I have now been enjoying this most delightful way of life for ten days,
and am certainly much better. I begin to eat and sleep again, and cough
less. My crew are a great amusement to me. They are mostly men from
near the first Cataract above Assouan, sleek-skinned, gentle, patient,
merry black fellows. The little black Reis is the very picture of
good-nature and full of fun, 'chaffing' the girls as we pass the
villages, and always smiling. The steersman is of lighter complexion,
also very cheery, but decidedly pious. He prays five times a day and
utters ejaculations to the apostle Rusool continually. He hurt his ankle
on one leg and his instep on the other with a rusty nail, and they
festered. I dressed them with poultices, and then with lint and
strapping, with perfect success, to the great admiration of all hands,
and he announced how much better he felt, 'Alhamdulillah,
kieth-el-hairack khateer ya Sitti' (Praise be to God and thanks without
end O Lady), and everyone echoed, 'kieth-el-hairack khateer.' The most
important person is the 'weled'--boy--Achmet. The most merry, clever,
omnipresent little rascal, with an ugly little pug face, a shape like an
antique Cupid, liberally displayed, and a skin of dark brown velvet. His
voice, shrill and clear, is always heard foremost; he cooks for the crew,
he jumps overboard with the rope and gives advice on all occasions,
grinds the coffee with the end of a stick in a mortar, which he holds
between his feet, and uses the same large stick to walk proudly before
me, brandishing it if I go ashore for a minute, and ordering everybody
out of the way. 'Ya Achmet!' resounds all day whenever anybody wants
anything, and the 'weled' is always ready and able. My favourite is
Osman, a tall, long-limbed black who seems to have stepped out of a
hieroglyphical drawing, shirt, skull-cap and all. He has only those two
garments, and how anyone contrives to look so inconceivably 'neat and
respectable' (as Sally truly remarked) in that costume is a mystery. He
is always at work, always cheerful, but rather silent--in short, the able
seaman and steady, respectable 'hand' _par excellence_. Then we have El
Zankalonee from near Cairo, an old fellow of white complexion and a
valuable person, an inexhaustible teller of stories at night and always
_en train_, full of jokes and remarkable for a dry humour much relished
by the crew. I wish I understood the stories, which sound delightful,
all about Sultans and Efreets, with effective 'points,' at which all
hands exclaim 'Mashallah!' or 'Ah!' (as long as you can drawl it). The
jokes, perhaps, I may as well be ignorant of. There is a certain Shereef
who does nothing but laugh and work and be obliging; helps Omar with one
hand and Sally with the other, and looks like a great innocent black
child. The rest of the dozen are of various colours, sizes and ages,
some quite old, but all very quiet and well-behaved.
We have had either dead calm or contrary wind all the time and the men
have worked very hard at the tow-rope. On Friday I proclaimed a halt in
the afternoon at a village at prayer-time for the pious Muslims to go to
the mosque; this gave great satisfaction, though only five went, Reis,
steersman, Zankalonee and two old men. The up-river men never pray at
all, and Osman occupied himself by buying salt out of another boat and
stowing it away to take up to his family, as it is terribly dear high up
the river. At Benisouef we halted to buy meat and bread, it is _comme
qui dirait_ an assize town, there is one butcher who kills one sheep a
day. I walked about the streets escorted by Omar in front and two
sailors with huge staves behind, and created a sensation accordingly. It
is a dull little country town with a wretched palace of Said Pasha. On
Sunday we halted at Bibbeh, where I caught sight of a large Coptic church
and sallied forth to see whether they would let me in. The road lay past
the house of the headman of the village, and there 'in the gate' sat a
patriarch, surrounded by his servants and his cattle. Over the gateway
were crosses and queer constellations of dots, more like Mithraic symbols
than anything Christian, but Girgis was a Copt, though the chosen head of
the Muslim village. He rose as I came up, stepped out and salaamed, then
took my hand and said I must go into his house before I saw the church
and enter the hareem. His old mother, who looked a hundred, and his
pretty wife, were very friendly; but, as I had to leave Omar at the door,
our talk soon came to an end, and Girgis took me out into the divan,
without the sacred precincts of the hareem. Of course we had pipes and
coffee, and he pressed me to stay some days, to eat with him every day
and to accept all his house contained. I took the milk he offered, and
asked him to visit me in the boat, saying I must return before sunset
when it gets cold, as I was ill. The house was a curious specimen of a
wealthy man's house--I could not describe it if I tried, but I felt I was
acting a passage of the Old Testament. We went to the church, which
outside looked like nine beehives in a box. Inside, the nine domes
resting on square pillars were very handsome. Girgis was putting it into
thorough repair at his own expense, and it will cost a good deal, I
think, to repair and renew the fine old wood panelling of such minute and
intricate workmanship. The church is divided by three screens; one in
front of the eastern three domes is impervious and conceals the holy of
holies. He opened the horseshoe door for me to look in, but explained
that no Hareem might cross the threshold. All was in confusion owing to
the repairs which were actively going on without the slightest regard to
Sunday; but he took up a large bundle, kissed it, and showed it me. What
it contained I cannot guess, and I scrupled to inquire through a Muslim
interpreter. To the right of this sanctum is the tomb of a Muslim saint!
