THE FELLAH.
It is always difficult to realise the state of mind of another person,
even of one who is perhaps an equal in education, and who has been
reared amid the same ideas and surroundings as one’s own; but it is
impossible to really take the same standpoint as one of another race,
another education, and another standard of duty and of morals. We
cannot, therefore, see the world as a fellah sees it; and I believe this
the more readily because after living the most part of ten years among
the fellahin, and being accused of having gone some way toward them, I
yet feel the gulf between their nature and my own as impassable as ever.
One measuring-line may perhaps give some slight idea of their position.
The resemblances between Egypt of the present and mediaeval England are
enough to help our feelings in the matter. There is the same prevalence
of the power of the great man of the village; the same rough-and-ready
justice administered by him; the same lack of intercommunication, the
same suspicion of strangers; the absence of roads, and use of pack
animals, is alike; the lack of shops in all but large towns, and the
great importance of the weekly markets in each village, is similar
again; and the mental state of the people seems to be somewhat akin to
that of our ancestors.
[Illustration: 113. HOUSES IN THE DELTA, WITH RAIN-PROOF DOMES.]
The man who can read and write is the rare exception in the country;
perhaps two per cent. of the fellahin men can do so, but probably not
one woman in ten thousand. Of education there is but very little, for
the great majority of the people; in villages the children of the fellah
seldom go to school, and in large towns the scholars are but a minority
of the boys, while the girls are nowhere. In accounts they have some
sharpness, but their reckoning would amuse an infant scholar in England.
I overheard some quick lads, of about sixteen, anxiously discussing what
a man’s wages were at £3 a month: they pretty soon saw that it was £1,
or 100 piastres, every ten days, but how many piastres a day that was
puzzled them all. One fellow proposed eleven; he was contradicted by
another who said twelve; then another tried 9½; and at last, as a great
discovery, one sagely reminded them all that ten tens made a hundred,
and so a hundred piastres in ten days _must_ be ten piastres a day.
Egypt would almost satisfy Jack Cade.
The gross superstition, and the innumerable local saints, remind us
again of mediaeval times. Many--perhaps most--of the people wear charms,
written on paper, and sewn up in leather; they are worn around the neck,
on the purse or pouch, or on the top of the cap. Cattle are also
sometimes protected by them. It is common also for a man passing a
saint’s tomb to repeat a prayer in a low mumble, even without stopping;
while many go into the tomb-chamber to pray. These saints are anybody
who has died in an odour of sanctity, probably within this century or
the last--for few, I imagine, have a perennial reputation. Some of the
great saints are commonly appealed to in the slightest emergency, such
as lifting a weight or climbing an obstacle; and constant appeals are
made to _Ya Said, ya Bedawi, ya Tantawi_ (‘O Said, O Bedawi, O man of
Tantah’) or _Ya sitteh Zenab_ (‘O lady Zenab,’ the wife of the prophet);
while a Copt, if his legs are stiff in rising from the ground, will call
out, _Ya adrah Mariam_ (‘O virgin Mary’). The most absurd tales are
readily believed, and there is little or no discrimination or criticism
applied to them. At one village there lies a large number of rough
stones half hidden in the ground, scattered over an acre or so; probably
old remnants of building material, brought a century or two ago from the
hills. A great festival of a local saint is held at the village yearly,
and an intelligent fellow gravely told me that the saint had been
murdered there with all his followers, of whom a thousand were buried
under each of the stones. The total number, or the question of burying a
thousand men in a few square yards, did not seem to matter. I have also
heard the old tale of the man who stole a sheep and ate it: when
questioned, he denied the theft, whereat the sheep bleated in his
stomach. A station-master, who had been educated in England, told me in
English, in all sincerity, a tale about a Copt he knew, who got great
treasures from a hall full of gold in an ancient mound. The door of the
place only opened for five minutes once a week, on Friday noon, just
when all true believers are at mosque; then the Copt went and took all
the gold he could carry, before the door shut. One day, tarrying, the
door began to shut and wounded his heel before he could escape.
[Illustration: 114. HOUSES IN MIDDLE EGYPT.]
