The railway to Cairo runs first along a narrow strip of sand which
separates the Baheirehma'adieh, or Lake of Aboukir, from Lake Mareotis,
now filled with salt water. As you go towards Cairo, Lake Mareotis is on
your right and the Lake of Aboukir on your left. The former stretches
out like a sea between shores so low that they disappear, and thus make
it impossible to estimate the size of the lake, which melts away into
the sky on the horizon.
The sunlight fell perpendicularly upon its smooth waters, and made them
flash and sparkle until the eye was weary; in other places, the gray
waters lay stagnant amid the gray sands, or else were of the dead white
of tin. It would have been easy to believe one's self in the Holland
Polders, travelling along one of the sleepy inland seas. The heavens
were as colourless as Van der Velde's skies, and the travellers, who,
trusting to painters, had dreamed of a blaze of colour, gazed with
amazement upon the vast extent of absolutely flat, grayish toned land,
which in no wise recalled Egypt, at least such as one imagines it to be.
On the side opposite Lake Mareotis rose, in the midst of luxuriant
gardens, the country homes of the rich merchants of the city, of the
government officials and of the consuls, painted in bright colours,
sky-blue, rose or yellow, picked out with white, and here and there the
great sails of boats, bound to Foueh or to Rosetta through the
Mahmoudieh Canal, showed above the vegetation and seemed to be
travelling on dry land. This curious effect, which always causes
surprise, is often met with in the neighbourhood of Leyden, Dordrecht,
and Haarlem, and in swampy countries where the water lies level with the
ground, and sometimes even, kept in by dikes, is higher than the level
of the country by several yards.
Where the salt water ends, the aspect of the country changes, not
gradually, but suddenly; on the one hand absolute barrenness, on the
other exuberant vegetation; and wherever irrigation brings a drop of
water, plants spring up, and the sterile dust becomes fertile soil. The
contrast is most striking. We had passed Lake Mareotis, and on either
side of the railroad stretched fields of _doora_ or maize, of cotton
plants in various stages of growth, some opening their pretty yellow
flowers, others shedding the white silk from their pods. Gutters full of
muddy water rayed the black ground with lines that shone here and there
in the light. These were fed by broader canals connected with the Nile.
Small dikes of earth, easily opened with a blow of a pickaxe, dammed up
the waters until watering-time. The rough wheels of the sakiehs, turned
by buffaloes, oxen, camels, or asses, raised the water to higher levels.
Sometimes, even, two robust fellahs, perfectly naked, tawny and shining
like Florentine bronzes, standing on the edge of a canal and balancing
like a swing a basket of waterproof esparto suspended from two ropes of
which they held the ends, skimmed the surface of the water and dashed it
into the neighbouring field with amazing dexterity. Fellahs in short
blue tunics were ploughing, holding the handle of a primitive plough
drawn by a camel and a humpbacked Soudanese ox; others gathered cotton
and maize; others dug ditches; others again dragged branches of trees by
way of a harrow over the furrows which the inundation had scarce left.
Everywhere was seen an activity not much in accord with the traditional
Oriental idleness.
The first fellahin villages seen on the right and left of the road
impress one curiously. They are collections of huts of unbaked brick
cemented with mud, with flat roofs occasionally topped with a sort of
whitewashed turret for pigeons, the sloping walls of which faintly
recall the outline of a truncated Egyptian pylon. A door as low as that
of a tomb, and two or three holes pierced in the wall are the only
openings in these huts, which look more like the work of termites than
that of men. Often half the village--if such a name can be given to
these earthen huts--has been washed away by the rains or sapped by the
flood; but no great harm is done; with a few handfuls of mud the house
is soon rebuilt, and five or six days of sunshine suffice to make it
inhabitable.
This description, scrupulously exact, does not give a very attractive
idea of a fellahin village; but plant by the side of these cubes of gray
earth a clump of date palms, have a camel or two kneel down in front of
the doors, which look like the mouths of warrens, let a woman come out
from one of them draped in her long blue gown, holding a child by the
hand and bearing a jar of water on her head, light it all up with
sunlight, and you have a charming and characteristic picture.
