages is always sent
by a man or a boy. If I strolled in to see the Omdeh or the village
sheykh, I should have to wait till his women-folk were well out of the
way. Their conversation might not have been edifying; but was that of
the men always so? Life in a purely Mohammedan country, if separated
from wife and family, is a one-sex existence.
I have met cultured men in the Near East, who for long periods had had
little intercourse with those of their own nationality, and I noticed
how ill at ease they seemed when brought in contact with European
ladies and gentlemen. Life was strange enough away from the European
settlements in Japan, but it was a more complete life. Though I might
not understand a word spoken by the _Okosan_ or the _mousume_, their
smiles of welcome were perfectly understandable.
The hotel Villa Victoria, which I have of late made my headquarters
in Cairo, is out of the general rush of tourists, and is frequented
by many who are at times engaged in excavating, or are in some way
connected with the Antiquities Department. There are also permanent
guests in various Government Offices, as well as others whose business
brings them in contact with things Egyptian. I was here long enough
for acquaintance with my fellow-lodgers to ripen into friendship, and
besides the pleasure of their company, I was enabled to pick up a good
deal of information. I could also stay here at any time of the year,
whereas most of the huge caravansaries put up their shutters when the
tourist season is over.
There were also ladies here who had the _entrée_ into the hareems of
the principal houses, and though they were careful not to give away
what is not intended for general discussion, I was yet able to get some
idea of the life which is led in the ‘prohibited places.’ The interior
of a princely home in Cairo at present must resemble that of a large
Parisian or London house, much more than that of the Sheykh Saheime
which I attempted to describe in a former chapter. The picture which
a reception-room in the hareem conjures up in the western mind--of
love-sick Zuleikas sprawling on cushioned floors, sighing for their
Selims and sucking sweets--may be safely dismissed. Diaphanous divided
skirts no more conceal their lower limbs, nor do gold-braided corsets
set off the symmetry of their figures. The Parisian modiste ‘a changé
tout cela.’ To us poor males, who only catch a sight of them as they
drive by in their broughams, they look still as oriental as ever. The
black silk _habarah_ entirely covers the ‘creation’ from Paris, and
the coiffeur’s art is hid beneath its folds. The white muslin _burko_
veils the face except the eyes, and whether these veils be thinner than
formerly I cannot say. But they are not sufficiently thick to hide
completely an often very pretty outline of cheek and chin.
My informant went there to read, or hear read, the French classics,
and though some of the ladies may have felt bored with extracts from
Corneille, I was told that many were intelligently interested. For fear
lest my readers might take Zohra as a fair specimen of an Egyptian
princess, I hasten to assure them that she was as great an exception
among the women as was her illustrious father amongst the men of his
time.
There was much in common between father and daughter. The great Pasha
let nothing stand between himself and his ambitions; any means were
good enough to remove those who obstructed his plans. He was a brave
man and a great soldier, and yet he could stoop to treacherously
murdering the mameluke Beys and their followers, when he considered his
rule in Egypt was safer without them. His young daughter was prepared
to sacrifice any one who might thwart her in her misplaced love; and
the form of madness which followed on her unsatisfied desires had its
parallel in the loss of reason by her father, when his ambitions to
found a great empire were not realised. He is reported to have had
eighty-five children, and strange it is that, with a family of such
dimensions, the succession of the present Khedive should have come
through an adopted son. Therefore, as far as we know, there is no
blood relationship between the actual members of the ruling house and
Mohammed Ali and his descendants.
It is pleasant to turn from Zohra to the mistress of a princely hareem,
who is now a great lady in Cairo. Though having children of her own,
she still finds room in her affections, as well as in her palace, to
mother many little girls who have either lost or have been abandoned
by their parents. She not only gives them a good education, but, as
children by adoption, she keeps them until suitable husbands are
provided for them. A kinder form of charity is hard to conceive.
Entertainments and visits from lady friends are of constant occurrence
in the wealthier hareems in Cairo, though the life of Egyptian ladies
in a general way must, from a European standpoint, be exceedingly
dull. Girl schools are on the increase as well as home instruction;
but taking the whole female population of Egypt, it is barely one per
cent. as yet who can either read or write. The percentage among men is
low enough--about five in a hundred; but as the enormous majority of
Egyptians are peasants, five per cent. may cover those who are above
the status of labouring men.
