I write to you out of the real Arabian Nights. Well may the Prophet
(whose name be exalted) smile when he looks on Cairo. It is a golden
existence, all sunshine and poetry, and, _I_ must add, kindness and
civility. I came up last Thursday by railway with the American
Consul-General, a charming person, and had to stay at this horrid
Shepheard's Hotel. But I do little but sleep here. Hekekian Bey, a
learned old Armenian, takes care of me every day, and the Amerian
Vice-Consul is my sacrifice. I went on Sunday to his child's
christening, and heard Sakna, the 'Restorer of Hearts.' She is
wonderfully like Rachel, and her singing is _hinreisend_ from expression
and passion. Mr. Wilkinson (the Consul) is a Levantine, and his wife
Armenian, so they had a grand fantasia; people feasted all over the house
and in the street. Arab music _schmetterte_, women yelled the
_zaghareet_, black servants served sweetmeats, pipes, and coffee, and
behaved as if they belonged to the company, and I was strongly under the
impression that I was at Nurreddin's wedding with the Vizier's daughter.
Yesterday I went to Heliopolis with Hekekian Bey and his wife, and
visited an Armenian country lady close by.
My servant Omar turns out a jewel. He has _deterre_ an excellent boat
for the Nile voyage, and I am to be mistress of a captain, a mate, eight
men and a cabin boy for 25 pounds a month. I went to Boulak, the port of
Cairo, and saw various boats, and admired the way in which the English
travellers pay for their insolence and caprices. Similar boats cost
people with dragomans 50 to 65 pounds. But, then, 'I shall lick the
fellows,' etc., is what I hear all round. The dragoman, I conclude,
pockets the difference. The owner of the boat, Sid Achmet el-Berberi,
asked 30 pounds, whereupon I touched my breast, mouth and eyes, and
stated through Omar that I was not, like other Ingeleez, made of money,
but would give 20 pounds. He then showed another boat at 20 pounds, very
much worse, and I departed (with fresh civilities) and looked at others,
and saw two more for 20 pounds; but neither was clean, and neither had a
little boat for landing. Meanwhile Sid Achmet came after me and
explained that, if I was not like other Ingeleez in money, I likewise
differed in politeness, and had refrained from abuse, etc., etc., and I
should have the boat for 25 pounds. It was so very excellent in all
fittings, and so much larger, that I thought it would make a great
difference in health, so I said if he would go before the American
Vice-Consul (who is looked on as a sharp hand) and would promise all he
said to me before him, it should be well.
Mr. Thayer, the American Consul-General, gives me letters to every
consular agent depending on him; and two Coptic merchants whom I met at
the fantasia have already begged me to 'honour their houses.' I rather
think the poor agents, who are all Armenians and Copts, will think I am
the republic in person. The weather has been all this time like a
splendid English August, and I hope I shall get rid of my cough in time,
but it has been very bad. There is no cold at night here as at the Cape,
but it is nothing like so clear and bright.
Omar took Sally sightseeing all day while I was away, into several
mosques; in one he begged her to wait a minute while he said a prayer.
They compare notes about their respective countries and are great
friends; but he is put out at my not having provided her with a husband
long ago, as is one's duty towards a 'female servant,' which almost
always here means a slave.
Of all the falsehoods I have heard about the East, that about women being
old hags at thirty is the biggest. Among the poor fellah women it may be
true enough, but not nearly as much as in Germany; and I have now seen a
considerable number of Levantine ladies looking very handsome, or at
least comely, till fifty. Sakna, the Arab Grisi, is fifty-five--an ugly
face, I am told (she was veiled and one only saw the eyes and glimpses of
her mouth when she drank water), but the figure of a leopard, all grace
and beauty, and a splendid voice of its kind, harsh but thrilling like
Malibran's. I guessed her about thirty, or perhaps thirty-five. When
she improvised, the finesse and grace of her whole _Wesen_ were
ravishing. I was on the point of shouting out 'Wallah!' as heartily as
the natives. The eight younger Halmeh (_i.e._, learned women, which the
English call Almeh and think is an improper word) were ugly and
screeched. Sakna was treated with great consideration and quite as a
friend by the Armenian ladies with whom she talked between her songs.
She is a Muslimeh and very rich and charitable; she gets 50 pounds for a
night's singing at least.
It would be very easy to learn colloquial Arabic, as they all speak with
such perfect distinctness that one can follow the sentences and catch the
words one knows as they are repeated. I think I know forty or fifty
words already, besides my 'salaam aleikum' and 'backsheesh.'
The reverse of the brilliant side of the medal is sad enough: deserted
palaces, and crowded hovels scarce good enough for pigstyes. 'One day
man see his dinner, and one other day none at all,' as Omar observes; and
the children are shocking from bad food, dirt and overwork, but the
little pot-bellied, blear-eyed wretches grow up into noble young men and
women under all their difficulties. The faces are all sad and rather
what the Scotch call 'dour,' not _mechant_ at all, but harsh, like their
voices. All the melody is in walk and gesture; they are as graceful as
cats, and the women have exactly the 'breasts like pomegranates' of their
poetry. A tall Bedaween woman came up to us in the field yesterday to
shake hands and look at us. She wore a white sackcloth shift and veil,
_und weiter nichts_, and asked Mrs. Hekekian a good many questions about
me, looked at my face and hands, but took no notice of my rather smart
gown which the village women admired so much, shook hands again with the
air of a princess, wished me health and happiness, and strode off across
the graveyard like a stately ghost. She was on a journey all alone, and
somehow it looked very solemn and affecting to see her walking away
towards the desert in the setting sun like Hagar. All is so Scriptural
in the country here. Sally called out in the railroad, 'There is Boaz,
sitting in the cornfield'; and so it was, and there he has sat for how
many thousand years,--and Sakna sang just like Miriam in one war-song.