The thing which strikes the most inattentive traveller as soon as he
steps into this Lower Egypt, where from time immemorial the Nile has
been accumulating its mud in thin layers, is the close intimacy of the
fellah and the earth. Autochthone is the name that best fits him; he
springs from the clay which he treads, he is made out of it, and scarce
has emerged from it. He manipulates it, presses it as a child presses
its nurse's breast, to draw from its brown bosom the milk of fertility.
He sinks waist-deep into its fertile mud, drains it, waters it, dries
it, according to its needs; cuts canals in it, builds up levees upon it,
draws from it the clay with which he constructs his family dwelling and
with which he will cement his tomb. Never was a respectful son more
careful of his old mother; he does not leave her as do those vagabond
children who forsake their natal roof in search of adventures. He
remains there, always attentive to the least want of his antique
ancestor, the black earth of Kame. If she thirsts, he gives her drink,
if she is troubled by too much humidity, he dries it; in order not to
wound her, he works her almost without tools, with his hands; his
plough merely scratches the telluric skin, which the inundation covers
each year with a new epidermis. As you watch him going and coming upon
that soaking ground, you feel that he is in his element. In his blue
garment, which resembles a pontiff's robe, he presides over the marriage
of earth and water, he unites the two principles which, warmed by the
sun, give birth to life. Nowhere is this harmony between man and the
soil so visible; nowhere does the earth play so important a part. It
imparts its colour to everything. The houses have the earth tint; the
bronze complexion of the fellahs recalls it; the trees covered with fine
dust, the waters laden with mud, conform to that fundamental harmony;
the animals themselves wear its livery; the dun-coloured camel, the gray
ass, the slate-blue buffalo, the ash-coloured pigeon, and the reddish
birds all fit in with the general tone.
Another thing which surprises one is the animation visible throughout
the country. On the levees along the canals and on those which traverse
the inundated portions, there moves a mob of passers-by and of
travellers. There is no road so frequented in France, even in the
neighbourhood of a populous city. Eastern people do not remain much in
their houses, and the smallest pretext is sufficient for them to set
forth, especially as they have not to think, as we have, of the weather;
the barometer is always at set fair, and rain is so uncommonly rare that
a man would be glad to get a soaking.
There is nothing more enjoyable, more varied and instructive than the
procession of people who are going about their business and who show in
succession in the opening of the carriage window, as in a frame in which
engravings or water-colours are constantly changing.
First, camels ambling along with a resigned and melancholy look,
swinging their long necks, curious animals whose awkward shapes recall
the attempts of a vanished creation. On the hump of the foremost is
perched the turbaned driver, as majestic as Eleazar, the servant of
Abraham, going to Mesopotamia to seek a wife for Isaac; he yields with
lazy suppleness to the rough, but regular motions of the animal;
sometimes smoking his chibouque as if he were seated at the door of a
cafe, or pressing the slow pace of his steed. Camels like to go in
single file; they are accustomed to it, and five or six are usually tied
together, sometimes even more; and thus the caravan travels along,
showing quaint against the flat lines of the horizon, and for want of
any object of comparison, apparently of vast size. On either side of the
line trot three or four swift-footed lads, armed with wands; for in the
East beasts of burden never lack hostlers and whippers-in. Some of the
camels are reddish, others sorrel, others brown, some even are white,
but dun is the most frequent colour. They carry stones, wood, grass
bound with esparto cords, bundles of sugar-cane, boxes, furniture,--in
fact, whatever in our country would be loaded on carts. Just now we
might have thought ourselves in Holland as we passed along those gray
stretches of submerged ground, but the illusion is soon dispelled; as
the camel swings along the canal bank, you feel that you are approaching
Cairo, and not Amsterdam.