While naming the local festivals above, it may be noted that they
generally take place around a tall pole fixed in some open space by the
village. Some poles are stout masts thirty or forty feet high: around
this central point is the celebration of the _molid_ or birthdays of the
village saint. Some _molids_ are fairs for the whole district, lasting
nine days or even more, and attended by performers, shows, jugglers,
sweet-sellers, and as much riff-raff as any English fair.
Many visitors to Egypt see the dancing and howling derwishes, but few
know of the common and less obtrusive orgies of the same kind in the
villages. They are connected strictly with a devotional sentiment: a man
who has just joined in such excitement will tell you that it is ‘good to
see Allah’ in that way--much like the fervid and maddening religious
intoxication which yet finds a place in English civilization. These
derwish parties are formed from a few men and boys--perhaps a dozen or
twenty--who happen to live as neighbours: they are almost always held in
moonlight, generally near full moon, a point which may connect them with
some pre-Islamite moon-worship; and though often without any cause but
idleness, yet I have noticed them being held after a death in a village
where they do not occur otherwise. A professed derwish often leads the
party, but that is not essential. The people all stand in a circle, and
begin repeating _Al-láh_ with a very strong accent on the latter
syllable; bowing down the head and body at the former, and raising it at
the latter. This is done all in unison, and slowly at first; gradually
the rate quickens, the accent is stronger, and becomes more of an
explosive howl, sounding afar off like an engine; the excitement is
wilder, and hideously wild, until a horrid creeping comes over you as
you listen, and you feel that in such a state there is no answering for
what may be done. Incipient madness of the intoxication of excitement
seems poured out upon them all, when at last they break down from
exhaustion; or perhaps one or other, completely mad for the time, rushes
off into the desert, and is followed, for fear he may injure himself.
After a pause, some other phrase is started, and the same round is gone
through. After about half an hour of this they separate with a great
sense of devotional virtue, and wearied with excitement.
[Illustration: 115. HOUSES IN UPPER EGYPT.]
Some curious observances are connected with accidental deaths. Fires of
straw are lighted one month after the death, around the ground where the
body has lain; and where blood has been shed iron nails are driven into
the ground, and a mixture of lentils, salt, &c., is poured out. These
look like offerings to appease spirits, and the fires seem as if to
drive away evil influences. Funeral offerings are still placed in the
tombs for the sustenance of the dead, just as they were thousands of
years ago.
The very hazy notions about all foreign places, and the blankness of
ignorance concerning surrounding Nature, is a strong reminder of
mediaeval times. To say that the earth is round is flat heresy in
Egypt; and even the _ulema_ of Cairo--learned in all the wisdom of
Islam--walked out of the government examination room to which they had
been invited when a pupil was examined in geography. To listen to a
description of a round world was too atrocious an insult to them. The
dim ideas of Europe--some far-off heathenish land of infidels--and the
questions as to how many Muslims there are in our towns and villages,
show the peasant, even when intelligent, to be much on a level with the
audience of Sir John Mandeville. It is no wonder that in such ignorance
there is a mighty fanaticism. Islam is all in all to the fellah: the
unbelievers he looks on as a miserable minority; and it is only the
unpleasant fact that they cannot be crushed at present that prevents his
crushing them, and asserting the supremacy of Islam. A clever Arab once
remarked to me concerning a department which was mismanaged by European
direction, ‘How much better it would be to have an Arab over it!’ But on
my asking where he could find a native whose corruption would not be far
worse than the present rule, he could but reluctantly give in. This
fanatical feeling of dislike to the Nusrani, or Nazarene, was the
mainstay of Arabi’s revolt; and the very existence of such a feeling
shows how dangerous it might become if fed on success. The children
unintentionally reveal what is the tone and talk of the households in
private; they constantly greet the European with howls of _Ya Nusrani_
(‘O Nazarene’), the full force of which title is felt when your
donkey-boy urges on his beast by calling it, ‘Son of a dog! son of a
pig! son of a Nazarene!’ Any abuse will do to howl at the infidel, and
I have been for months shouted at across every field as _Ya khawaga
mafeles!_ (‘O bankrupt foreigner’), because I preferred walking to the
slow jolt of a donkey. The fact that dozens of the villagers were
depending on me for good pay all the time did not seem to weigh in the
youthful mind, compared with the pleasure of finding a handy insult.