I have heard the complaint from educated Moslems that their wives were
poor companions, and that they therefore spent but little of their time
in their company. I don’t know what else they could expect. The fellaha
woman may at times be overworked, but her existence seems a happier one
than that of many of her wealthier sisters in their enforced idleness.
A fashionable French modiste was for a while a guest at the Villa
Victoria. She spent her time running from one hareem to another,
getting orders for the latest things in hats. As some of these hats, at
the time of which I am writing, were about half the size of a billiard
table, we would see her driving to her clients nearly lost amongst
colossal bandboxes. For convenience she wore her _chef-d’œuvre_, that
is the biggest, on her own head, and she would sometimes return crowned
with a smaller one, having, as she told us, disposed of the masterpiece
in one of the hareems. We were curious to know when and where her
clients could wear them, for they never appeared in Cairo with a
European hat on their heads. ‘Oh! mais c’est pour Paris ou Vienne,’
she said, and assured us that they looked ‘bien chics.’
Just think of it!--Zuleika in a Paris taxi balancing one of these
shapeless masses of millinery on the top of her head!
To see things as others see them may often be the wish of most of
us. I have never felt this wish stronger than when I have seen some
old village sheykh asking his way about modernised Cairo. Some evil
ginn must have raised these huge blocks of buildings which house the
unbelievers. Strange things to help them on their road to perdition
are exposed in the stores, and sheets of some invisible material which
his eye can penetrate, but which resists the touch of his finger, hang
before the accursed articles. Cars run along the streets with neither
an ass nor a camel to draw them. Sparks which fly from beneath the
wheels and overhead, accompanied by a crackling sound, must be sure
evidence of the _afrit_ who drives them. Naserene women talk in a
strange language to men, and shamelessly expose their faces to all.
He passes a large modern café, and sees coreligionists unturbaned and
dressed as the Frank, partaking of forbidden drinks and disregarding
the call of the mueddin, which alone brings a ray of hope to the poor
sheykh. He hastens to the mosques--it is some way off, for mosques are
few and far between in this godless part--he makes his prostrations,
and he prays to Allah that the _Muslemeen_ may come by their own again.
After he has rested in the native quarters, and he meditates on his
well-watered fields, he may wish that some of his prayers be not too
literally answered. He may still remember the time when excessive
taxation robbed his people of the fruits of their labour, and scars may
yet remain on his back of the _Kurbág_ which drove him to the forced
labour.
I have much in sympathy with the old sheykh, though we may see things
from opposite points of view. Were the old town not being slowly robbed
of its beauty and oriental character, I might feel indifferent as to
what was being done in the new, for my object in spending so many
seasons in Egypt has never been to paint the modern city, which at
its best could never equal that which I could find nearer home. The
inconsistency of the old man’s prayer, and the contemplations of his
better watered fields, finds a parallel in my regrets that the old
order gives place to the new; while I am certainly not indifferent to
the creature comforts which a Europeanised hotel allows me to enjoy.
The discomforts I have endured in native inns in the unfrequented
places may not have left permanent scars; but they would recall some
very unpleasant experiences had not the interest of what I was in
search of given them a back seat in my memory. Apart from this selfish
point of view, it is a joy to know that the thousands who dwell in the
old city can now drink an unpolluted water, that their sick can have an
enlightened medical treatment, and that the education of their young is
at present adapted to a useful citizenship.
[Illustration: THE TOMB OF SHEYKH ABD-EL-DEYM]
Our countrymen who are guiding the destinies of Egypt, and who are
honestly working for the betterment of its people, are not primarily
responsible for the unsuitable planning of the modern Cairo. Ismael
Pasha’s boast, ‘L’Egypte fait partie de l’Europe,’ came after the
remodelling of Alexandria, and since the time when Clot Bey drew the
plans of a northern city to be built in a semi-tropical country.
From what I hear, this unfortunate example is being followed in
Khartúm, which is well inside the tropics. The wide sun-baked streets
may be pleasant to those who only visit it during the short winter; but
they who have to remain there during the long summer months may long
for the shady lanes which wind amongst the habitations of the ancient
parts of Cairo. The well-to-do in the mediæval city were not obliged
to migrate to Europe during the hottest season, as the clients of our
modiste feel now constrained to do.