Next come horsemen, bestriding thin, but spirited horses; droves of
small donkeys, their masters perched on their cruppers, almost on their
tails, their legs almost touching the ground, ready to be used in case
the tricky animal falls or jibs, or even indulges, as it often does, in
a roll in the dust of the road. In the East the ass is neither contemned
nor considered ridiculous as it is in France; it has preserved its
Homeric and biblical nobility, and every one bestrides it without
hesitation, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, women as well
as men.
Now along the canal comes a charming group: a young woman robed in a
long blue mantle, the folds of which fall chastely around her, is seated
upon an ass which a man, still vigorous but whose beard is already
streaked with gray and white hairs, leads carefully. In front of the
mother, who supports it with one hand, is a naked child, exquisitely
beautiful, happy and delighted at his trip. It is a picture of the
Flight into Egypt; the figures lack nothing but a fine golden halo
around their heads. The Virgin, the Child Jesus, and Saint Joseph must
have looked like that, and so must their flight have been in the living
and simple reality; their equipage was not much finer. What a pity that
some great painter, Perugino, Raphael, or Albert Duerer, does not happen
to be here.
Damanhur, which the railroad traverses, looks very much as must have
looked the ancient cities of Egypt, now buried under the sand or fallen
into dust. It is surrounded by sloping walls built of unbaked bricks or
of pise which preserves its earthy colour. The flat-roofed houses rise
one above another like a collection of cubes dotted with little black
holes. A few dovecotes, the cupolas of which are whitewashed, and one or
two minarets striped with red and white, alone impart to the antique
appearance of that city the modern aspect of Islamism. On the top of the
terraces women, squatting on mats or standing in their long robes of
brilliant colours, are looking at us, no doubt attracted by the passing
of the train. As they show against the sky, they are wondrously elegant
and graceful. They look like statues erected on the top of buildings or
the front of temples.
The moment the train stopped, it was invaded by a band of women and
children, offering fresh water, bitter oranges, and honey confections to
the travellers; and it was delightful to see these brown faces showing
at the carriage window their bright smile and their white teeth. I
should have liked to remain some time in Damanhur, but travel, like
life, is made up of sacrifices. How many delightful things one is
compelled to leave by the roadside, if one wishes to reach the end. A
man cannot see everything, and must be satisfied with seeing a few
things. So I had to leave Damanhur and to behold that dream from afar
without being able to traverse it. As far as I could see, even through
my glass, the land reached to the horizon line, intersected by canals,
broken by gutters, shimmering with pools of water, with scattered clumps
of sycamore trees and date palms, with long strips of cultivated ground,
water-wheels rising here and there, and enlivened by the incessant
coming and going of the labourers who followed, on the backs of camels,
horses, or asses, or on foot, the narrow road bordering the levees. At
intervals there arose, under the shade of a mimosa, the white cupola of
a tomb; sometimes a nude child stood motionless on the edge of the water
in the attitude of unconscious reverie, not even turning his head to see
the train fly along. This deep gravity in childhood is peculiar to the
East. What could that boy, standing on his lump of earth as a Stylites
on his pillar, be thinking of? From time to time flocks of pigeons, busy
feeding, flew off with a sudden whir as the train passed by, and
alighted farther away on the plain; aquatic birds swam swiftly through
the reeds that outstretched behind them, pretty wagtails hopped about,
wagging their tails, on the crest of the levees; and in the heavens at a
vast height, soared hawks, falcons, and gerfalcons, sweeping in great
circles. Buffaloes wallowed in the mud of the ditches, and flocks of
black sheep with hanging ears, very like goats, were hurrying along
driven by the shepherds. The antique simplicity of the costume of the
young herdsmen, with their short tunics, white or blue, faded by the
sun, their bare legs, their dusty, naked feet, their felt caps, their
crooks, recalled the patriarchal scenes of the Bible.