_Wednesday_.--My contract was drawn up and signed by the American
Vice-Consul to-day, and my Reis kissed my hand in due form, after which I
went to the bazaar to buy the needful pots and pans. The transaction
lasted an hour. The copper is so much per oka, the workmanship so much;
every article is weighed by a sworn weigher and a ticket sent with it.
More Arabian Nights. The shopkeeper compares notes with me about
numerals, and is as much amused as I. He treats me to coffee and a pipe
from a neighbouring shop while Omar eloquently depreciates the goods and
offers half the value. A water-seller offers a brass cup of water; I
drink, and give the huge sum of twopence, and he distributes the contents
of his skin to the crowd (there always is a crowd) in my honour. It
seems I have done a pious action. Finally a boy is called to carry the
_batterie de cuisine_, while Omar brandishes a gigantic kettle which he
has picked up a little bruised for four shillings. The boy has a donkey
which I mount astride _a l'Arabe_, while the boy carries all the copper
things on his head. We are rather a grand procession, and quite enjoy
the fury of the dragomans and other leeches who hang on the English at
such independent proceedings, and Omar gets reviled for spoiling the
trade by being cook, dragoman, and all in one.
I went this morning with Hekekian Bey to the two earliest mosques. The
Touloun is exquisite--noble, simple, and what ornament there is is the
most delicate lacework and embossing in stone and wood. This Arab
architecture is even more lovely than our Gothic. The Touloun is now a
vast poorhouse, a nest of paupers. I went into three of their lodgings.
Several Turkish families were in a large square room neatly divided into
little partitions with old mats hung on ropes. In each were as many bits
of carpet, mat and patchwork as the poor owner could collect, and a small
chest and a little brick cooking-place in one corner of the room with
three earthern pipkins for I don't know how many people;--that was
all--they possess no sort of furniture, but all was scrupulously clean
and no bad smell whatever. A little boy seized my hand and showed where
he slept, ate and cooked with the most expressive pantomime. As there
were women, Hekekian could not come in, but when I came out an old man
told us they received three loaves (cakes as big as a sailor's biscuit),
four piastres a month--_i.e._, eightpence per adult--a suit of clothes a
year, and on festive occasions lentil soup. Such is the almshouse here.
A little crowd belonging to the house had collected, and I gave sixpence
to an old man, who transferred it to the first old man to be _divided_
among them all, ten or twelve people at least, mostly blind or lame. The
poverty wrings my heart. We took leave with salaams and politeness like
the best society, and then turned into an Arab hut stuck against the
lovely arches. I stooped low under the door, and several women crowded
in. This was still poorer, for there were no mats or rags of carpet, a
still worse cooking-place, a sort of dog-kennel piled up of loose stones
to sleep in, which contained a small chest and the print of human forms
on the stone floor. It was, however, quite free from dust, and perfectly
sweet. I gave the young woman who had led me in sixpence, and here the
difference between Turk and Arab appeared. The division of this created
a perfect storm of noise, and we left the five or six Arab women
out-shrieking a whole rookery. I ought to say that no one begged at all.
_Friday_.--I went to-day on a donkey to a mosque in the bazaar, of what
we call Arabesque style, like the Alhambra, very handsome. The Kibleh
was very beautiful, and as I was admiring it Omar pulled a lemon out of
his breast and smeared it on the porphyry pillar on one side of the arch,
and then entreated me to lick it. It cures all diseases. The old man
who showed the mosque pulled eagerly at my arm to make me perform this
absurd ceremony, and I thought I should have been forced to do it. The
base of the pillar was clogged with lemon-juice. I then went to the
tombs of the Khalifah; one of the great ones had such arches and such
wondrous cupolas but all in ruins. There are scores of these noble
buildings, any one of which is a treasure, falling to decay. The next,
strange to say, was in perfect repair. I got off the donkey, and Omar
fidgeted and hesitated a little and consulted with a woman who had the
key. As there were no overshoes I pulled my boots off, and was rewarded
by seeing the footprints of Mohammed on two black stones, and a lovely
little mosque, a sort of _Sainte Chapelle_. Omar prayed with ardent
fervour and went out backwards, saluting the Prophet aloud. To my
surprise the woman was highly pleased with sixpence, and did not ask for
more. When I remarked this, Omar said that no Frank had ever been inside
to his knowledge. A mosque-keeper of the sterner sex would not have let
me in. I returned home through endless streets and squares of Moslem
tombs, those of the Memlooks among them. It was very striking; and it
was getting so dark that I thought of Nurreddin Bey, and wondered if a
Jinn would take me anywhere if I took up my night's lodging in one of the
comfortable little cupola-covered buildings.
My Coptic friend has just called in to say that his brother expects me at
Kenneh. I find nothing but civility and a desire to please. My boat is
the _Zint el Bachreyn_, and I carry the English flag and a small American
distinguishing pennant as a signal to my consular agents. We sail next
Wednesday. Good-bye for the present, dearest Mutter.