All the Christendom of Upper Egypt is in a state of excitement, owing to
the arrival of the Patriarch of Cairo, who is now in Luxor. My
neighbour, Mikaeel, entertains him, and Omar has been busily decorating
his house and arranging the illumination of his garden, and to-day is
gone to cook the confectionery, he being looked upon as the person best
acquainted with the customs of the great. Last night the Patriarch sent
for me, and I went to kiss his hand, but I won't go again. It was a very
droll caricature of the thunders of the Vatican. Poor Mikaeel had
planned that I was to dine with the Patriarch, and had borrowed my silver
spoons, etc., etc., in that belief. But the representative of St. Mark
is furious against the American missionaries who have converted some
twenty Copts at Koos, and he could not bring himself to be decently civil
to a Protestant. I found a coarse-looking man seated on a raised divan
smoking his chibouk, on his right were some priests on a low divan; I
went up and kissed his hand and was about to sit by the priests, but he
roughly ordered a cawass to put a wooden chair _off the carpet_ to his
left, at a distance from him, and told me to sit there. I looked round
to see whether any of my neighbours were present, and I saw the
consternation in their faces so, not wishing to annoy them, I did as if I
did not perceive the affront, and sat down and talked for half an hour to
the priests, and then took leave. I was informed that the Catholics were
_naas mesakeen_ (poor inoffensive people), and that the Muslims at least
were of an old religion, but that the Protestants ate meat all the year
round, 'like dogs'--'or Muslims,' put in Omar, who stood behind my chair
and did not relish the mention of dogs and the 'English religion' in one
sentence. As I went the Patriarch called for dinner, it seems he had
told Mikaeel he would not eat with me. It is evidently 'a judgment' of a
most signal nature that I should be snubbed for the offences of
missionaries, but it has caused some ill blood; the Kadee and Sheykh
Yussuf and the rest, who all intended to do the civil to the Patriarch,
now won't go near him on account of his rudeness to me. He has come up
in a steamer, at the Pasha's expense, with a guard of cawasses, and, of
course, is loud in praise of the Government, though he failed in getting
the Moudir to send all the Protestants of Koos to the public works, or
the army.
From what he said before me about the Abyssinians, and still more, from
what he said to others about the English prisoners up there, I am
convinced that the place to put the screw on is the _Batrarchane_
(Patriarch's palace) at Cairo, and that the priests are at the bottom of
that affair. {350} He boasted immensely of the obedience and piety of
_El Habbesh_ (the Abyssinians).
_Saturday_.--Yesterday I heard a little whispered grumbling about the
money demanded by the 'Father.' One of my Copt neighbours was forced to
sell me his whole provision of cooking butter to pay his quota. This a
little damps the exultation caused by seeing him so honoured by the
Effendina. One man who had heard that he had called the American
missionaries 'beggars,' grumbled to me, 'Ah yes, beggars, beggars, they
didn't beg of me for money.' I really do think that there must be
something in this dread of the Protestant movement. Evidently the Pasha
is backing up the Patriarch who keeps his church well apart from all
other Christians, and well under the thumb of the Turks. It was pretty
to hear the priests talk so politely of Islam, and curse the Protestants
so bitterly. We were very nearly having a row about a woman, who
formerly turned Moslimeh to get rid of an old blind Copt husband who had
been forced upon her, and was permitted to recant, I suppose in order to
get rid of the Muslim husband in his turn. However he said, 'I don't
care, she is the mother of my two children, and whether she is Muslim or
Christian she is my wife, and I won't divorce her, but I'll send her to
church as much as she likes.' Thereupon the priests of course dropped
the wrangle, much to the relief of Sheykh Yussuf, in whose house she had
taken up her quarters after leaving the church, and who was afraid of
being drawn into a dispute.
My new little Darfour boy is very funny and very intelligent. I hope he
will turn out well, he seems well disposed, though rather lazy. Mabrook
quarrelled with a boy belonging to the quarter close to us about a bird,
and both boys ran away. The Arab boy is missing still I suppose, but
Mabrook was brought back by force, swelling with passion, and with his
clothes most scripturally 'rent.' He had regularly 'run amuck.' Sheykh
Yussuf lectured him on his insolence to the people of the quarter, and I
wound up by saying, 'Oh my son! whither dost thou wish to go? I cannot
let thee wander about like a beggar, with torn clothes and no money, that
the police may take thee and put thee in the army; but say where thou
desirest to go, and we will talk about it with discretion.' It was at
once borne in upon him that he did not want to go anywhere, and he said,
'I repent; I am but an ox, bring the courbash, beat me, and let me go to
finish cooking the Sitt's dinner.' I remitted the beating, with a threat
that if he bullied the neighbours again he would get it at the police,
and not from Omar's very inefficient arm. In half an hour he was as
merry as ever. It was a curious display of negro temper, and all about
nothing at all. As he stood before me, he looked quite grandly tragic;
and swore he only wanted to run outside and die; that was all.
I wish you could have heard (and understood) my _soirees, au clair de la
lune_, with Sheykh Yussuf and Sheykh Abdurrachman. How Abdurrachman and
I wrangled, and how Yussuf laughed, and egged us on. Abdurrachman was
wroth at my want of faith in physic generally, as well as in particular,
and said I talked like an infidel, for had not God said, 'I have made a
medicine for every disease?' I said, 'Yes, but He does not say that He
has told the doctors which it is; and meanwhile I say, _hekmet Allah_,
(God will cure) which can't be called an infidel sentiment.' Then we got
into alchemy, astrology, magic and the rest; and Yussuf vexed his friend
by telling gravely stories palpably absurd. Abdurrachman intimated that
he was laughing at _El-Ilm el-Muslimeen_ (the science of the Muslims),
but Yussuf said, 'What is the _Ilm el-Muslimeen_? God has revealed
religion through His prophets, and we can learn nothing new on that
point; but all other learning He has left to the intelligence of men, and
the Prophet Mohammed said, "All learning is from God, even the learning
of idolaters." Why then should we Muslims shut out the light, and want
to remain ever like children? The learning of the Franks is as lawful as
any other.' Abdurrachman was too sensible a man to be able to dispute
this, but it vexed him.
I am tired of telling all the _plackereien_ of our poor people, how three
hundred and ten men were dragged off on Easter Monday with their bread
and tools, how in four days they were all sent back from Keneh, because
there were no orders about them, and made to _pay their boat hire_. Then
in five days they were sent for again. Meanwhile the harvest was cut
green, and the wheat is lying out unthreshed to be devoured by birds and
rats, and the men's bread was wasted and spoiled with the hauling in and
out of boats. I am obliged to send camels twenty miles for charcoal,
because the Abab'deh won't bring it to market any more, the tax is too
heavy. Butter too we have to buy secretly, none comes into the market.
When I remember the lovely smiling landscape which I first beheld from my
windows, swarming with beasts and men, and look at the dreary waste now,
I feel the 'foot of the Turk' heavy indeed. Where there were fifty
donkeys there is but one; camels, horses, all are gone; not only the
horned cattle, even the dogs are more than decimated, and the hawks and
vultures seem to me fewer; mankind has no food to spare for hangers-on.
The donkeys are sold, the camels confiscated, and the dogs dead (the one
sole advantage). Meat is cheap, as everyone must sell to pay taxes and
no one has money to buy. I am implored to take sheep and poultry for
what I will give.