At the next station we stopped, and I got out to have a look at the
landscape. I had scarcely gone a few steps when a wondrous sight met my
astonished eyes: before me was the Nile, old Hapi, to give it its
ancient Egyptian name, the inexhaustible Father of Waters. Through one
of those involuntary plastic impressions which act upon the imagination,
the Nile called up to my mind the colossal marble god in one of the
lower halls of the Louvre, carelessly leaning on his elbow and, with
paternal kindliness, allowing himself to be climbed over by the little
children which represent cubits, and the various phases of the
inundation. Well, it was not under this mythological aspect that the
great river appeared to me for the first time. It was flowing in flood,
spreading out broadly like a torrent of reddish mud which scarcely
looked like water as it swelled and rushed by irresistibly. It looked
like a river of soil; scarcely did the reflection of the sky imprint
here and there upon the gloomy surface of its tumultuous waves a few
light touches of azure. It was still almost at the height of its rise,
but the flood had the tranquil power of a regular phenomenon, and not
the convulsive disorder of a scourge. The majesty of that vast sheet of
water laden with fertilising mud produces an almost religious
impression. How many vanished civilisations have been reflected for a
time in that ever-flowing wave! I remained absorbed as I gazed at it,
sunk in thought, and feeling that strange sinking of the heart which one
experiences after desire has been fulfilled, and reality has taken the
place of the dream. What I was looking at was indeed the Nile, the real
Nile, the river which I had so often endeavoured to discover by
intuition. A sort of stupor nailed me to the bank, and yet it was a very
natural thing that I should come across the Nile in Egypt in the very
centre of the Delta. But man is subject to such artless astonishment.
Dhahabiyehs and felukas spreading their great lateen sails were tacking
across the river, passing from one shore to the other, and recalling the
shape of the mystic baris of the times of the Pharaohs.
We set out again. The aspect of the country was still the same; fields
of cotton, maize, doora, stretched as far as the eye could reach. Here
and there glimmered the portions of the ground covered by the flood.
Slate-blue buffaloes wallowed in the pools and emerged covered with mud;
water birds stood along the edges, and sometimes flew off as the train
passed, watched by families of fellahs, squatting on the banks of the
ditches. Along the road travelled the endless procession of camels,
asses, oxen, black goats, and foot-passengers, which enlivened to such
an extent that peaceful, flat landscape. I had already noticed when in
Holland the additional importance given to figures by a flat country;
the lack of hills makes them stand out, and as they usually show against
the sky they loom larger. I seemed to see pass by the zones of painted
_bassi-relievi_ representing agricultural scenes which occasionally
formed part of the decoration of the halls of Egyptian tombs. Here and
there rose villages or farms, the lines of whose sloping, earth-gray
walls recalled the substructures of antique temples. Groups of sycamore
and mimosa trees, set off by clumps of date palms, brought out the soft
tones of the walls by the contrast of their rich verdure. Elsewhere I
caught sight of fellahin huts surmounted by whitewashed dovecotes,
placed side by side like beehives or the minarets of a mosque. We soon
reached Tantah, a somewhat important town, to which the fine mosque of
Seyd Ahmed Badouy attracts pilgrims twice a year, and the fairs of which
are frequented by the caravans.
Tantah, from the railway station,--for the train does not stop long
enough to allow travellers to visit the town,--has an animated and
picturesque aspect. Amid the houses in the Arab style with their
look-outs and their awnings, rise buildings in that Oriental-Italian
style dear to persons of progress and of modern ideas, painted in soft
colours, ochre, salmon, or sky-blue; flat-roofed clay huts; over all,
the minarets of the mosque, the white cupolas of a few tombs, and the
inevitable fig trees and palms rising above the low garden walls.
Between the town and the station stretches waste ground, a sort of
fair-ground, on which are camps, huts of reed or of date-palm branches,
tents formed of old rags of cloth and sometimes of the linen of an
unrolled turban. The inhabitants of these frail dwellings cook in the
open air. The coffee is made, a cup at a time, in a small brass kettle,
and on plates of tin are cooked the thin doora cakes. The fuel is
camel's-dung. The fellahs suck eagerly the sweetish juice of the
sugar-cane cut into short pieces, and the slices of watermelon show
within the green skin their ripe, rosy, flesh, spotted with black seeds.