This temper, if not held down, might easily rise in the arrogance of its
ignorance to such a height as to need a much sharper lesson than it has
ever received. That a massacre of the Coptic Christians was fully
anticipated by them when Arabi drove out the foreigners, is a well-known
matter of history, which should not be lightly forgotten.
This fanaticism is linked with an unreasoning ferocity of punishment. I
have seen a coachman suddenly seize on a street-boy, and, for some word
or gesture, lash him on the bare legs with the whip again and again with
all his might. Even a particularly good-natured and pleasant native
remarked with gusto how good it would be to take a certain family who
were of thievish habits, and pour petroleum over them--from the old
woman to the baby--and so burn them all up alive: he gloated over the
thoroughness of the undertaking, while all the time he was cheating his
own employer. It is a pity for their sakes that they do not believe in
witchcraft, the whole village would so much enjoy the festivity of doing
a ducking, in the fashion of our ancestors.
Akin to this fanaticism is the ruling view of everything as _kismet_,
the allotted fate. Perhaps no abstraction is so deleterious to a
character as this; as a man always can thus shut his eyes to the
consequences of his own actions, and refuse to learn by experience. I
never yet found a fellah who confessed to doing wrong, or to being sorry
for what he had done. He may sometimes stand and look aghast at the
consequences of his own carelessness; but he will do no more, and no
less, if the damage is the fault of someone else. He scarcely can, in
fact, express what one of ourselves would feel, as there is no word for
repentance in his vocabulary, except ‘good’; nor is there any word for
sorrow, except ‘angry’ or ‘annoyed.’ The very sentiment of remorse is so
unknown that there are no means of expressing it in any form. The
constant way of appeasing an injured party is for the offender to assure
him emphatically that it is of no consequence (_ma’alesh_); and the more
often he thus asserts that he has not done the other a wrong, the more
he considers he clears himself of it, until after sufficient of this
lying he goes away with a sense of virtue. If in consequence of some
very plain fault a man is punished by dismissal or otherwise, expressly
pointing out to him the causes of his punishment, he will sullenly shrug
his shoulders and say to his companions, _Kismet_; it is fated he is not
to work. That any blame attaches to him for his trouble seems not to be
_dangable_ into him by any means. This lack of belief in consequences is
also seen in the extreme carelessness often shown. After a harvest, a
large quantity of grain had been stored in a room beside a village,
covered with the most inflammable of roofing--durra straw: then, in
order to toast some bread, a blazing fire was lighted in the low room,
and allowed to flame up to the straw overhead. Of course it was soon
all in flames, and the whole of a large proprietor’s harvest was
destroyed. Even when it was blazing, within a hundred feet of the canal,
the only attempt to fetch water was by two or three women slowly filling
their great pitchers and carrying them up on their heads as usual; no
notion of a chain-gang ever seemed to occur to them. The same lack of
any co-operation is seen when robbers are about. I asked why, when a
house was attacked by thieves, the other villagers did not all come out
and seize the men, being ten or twenty to one. The reply was, ‘When any
one hears another house being robbed, he keeps as quiet as possible, and
does nothing, for fear of attracting the thieves to his own house.’
This belief in _kismet_, and lack of co-operation, tells favourably in
one way--the fellah is not revengeful. No matter whether he deserves
what ill befalls him, or is an innocent sufferer, he never goes about
for simple vengeance, but yields, and is ready to act as if no grudge or
ill-feeling rested in his mind. What might be the case in an affront to
their religion or family I would not say; but in all minor matters the
fellah may be dealt with regardless of an idea of revenge.