enclosed under the adjoining dome. Here we went in and Girgis kissed the
tomb on one side while Omar salaamed it on the other--a pleasant sight.
They were much more particular about our shoes than in the mosques. Omar
wanted to tie handkerchiefs over my boots like at Cairo, but the priest
objected and made me take them off and march about in the brick and
mortar rubbish in my stockings. I wished to hear the service, but it was
not till sunset, and, as far as I could make out, not different on Sunday
to other days. The Hareems are behind the screen furthest removed from
the holy screen, behind a third screen where also was the font, locked up
and shaped like a Muslim tomb in little. (Hareem is used here just like
the German _Frauenzimmer_, to mean a respectable woman. Girgis spoke of
me to Omar as 'Hareem.') The Copts have but one wife, but they shut her
up much closer than the Arabs. The children were sweetly pretty, so
unlike the Arab brats, and the men very good-looking. They did not seem
to acknowledge me at all as a _co-religionnaire_, and asked whether we of
the English religion did not marry our brothers and sisters.
The priest then asked me to drink coffee at his house close by, and there
I 'sat in the gate'--_i.e._, in a large sort of den raised 2 feet from
the ground and matted, to the left of the gate. A crowd of Copts
collected and squatted about, and we were joined by the mason who was
repairing the church, a fine, burly, rough-bearded old Mussulman, who
told how the Sheykh buried in the church of Bibbeh had appeared to him
three nights running at Cairo and ordered him to leave his work and go to
Bibbeh and mend his church, and how he came and offered to do so without
pay if the Copts would find the materials. He spoke with evident pride,
as one who had received a Divine command, and the Copts all confirmed the
story and everyone was highly gratified by the miracle. I asked Omar if
he thought it was all true, and he had no doubt of it. The mason he knew
to be a respectable man in full work, and Girgis added that he had tried
to get a man to come for years for the purpose without success. It is
not often that a dead saint contrives to be equally agreeable to
Christians and Mussulmans, and here was the staunch old 'true believer'
working away in the sanctuary which they would not allow an English
fellow-Christian to enter.
Whilst we sat hearing all these wonders, the sheep and cattle pushed in
between us, coming home at eve. The venerable old priest looked so like
Father Abraham, and the whole scene was _so_ pastoral and Biblical that I
felt quite as if my wish was fulfilled to live a little a few thousands
of years ago. They wanted me to stay many days, and then Girgis said I
must stop at Feshn where he had a fine house and garden, and he would go
on horseback and meet me there, and would give me a whole troop of
Fellaheen to pull the boat up quick. Omar's eyes twinkled with fun as he
translated this, and said he knew the Sitt would cry out, as she always
did about the Fellaheen, as if she were hurt herself. He told Girgis
that the English customs did not allow people to work without pay, which
evidently seemed very absurd to the whole party.
GEBEL SHEYK EMBARAK,
_Thursday_.
I stopped last night at Feshn, but finding this morning that my Coptic
friends were not expected till the afternoon, I would not spend the whole
day, and came on still against wind and stream. If I could speak Arabic
I should have enjoyed a few days with Girgis and his family immensely, to
learn their _Ansichten_ a little; but Omar's English is too imperfect to
get beyond elementary subjects. The thing that strikes me most is the
tolerant spirit that I see everywhere. They say 'Ah! it is your custom,'
and express no sort of condemnation, and Muslims and Christians appear
perfectly good friends, as my story of Bibbeh goes to prove. I have yet
to see the much-talked-of fanaticism, at present I have not met with a
symptom of it. There were thirteen Copt families at Bibbeh and a
considerable Muslim population, who had elected Girgis their headman and
kissed his hand very heartily as our procession moved through the
streets. Omar said he was a very good man and much liked.