Women, as graceful as statues, come and go, holding the end of their
veil between their teeth so as to conceal one half of the face, and
bearing on their heads Theban jars or copper vases; while the men,
squatting on the ground or on small carpets, their knees up to their
chins, forming an acute angle like the legs of locusts, in an attitude
which no European could assume, and recalling the judges of Amenti
ranged in rows one behind another on the papyri of funeral rituals,
preserve that dreamy immobility so dear to Orientals when they have
nothing to do; for to move about merely for exercise, as Christians do,
strikes them as utter folly.
Dromedaries, alone or grouped in circles, kneeling under their burdens,
stretch out their long legs on the sand, motionless in the burning sun.
Asses, some of which are daintily harnessed, with saddles of red morocco
rising in a boss on the withers, and with headstalls adorned with tufts,
and others with an old carpet for a saddle-cloth, were waiting for the
travellers who were to stop at Tantah to bear them from the station to
the town. The donkey drivers, clothed in short blue and white tunics,
bare-armed and bare-legged, their heads covered with a fez, a wand in
their hand, and resembling the slender figures of shepherds or youths
which are so exquisitely drawn on the bodies of Greek vases, stood near
their animals in an indolent attitude, which they abandoned as soon as a
chance customer came their way. Then they indulged in mad
gesticulations, guttural cries, and fought with each other until the
unfortunate tourist ran the risk of being torn to pieces or stripped of
the best part of his garments. Tawny, wandering dogs with jackal ears,
fallen indeed from their old position, and forgetting apparently that
they counted Anubis, the dog-headed _Anubis latrator_, among their
ancestors, passed in and out among the groups, but without taking the
least interest in what was going on.
The bonds which in Europe unite the dog to man do not exist in the East;
its social instinct has not been developed, its sympathies have not been
appealed to; it has no master, and lives in a savage state. No services
are asked of it, and it is not cared for; it has no home and dwells in
holes which it makes, unless it stays in some open tomb; no one feeds
it; it hunts for itself, gorging on dead bodies and unnamable debris.
There is a proverb which says that wolves do not eat each other; Eastern
dogs are less scrupulous; they readily devour their sick, wounded, or
dead companions. It seemed strange to me to see dogs which did not make
any advances to me, and did not seek to be caressed, but maintained a
proud and melancholy reserve.
Little girls in blue gowns and little negroes in white tunics came up to
the carriages, offering pastry, cakes, bitter oranges, lemons, and
apples,--yes, apples. Eastern people seem to be very fond of that acid
Northern fruit which, along with wretched, granulous pears, forms part
of every dessert, at which of course one never gets either pomegranates,
or bananas, or dates, or oranges, or purple figs, or any native fruits,
which are no doubt left to the common people.
The whistle of the engine sounded, and we were again carried away
through that very humid and very green Delta. However, as we advanced
there showed on the horizon lines of rosy land from which vegetable life
was wholly absent. The sand of the desert advances with its waves, as
sterile as those of the sea, eternally disturbed by the winds and
beating upon the islet of cultivated earth surrounded and stormed by
dusty foam, as upon a reef which it endeavours to cover up. In Egypt,
whatever lies above the level of the flood is smitten with death. There
is no transition; where stops Osiris, Typhon begins; here luxuriant
vegetation, there not a blade of grass, not a bit of moss, not a single
one of the adventurous plants which grow in solitary and lonely
places,--nothing but ground-up sandstone without any mixture of loam.
But if a drop of Nile water falls upon it, straightway the barren sand
is covered with verdure. These strips of pale salmon-colour form a
pleasant contrast with the rich tints of the great plain of verdure
spread out before us.