The cardinal principle to remember in dealing with Egyptians is that
they have no forbearance, and know no middle course. The notion of means
exactly meeting an end, is outside of the fellah’s sense. If he is
careless about a danger, he is so careless in many cases as to be
killed; if he thinks about it, he is so afraid that he will not face it
at all. If he has to make anything secure, no amount of surplus
security seems too great. If he knows that you have power, he cannot be
too submissive, and insists on kissing your hand, or at the least so
honouring the aroma of it where it has touched his own. But if he has
power himself, he gets all he can out of it; and the grasping and
overbearing nature of the village shekh is too generally well known to
those under him. Nothing seems to have astonished and disgusted Stanley
more than the scheming of the Egyptian soldiers, whom he expected to
follow him, in retreating. Yet the whole affair was characteristically
Egyptian: fleeing from the Mahdists; only too glad to find anyone so
foolish in their eyes as to be troubled about them; and then clumsily
plotting--without any regard to time--for making the best profit they
could out of the affair, by seizing whatever seemed to have come into
their power. It would have been nothing to them to make away with people
who were so indiscreet as to put ammunition within their grasp. The
scheme seems to be the natural course of things to anyone who has
watched the ways of Egypt. Peremptory orders are understood; and the
more peremptorily they are enforced the more cheerfully they are obeyed,
though roughness or harshness is seldom necessary: but if you do not
rule, you must submit to be ruled. And the fellah has a positive dislike
to having a choice of action left to him. In matters indifferent to me,
I often tell them to do what they please; and that generally ends in
their helplessly doing nothing, especially if they need to co-operate.
At last, seeing their trouble, I give a precise order, and every one at
once obeys it with thankfulness.
From this it follows that the fellah is one of the most easily managed
people in the world. When once he knows who is master, there is little
or no trouble. And if you can pick and choose your men, and keep them
well in hand, instantly dismissing any who may disobey, it would be
impossible to find a more cheerful, pleasant, well-disposed, and kindly
set of fellows. The only danger is that they may perceive too much of
your confidence in them. All the best men I have had have gone
lamentably to the bad when they found that they were at all trusted. The
temptation of having any credit of character is too great for them; they
hasten to commute it for instant advantage, as soon as they see that
there is anything to be made of it. The goose that lays golden eggs has
a short and perilous life in Egypt.
That there is scarcely any sense of honour as to truthfulness need
hardly be remarked. The idea of truth for its own sake does not weigh
appreciably against either present advantage or serving the interest of
another. The most respectable fellahin I have known would lie readily
and unlimitedly, if they thought it beneficial. One very good fellow
came to tell me one day what he had heard, prefacing it by saying how he
had not two minutes before obtained the information by solemnly
promising never to tell me about it. That he avowed the most unblushing
and deliberate lying never seemed to occur to his mind as anything
noticeable, but rather a virtuous attention to my interests. Another
superior fellow lost some letters, which were entrusted to him to post:
when he came back he mentioned the loss, without any regret, and
immediately went on to praise himself for the great virtue he had shown
in acknowledging it, and the elevation of his moral standpoint above the
sinners around him. It was, perhaps, a triumph of candour for an
Egyptian.
From all that we have just noticed it will be plain that Egypt is a land
of bribery. Every person who wants anything pays for it; time,
attention, favour, facilities, screening, and escaping, all have their
price. And it is the length of this price that is the deterrent from
crime, and the dread of those who get into trouble over any affair. I
reported a case of a villager throwing a dead buffalo into the canal. A
policeman visited the shekh to enquire; a sovereign changed hands, and
he returned stating that it was all a mistake, and that no dead buffalo
ever existed there. But a few weeks later another policeman in search of
prey rode round; and, finding a dead dog, pocketed a dollar for his
acuteness. And the policeman is the fellah in trousers, armed, and in
authority. A good false accusation will sometimes do, and is even
occasionally worked on a wholesale scale for small bribes. Briefly, it
may be stated that the working of petty jurisdiction is, that the law
lays down what are offences, and attaches certain penalties to them;
these penalties, then, roughly are the maximum limits to which the
police can reward themselves by the discovery of such offences. The
system works all right in the long run, as well as any system could in
so corrupt a country: it is part payment by results to the police, with
a minimum daily wage secured to them, and the pickings in proportion to
their acuteness. Of course all this is profanity to the ears of High
Officials, who never have a chance of hearing the quiet doings in the
villages. The European dignitaries, and many of the natives also, duly
and diligently administer justice when an affair comes to their ears;
but the little minor assaults and thefts and squabbles are adjusted on a
rougher and readier system, which had better be left alone if it cannot
be improved away altogether.