The villages look like slight elevations in the mud banks cut into square
shapes. The best houses have neither paint, whitewash, plaster, bricks
nor windows, nor any visible roofs. They don't give one the notion of
human dwellings at all at first, but soon the eye gets used to the
absence of all that constitutes a house in Europe, the impression of
wretchedness wears off, and one sees how picturesque they are, with
palm-trees and tall pigeon-houses, and here and there the dome over a
saint's tomb. The men at work on the river-banks are exactly the same
colour as the Nile mud, with just the warmer hue of the blood circulating
beneath the skin. Prometheus has just formed them out of the universal
material at hand, and the sun breathed life into them. Poor
fellows--even the boatmen, ragged crew as they are--say 'Ah, Fellaheen!'
with a contemptuous pity when they see me watch the villagers at work.
The other day four huge barges passed us towed by a steamer and crammed
with hundreds of the poor souls torn from their homes to work at the
Isthmus of Suez, or some palace of the Pasha's, for a nominal piastre a
day, and find their own bread and water and cloak. One of my crew,
Andrasool, a black savage whose function is always to jump overboard
whenever the rope gets entangled or anything is wanted, recognised some
relations of his from a village close to Assouan. There was much
shouting and poor Andrasool looked very mournful all day. It may be his
turn next. Some of the crew disloyally remarked that they were sure the
men there wished they were working for a Sitti Ingleez, as Andrasool told
them he was. Think too what splendid pay it must be that the boat-owner
can give out of 25 pounds a month to twelve men, after taking his own
profits, the interest of money being enormous.
When I call my crew black, don't think of negroes. They are
elegantly-shaped Arabs and all gentlemen in manners, and the black is
transparent, with amber _reflets_ under it in the sunshine; a negro looks
_blue_ beside them. I have learned a great deal that is curious from
Omar's confidences, who tells me his family affairs and talks about the
women of his family, which he would not to a man. He refused to speak to
his brother, a very grand dragoman, who was with the Prince of Wales, and
who came up to us in the hotel at Cairo and addressed Omar, who turned
his back on him. I asked the reason, and Omar told me how his brother
had a wife, 'An old wife, been with him long time, very good wife.' She
had had three children--all dead. All at once the dragoman, who is much
older than Omar, declared he would divorce her and marry a young woman.
Omar said, 'No, don't do that; keep her in your house as head of your
home, and take one of your two black slave girls as your Hareem.' But
the other insisted, and married a young Turkish wife; whereupon Omar took
his poor old sister-in-law to live with him and his own young wife, and
cut his grand brother dead. See how characteristic!--the urging his
brother to take the young slave girl 'as his Hareem,' like a respectable
man--that would have been all right; but what he did was 'not good.'
I'll trouble you (as Mrs. Grote used to say) to settle these questions to
everyone's satisfaction. I own Omar seemed to me to take a view against
which I had nothing to say. His account of his other brother, a
confectioner's household with two wives, was very curious. He and they,
with his wife and sister-in-law, all live together, and one of the
brother's wives has six children--three sleep with their own mother and
three with their _other_ mother--and all is quite harmonious.
SIOUT,
_December_ 10.
I could not send a letter from Minieh, where we stopped, and I visited a
sugar manufactory and a gentlemanly Turk, who superintended the district,
the Moudir. I heard a boy singing a _Zikr_ (the ninety-nine attributes
of God) to a set of dervishes in a mosque, and I think I never heard
anything more beautiful and affecting. Ordinary Arab singing is harsh
and nasal, but it can be wonderfully moving. Since we left Minieh we
have suffered dreadfully from the cold; the chickens died of it, and the
Arabs look blue and pinched. Of course it is _my weather_ and there
never was such cold and such incessant contrary winds known. To-day was
better, and Wassef, a Copt here, lent me his superb donkey to go up to
the tomb in the mountain. The tomb is a mere cavern, so defaced, but the
view of beautiful Siout standing in the midst of a loop of the Nile was
ravishing. A green deeper and brighter than England, graceful minarets
in crowds, a picturesque bridge, gardens, palm-trees, then the river
beyond it, the barren yellow cliffs as a frame all around that. At our
feet a woman was being carried to the grave, and the boys' voices rang
out the Koran full and clear as the long procession--first white turbans
and then black veils and robes--wound along. It is all a dream to me.
You can't think what an odd effect it is to take up an English book and
read it and then look up and hear the men cry, 'Yah Mohammad.' 'Bless
thee, Bottom, how art thou translated;' it is the reverse of all one's
former life when one sat in England and read of the East. '_Und nun sitz
ich mitten drein_' in the real, true Arabian Nights, and don't know
whether 'I be I as I suppose I be' or not.
Tell Alick the news, for I have not written to any but you. I do so long
for my Rainie. The little Copt girls are like her, only pale; but they
don't let you admire them for fear of the evil-eye.