Soon we came upon another arm of the Nile, the Phatnitic branch, which
flows into the sea near Damietta. It is crossed by the railway, and on
the other side lie the ruins of ancient Athrebys, over which has been
built a fellahin village. The train sped along, and soon on the right,
above the line of green, turning almost black in the dazzling light,
showed in the azure distance the triangular silhouette of the pyramids
of Cheops and Chephren, appearing, from where I first beheld them, like
a single mountain with a piece taken out of the summit. The marvellous
clearness of the atmosphere made them appear nearer, and had I not been
aware of the real distance I should have found it difficult to estimate
it correctly. It is quite natural to catch sight of the pyramids as one
approaches Cairo; it is to be expected and it is expected, yet the sight
causes extraordinary emotion and surprise. It is impossible to describe
the effect produced by that vaporous outline so faint that it almost
melts into the colour of the sky, and that, if one had not been
forewarned, it might escape notice. Neither years nor barbarians have
been able to overthrow these artificial mountains, the most gigantic
monuments, except, perhaps, the Tower of Babel, ever raised by man. For
five thousand years they have been standing there,--almost as old as the
world, according to the biblical account. Even our own civilisation,
with its powerful methods of destruction, could scarcely manage to tear
them down. The pyramids have seen ages and dynasties flow by like
billows of sand, and the colossal Sphinx with its noseless face ever
smiles at their feet with its ironical and mysterious smile. Even after
they were opened they kept their secret, and yielded up but the bones of
oxen by the side of an empty sarcophagus. Eyes that have been closed so
long that Europe, perchance, had not emerged from the flood when those
eyes beheld the light, gazed upon them from where I am; they are
contemporaneous with vanished empires, with strange races of men since
swept from the surface of the earth; they have beheld civilisations that
we know nothing of; heard spoken the tongues which men seek to make out
in hieroglyphics, known manners which would appear to us as strange as a
dream. They have been there so long that the stars have changed their
places, and they belong to a past so prodigiously fabulous that behind
them the dawn of the world seems to shine.
While these thoughts flashed through my mind we were rapidly approaching
Cairo,--Cairo, of which I had talked so often with poor Gerard de
Nerval, with Gustave Flaubert, and Maxime Du Camp, whose tales had
excited my curiosity to the highest pitch. In the case of cities which
one has desired to see from childhood, and which one has long inhabited
in dreams, one is apt to conceive a fantastic notion which it is very
difficult to efface, even in presence of reality. The sight of an
engraving, of a picture, often forms a starting-point. My Cairo, built
out of the materials of the "Thousand and One Nights," centred around
the Ezbekiyeh Place, the strange painting of which Marilhat had sent
from Egypt to one of the first exhibitions which followed the Revolution
of July. Unless I am mistaken, it was his first picture, and whatever
the perfection which he afterwards attained, I do not believe that he
ever painted a work fuller of life, more individual, and more striking.
It made a deep and curious impression upon me; I went time and again to
see it; I could not take my eyes off it, and it exercised upon me a sort
of nostalgic fascination. It was from that painting that my dreams
started upon fantastic trips through the narrow streets of ancient Cairo
once traversed by Caliph Haroun al Raschid and his faithful vizier
Jaffier, under the disguise of slaves or common people. My admiration
for the painting was so well known that Marilhat's family gave me, after
the death of the famous artist, the pencil sketch of the subject made on
the spot, and which he had used as a study for the finished work.
And now we had arrived. A great mob of carriages, asses, donkey drivers,
porters, guides, dragomans, rioted in front of the railway station,
which is at Boulah, a short distance from old Cairo. When we had
recovered our luggage, and I had been installed with my friend in a
handsome open carriage preceded by a _sais_, it was with secret delight
that I heard the Egyptian providence which watched over us in its
_Nizam_ uniform and its magenta fez, call out to the coachman, "Hotel
Shepheard, Ezbekiyeh Place." I was going to lodge in my dream.