The barrier which exists between the fellah and the European official is
almost insurmountable. Not many officials visit the country districts at
all; when they do they stop at the shekhs’ houses, and are always
attended by servants, before whom no man would speak if he could avoid
it, as they would talk about him to the natives in the offices. Then the
fellah is timid, dreads men who go about on prancing horses, and wear
riding-boots and spurs--all that means police and terrorism to him.
Unless therefore there is something very seriously amiss, the fellah in
general will not fly to the European official, on the rare occasion when
he sees him in the distance, and get himself into the fire by trying to
put some one else into the frying-pan. If any one wanted to learn what
was going on, and what was the state of affairs, let him go on foot
occasionally and tramp through some villages, chat to the people by the
way, avoid the shekhs like poison; and, while not at all disguising who
he was in conversation, move about in as different a manner to the
ordinary official as he possibly can. Some wiseacres have even said,
‘Well, let them petition if there is anything amiss.’ Petition, indeed!
from people who cannot write, and have no knowledge in general of who
is the proper official to appeal to, or where he is! If they go to one
of the clerks at the wayside--where they sit about the office doors,--he
will at once inform the natives in the very office which may be in
fault: if they go to the village scribe, he is generally a right-hand
man of the shekh, who may be the very defendant in question. No!
European administration, except in important or flagrant cases, scarcely
touches the life of the fellah directly.
When I first met the fellah, I had always impressed upon me by an old
Arab that no one ever did anything rightly unless they were heartily
afraid; and though this may be a harsh way to state it, the fact is true
at bottom. There is no need to terrorise or to bully, and with most
Egyptians perfect suavity is the best course; but if a man transgresses
in any way he must be met by sternness, and emphatically put into his
right place. One of the most effective of minor rebukes is to raise a
laugh at the transgressor among the bystanders: to make a man’s doings
ridiculous to his neighbours crushes him more than any expostulations.
The fellah has a good sense of the ludicrous, though he very seldom
originates a joke. I have known little comparisons or nicknames that I
have given, taken up all round by the people with a relish, and be
repeated sometimes for days afterwards. Nothing smoothes matters more
than getting them into a cheerful mood; and I have often watched the
faces when a discussion or difference has occurred, and by just throwing
in a remark when a passing smile appeared, to bring it out into a laugh,
the scale has been turned and business settled. The native in general
squabbles over a difference with his fellows, shouts, and insists, shows
fight, seizes the garments of his opponent, and threatens to tear them;
all for, perhaps, a pennyworth of advantage one way or other. They think
equally that persistent worrying will wear out the determination of the
European; and, until they learn by long experience, they will try that
method. I have known a shekh stand facing me for over half an hour
persisting that I should employ certain men to work for me; and, though
my refusals increased in strength, it was not until he was wearied out
that he ceased: it is a simple battle of endurance in such cases. He
knew that his position would prevent direct personal ejection by force,
and he accordingly used up that forbearance as so much leverage for his
request.
Two principles of the fellah nature which Europeans cannot realise at
first are that they cannot exercise forbearance, as we have noticed; and
secondly, that they cannot stand long-continued temptation. Residents
sometimes say that the native is incurably bad; that he may serve you
for years, and rob you at the end. But such cases are really the fault
of the employer, who has no more right to tempt people to rob him than
to tempt them to murder him. To reconcile such a view of the fellah with
the astonishing honesty and particularity that I have often found, may
seem difficult. But time is the source of the difference. A man who will
at once correct his accounts against himself, or bring you some trifle
that you have overlooked or forgotten, will be quite incapable of even
far less honesty, if the temptation is before him for months. Their
impulses are generally sound and honest; but if they begin to look on
anything as being in their hands, they drift easily into regarding it as
their own. It is only a more rapid application of what may be seen in
England regarding long trusts, charities, tenant-right, &c. The
straightforward honesty that I have found on most occasions when an
immediate temptation was before the fellah, has surprised me, and makes
it needful to remember that this must not be strained and tried by
continual temptation, the exposure to which will almost certainly spoil
the character, and oblige one to cast aside a man who might otherwise
have been useful and honest. Knowing this, I regard these failings of
the fellah as lying quite as much at his employer’s door as at his own.
