_To Mrs. Austin_.
LUXOR,
_January_ 9, 1865.
I gave Sheykh Yussuf your knife to cut his _kalem_ (reed pen) with, and
to his little girl the coral waistband clasp you gave me _as from you_.
He was much pleased. I also brought the Shereef the psalms in Arabic to
his great delight. The old man called on all 'our family' to say a
_fathah_ for their sister, after making us all laugh by shouting out
'_Alhamdulillah_! here is our darling safe back again.'
I wish you could have seen me in the crowd at Keneh holding on to the
Kadee's _farageeyeh_ (a loose robe worn by the Ulema). He is the real
original Kadee of the Thousand and One Nights. Did ever Kadee tow an
Englishwoman round a Sheykh's tomb before? but I thought his
determination to show the people that he considered a Christian not out
of place in a Muslim holy place very edifying.
I find an exceedingly pleasant man here, an Abab'deh, a very great Sheykh
from beyond Khartoum, a man of fifty I suppose, with manners like an
English nobleman, simple and polite and very intelligent. He wants to
take me to Khartoum for two months up and back, having a tent and a
_takhterawan_ (camel-litter) and to show me the Bishareen in the desert.
We traced the route on my map which to my surprise he understood, and I
found he had travelled into Zanzibar and knew of the existence of the
Cape of Good Hope and the English colony there. He had also travelled in
the Dinka and Shurook country where the men are seven feet and over high
(Alexander saw a Dinka girl at Cairo three inches taller than himself!).
He knows Madlle. Tine and says she is 'on everyone's head and in their
eyes' where she has been. You may fancy that I find Sheykh Alee very
good company.
To-day the sand in front of the house is thronged with all the poor
people with their camels, of which the Government has made a new levy of
eight camels to every thousand feddans. The poor beasts are sent off to
transport troops in the Soudan, and not being used to the desert, they
all die--at all events their owners never see one of them again. The
discontent is growing stronger every day. Last week the people were
cursing the Pasha in the streets of Assouan, and every one talks aloud of
what they think.
_January_ 11.--The whole place is in desolation, the men are being
beaten, one because his camel is not good enough, another because its
saddle is old and shabby, and the rest because they have not money enough
to pay two months' food and the wages of one man, to every four camels,
to be paid for the use of the Government beforehand. The _courbash_ has
been going on my neighbours' backs and feet all the morning. It is a new
sensation too when a friend turns up his sleeve and shows the marks of
the wooden handcuffs and the gall of the chain on his throat. The system
of wholesale extortion and spoliation has reached a point beyond which it
would be difficult to go. The story of Naboth's vineyard is repeated
daily on the largest scale. I grieve for Abdallah-el-Habbashee and men
of high position like him, sent to die by disease (or murder), in
Fazoghou, but I grieve still more over the daily anguish of the poor
fellaheen, who are forced to take the bread from the mouths of their
starving families and to eat it while toiling for the private profit of
one man. Egypt is one vast 'plantation' where the master works his
slaves without even feeding them. From my window now I see the men
limping about among the poor camels that are waiting for the Pasha's
boats to take them, and the great heaps of maize which they are forced to
bring for their food. I can tell you the tears such a sight brings to
one's eyes are hot and bitter. These are no sentimental grievances;
hunger, and pain, and labour without hope and without reward, and the
constant bitterness of impotent resentment. To you all this must sound
remote and almost fabulous. But try to imagine Farmer Smith's team
driven off by the police and himself beaten till he delivered his hay,
his oats and his farm-servant for the use of the Lord Lieutenant, and his
two sons dragged in chains to work at railway embankments--and you will
have some idea of my state of mind to-day. I fancy from the number of
troops going up to Assouan that there is another rising among the blacks.
Some of the black regiments revolted up in the Soudan last summer, and
now I hear Shaheen Pasha is to be here in a day or two on his way up, and
the camels are being sent off by hundreds from all the villages every
day. But I am weary of telling, and you will sicken of hearing my
constant lamentations.
Sheykh Hassan dropped in and dined with me yesterday and described his
mother and her high-handed rule over him. It seems he had a 'jeunesse
orageuse' and she defended him against his father's displeasure, but when
the old Sheykh died she informed her son that if he ever again behaved in
a manner unworthy of a Sheykh-el-Arab she would not live to see it. 'Now
if my mother told me to jump into the river and drown I should say
_hader_ (ready), for I fear her exceedingly and love her above all people
in the world, and have left everything in her hand.' He was good enough
to tell me that I was the only woman he knew like his mother and that was
why he loved me so much. I am to visit this Arab Deborah at the Abab'deh
village two days ride from the first Cataract. She will come and meet me
at the boat. Hassan was splendid when he said how he feared his mother
exceedingly.
To my amazement to-day in walked the tremendous Alim from Tunis, Sheykh
Abd-el-Moutovil, who used to look so black at me. He was very civil and
pleasant and asked no end of questions about steam engines, and
telegraphs and chemistry; especially whether it was true that the
Europeans still fancied they could make gold. I said that no one had
believed that for nearly two hundred years, and he said that the Arabs
also knew it was 'a lie,' and he wondered to hear that Europeans, who
were so clever, believed it. He had just been across the Nile to see the
tombs of the Kings and of course 'improved the occasion' and uttered a
number of the usual fine sayings about the vanity of human things. He
told me I was the only Frank he had ever spoken to. I observed he did
not say a word about religion, or use the usual pious phrases. By the
bye, Sheykh Yussuf filled up my inkstand for me the other evening and in
pouring the ink said 'Bismillah el-Rachman el-Racheem' (In the name of
God, the merciful, the compassionate). I said 'I like that custom, it is
good to remind us that ink may be a cruel poison or a good medicine.'
I am better, and have hardly any cough. The people here think it is
owing to the intercession of Abu-l-Hajjaj who specially protects me. I
was obliged to be wrapped in the green silk cover of his tomb when it was
taken off to be carried in procession, partly for my health and general
welfare, and as a sort of adoption into the family. I made a feeble
resistance on the score of being a Nazraneeyeh but was told 'Never fear,
does not God know thee and the Sheykh also? no evil will come to thee on
that account but good.' And I rather think that general goodwill and
kindness is wholesome.