I know I can write nothing more sure to please you than that I am a good
deal better. It has been intensely hot, and the wind very worrying, but
my cough has greatly abated and I do not feel so weak as I did. I am
anchored here in the river at my old quarters, and have not yet been
ashore owing to the hot wind and the dust, which of course are far less
troublesome here on the river. I have seen but very few people and have
but one neighbour, in a boat anchored near mine, a very bewitching
Circassian, the former slave of a rich Pasha, now married to a
respectable dragoman, and staying in his boat for a week or two. She is
young and pretty, and very amiable, and we visit each other often and get
on very well indeed. She is a very religious little lady, and was much
relieved when I assured her it was not part of my daily devotions to
curse the Prophet, and revile the noble Koran.
I am extremely glad that the English have given a hearty welcome to the
Ameer el-Moornemeen (Commander of the Faithful); it will have an
excellent effect in all Mussulman countries. A queer little Indian from
Delhi who had been converted to Islam, and spent four years at Mecca
acting as dragoman to his own countrymen, is now settled at Karnac. I
sent for him, and he carne shaking in his shoes. I asked why he was
afraid? 'Oh, perhaps I was angry about something, and he was my _rayah_,
and I might have him beaten.' I cried out at him, 'Ask pardon of God, O
man. How could I beat thee any more than thou couldst beat me? Have we
not laws? and art thou not my brother, and the _rayah_ of our Queen, as I
am and no more?' 'Mashallah!' exclaimed the six or eight fellaheen who
were waiting for physic, in prodigious admiration and wonder; 'and did we
not tell thee that the face of the Sitt brings good fortune and not
calamity and stick?' I found the little Indian had been a hospital
servant in Calcutta, and was practising a little physic on his own
account. So I gave him a few drugs especially for bad eyes, which he
knew a good deal about, and we became very good friends; he was miserable
when I left and would have liked me to have taken him as a volunteer
servant.
I have come to a curious honour. _Ich bin beim lebendigem Leibe
besungen_. Several parties of real Arabs came with their sick on camels
from the desert above Edfou. I asked at last what brought them, and they
told me that a _Shaer_ (bard or poet) had gone about singing my praises,
as how the daughter of the English was a flower on the heads of the
Arabs, and those who were sick should go and smell the perfume of the
flower and rejoice in the brightness of the light (_nooreen_)--my name.
Rather a highflown way of mentioning the 'exhibition' of a black dose.
But we don't feel that a man makes a fool of himself here when he is
romantic in his talk even about an old woman.
It is no use to talk of the state of things here; all classes are
suffering terribly under the fearful taxation, the total ruin of the
fellaheen, and the destruction of trade brought about by this much
extolled Pasha. My grocer is half ruined by the 'improvements' made a
_l'instar de Paris_--long military straight roads cut through the heart
of Cairo. The owners are expropriated, and there is an end of it. Only
those who have half a house left are to be pitied, because they are
forced to build a new front to the street on a Frankish model which
renders it uninhabitable to them and unsaleable.
The river men are excited about the crews gone to Paris, for fear they
should be forcibly detained by the _Sultaneh Franzaweeh_, I assured them
that they will all come home safe and happy, with a good backsheesh.
Many of them think it a sort of degradation to be taken for the Parisians
to stare at like an anteeka, a word which here means what our people call
a 'curiosity.'
I go on very well with my two boys. Mabrook washes very well and acts as
_marmiton_. Darfour is housemaid and waiter in his very tiny way. He is
only troublesome as being given to dirty his clothes in an incredibly
short time. His account of the school system of Darfour is curious. How
when the little boy has achieved excellence he is carried home in triumph
to his father's house, who makes a festival for the master and boys. I
suppose you will be surprised to hear that the Darfour 'niggers' can
nearly all read and write. Poor little Darfour apologised to me for his
ignorance, he was stolen he said, when he had only just begun to go to
school. I wish an English or French servant could hear the instructions
given by an Alim here to serving men. How he would resent them! 'When
thou hast tired out thy back do not put thy hand behind it (do not shirk
the burden). Remember that thou art not only to obey, but to please thy
master, whose bread thou eatest;' and much more of the like. In short, a
standard of religious obedience and fidelity fit for the highest Catholic
idea of the 'religious life.' Upon the few who seek instruction it does
have an effect (I am sure that Omar looks on his service as a religious
duty), but of course they are few; and those who don't seek it themselves
get none. It is curious how all children here are left utterly without
any religious instruction. I don't know whether it is in consequence of
this that they grow up so very devout.