One of the pleasantest points of the Egyptian character is the genuine
and unfeigned hospitality so often met with. If in walking through a
village I happen to pass the shekh sitting at his door, he will usually
press the stranger to come in and have coffee, and hardly take a
refusal. When pitching tent for the night, it is well to avoid coming
under the shekh’s notice, or probably he will insist on your stopping in
his house: and in the larger towns the shekhs have sometimes excellent
guest-chambers, with European furniture. This is hospitality for which
no return is expected, or would be accepted. Even with poor people it is
the custom for them to press one to stay, and to have coffee or food
with them. An Egyptian travelling in England would think it very brutal
that neither the squire nor any of the inhabitants of a village should
press him to stay for a meal or for the night with them: he would set us
down as shamelessly mercenary, and without any sense of propriety or
generosity.
It is certain that the perceptions of an Egyptian are far less keen than
ours. Their feeling of pain is hardly comparable with our own: with bad
injuries, such as torn or crushed fingers, they do not seem at all
distressed; and a boy said to me that it was no wonder I healed quickly,
as I did not disturb a wound, ‘whereas an Arab would pull a cut open to
look at it inside.’ With pain, so with the senses in health. They cannot
distinguish one person from another by the footstep; they do not easily
distinguish a voice; they seldom respond or seem to perceive any words
when called from a distance, unless the attention is aroused by loudly
calling the person’s name; they never notice slight or distant sounds,
and seem to suppose that you will never perceive a whisper from one to
another. That the sense of smell is not much developed is only too
evident from the fearfully filthy condition of the village surroundings,
which are sometimes poisonous to an European.
Unfortunately the result of education is rather to spoil than to develop
natural ability. Of the very few peasants I have met with who had been
taught to write, two were fools in other matters, all common sense and
ability appearing to have been crushed out of them. Nor is this at all
surprising, when we know that the cardinal part of Muslim education is
the learning of the pointless prolixities of the Koran by heart, as a
pure matter of rote, without the use of the reason or intellect. To
burden a child’s mind with such a fearful task is enough to ruin it, if
not strong. It is a sad sight to see the whole of the coming intellects
of a town rocking themselves to and fro while they gabble through _sura_
after _sura_ of the Koran in a gusty sing-song voice without pause or
point; and then to reflect that this is the end and aim of nearly all
their education. The native Coptic schools are the only encouraging
sight of indigenous training; and the ability shown by some of their
boys is astonishing.
What then can we look forward to as the hope of improvement of such a
people? In the first place, a strong and just government, with a
sufficient amount of an incorruptible European element to crush out
bribery and ensure justice; this, in a couple of generations, would go
far to alter the national character. To trust one’s money to the care of
the government at the post-office, is the idea which astounds a fellah
more than anything else he can learn of England. An education in which
the Koran is but incidental, and not a crushing load on the memory, is
another necessity. A spread of some sanitary ideas, and a cheap supply
of some staple medicines for the commonest ailments, would be a great
step: the utter ignorance and lack of all common sense in such matters
is appalling. Probably improved dwellings, on some large estates, would
be the most powerful means for changing their notions; only such must
not be Europeanised, but thoroughly native houses reasonably arranged as
to ventilation, dryness, and disposal of all refuse; thus they might
lead to imitation; and a small premium on well-built houses would push
the subject. The only class yet appreciably affected for the better by
foreign influence is the Coptic community; and in that the energy of the
American missionaries, and the good example of their followers, has
produced a healthy awakening amid the body of the race, which is perhaps
the most promising sight in the country at present. The enterprise of
the Copt in education and improvement, with the advantage of the higher
standard of Christianity above the ethics of the Koran, may now develop
a better moral fibre in the nation, without which its advance is
hopeless. The great snare to be avoided is the foreign character of
improvements; so long as speaking a foreign language, wearing foreign
clothes, and aping foreign manners are thought to be the objects of a
change, we cannot expect to see a real progress in the character of a
nation. That English influence has a vast field for philanthropic
enterprise in this six millions of people is obvious; but the best
intentions may be too easily nullified by ignorance of the conditions of
the case, and by the incapacity and resistance of the average native
official, by whom it is useless to expect any serious change or solid
advance to be carried out to order.