things without seeing them, and I am afraid to steal from the
guide-book--unintelligently, I mean. I have sometimes found the
guide-book mistaken--not often, I admit, but too often to take chances.
I should be struck with remorse if I should steal from the guide-book
and then find that I had stolen a mistake. So I shall have to skip
Galilee, Tiberias, Nazareth, and Hebron, for the reason that I could not
visit those and include Egypt, too, by our schedule.
One _must_ go to Egypt. If the "grand object of all travel is to visit
the shores of the Mediterranean," then the grand climax of that tour is
Egypt. One _must_ take all the time there is for that amazing land, and
any time will be too short, even though it be a lifetime.
The guide-book says that the arrival at Alexandria is not very
impressive. I suppose a good deal depends on the day and the time of day
and one's mental attitude. As usual with our arrivals, it was early
morning, and everything was hazy and yellow-misty with sunrise. We were
moving slowly, and the water was glassy still. Here and there across the
yellow haze drifted a barge-like craft with a lateen-sail, or a slow
moving boat, pulled by men in native dress. Then out of the mist across
the port bow came the outline of a low-lying shore, and a shaft that
rose, a vague pencil against the morning glow. The Diplomat was leaning
on the rail at my side.
"Egypt," he said, quietly. "That is a lighthouse--they call it a pharos,
after the one that Ptolemy built; it must have stood about in the same
direction."
Certainly that was not very dramatic, not actively so at least, but to
me it was impressive; and stealing into that dream-like harbor, through
the mellow quiet of the morning, I had the feeling that we were creeping
up on the past--catching it asleep, as it were; that this was indeed the
pharos of the Ptolemies--the harbor they had known.
I shall always remember Alexandria, Egypt. I shall always remember the
railway station with its wild hallabaloo of Arab porters, who grab one's
hand-baggage, make off with it, and sit on it in a secluded place until
you race around and hunt it up and produce baksheesh for its return. You
do not check baggage in Egypt, by the way; you register it, which means
that you tell somebody about it, then try to convince yourself that it
is all right and that some day you will see it again.
But I shall remember that station for another reason. When we had
finally fought our way through to the train, and Laura and I had placed
our things here and there in our compartment--in the racks and about--we
realized that we were hot and thirsty, and I said I would slip back and
get some oranges, seeing we had plenty of time.
It was easy to do that--easy enough, I mean, for I no longer had
anything for the Bedouins to grab. I got the oranges and paid a piastre
apiece for them--about ten times what they were worth in Jaffa, and I
had the usual difficulty making change--a detachment of interested Arabs
looking on meanwhile. Then I started back, and was stopped by a guard
who wanted to see my ticket. I felt for the flat leather case which I
generally carry in my hip-pocket. It was gone!
If there had been anything resembling a chair there I should have sat
down. As it was I took hold of the little railing, for my knees had a
watery feeling which I felt was not to be trusted. That pocket-book
contained my letter of credit; all my money, except a little change; my
tickets, my character--everything that an unprotected stranger is likely
to need in a strange land! When I got my breath I dived into all my
pockets at once, then went through them categorically, as much as three
times apiece. I had never realized I owned so many pockets or that they
could be so empty, so useless.
Those Bedouins had done it, of course. I rushed back to the orange-man,
and in a mixture of three languages which nobody, not even myself, could
understand, explained my loss. He shrugged his shoulders in French,
elevated his hands in Egyptian, and said "No can tell" in English. I
glared around at the contiguous Bedouins, but they all looked
disinterestedly guilty. In a mixed daze I went back to the guard, and
crept through when he was attending to another passenger. I still held
the bag of oranges, and handed them to Laura, who was quietly waiting,
looking out the window at the passing show. Little did she guess my
condition, and how could I tell her?
It was quite by chance that I glanced up at the overhead rack where I
had stowed our smaller packages. Ah me! The gates of bliss open wide
will never be a more inspiring sight than what I saw there. There it
lay--that precious pocket-book! In the disordered mental state of our
arrival I had for some unguessed reason taken out my pocket-case and
laid it there with the other items. It was safe--safe in every detail.
The world suddenly became glorified. Those Bedouins were my brothers. I
would have gone back and embraced them if the train had not begun to
move.
Yes, I shall always remember Alexandria.
There is a continuous panorama between Alexandria and Cairo, absolutely
fascinating to one who has not seen it before, and I wonder how it can
ever grow old to any one. Almost immediately there was water--the Nile,
or one of its canals--and stretching away, a dead level of
green--lavish, luxurious, blossoming green--the delta-land of Lower
Egypt, the richest garden in all the world. A network of irrigation; mud
villages that might have been made by wasps; a low-dropping sky that met
the level green--these made a background, and against it, along the
raised road that follows the Nile, an endless procession passed.
A man riding a camel, leading another; a boy watering two buffaloes; an
Arab walking, followed by his wife and a string of loaded donkeys;
ditto camels; a cow grinding an old Egyptian water-mill that has been in
use since Pharaoh's time; two men turning an Archimedes screw to lift
the water to their fields--so the pictures whirl by. The Orient has
become familiar to us, yet for some reason the atmosphere, the
impression, is wholly different here, because--I cannot tell
why--because this is Egypt, I suppose, and there is only one Egypt, a
fact easier to realize than to explain.
The day was well along when we reached Cairo and, after the usual battle
with the Ishmaelites, drove to Shepheard's Hotel. As there is only one
Egypt, so there is only one Shepheard's Hotel. There are other hotels as
large and as lavish, with as fair gardens, perhaps, but I believe there
is no other hotel on the planet where you can sit on a vast balmy
terrace and look down on such a panorama of the nations--American,
European, Asiatic, African--such a universal congress of pleasure as
each winter assembles here. It would take a more riotous pen than mine
to achieve a description of that mixture. If the reader can imagine a
World's Fair Midway of every nationality and every costume and every
language and mode of locomotion under the sun, and can see mingled with
it all the dark-faced sellers of shawls and scarabs, and beads and
relics, the picture will serve, and we will let it go at that.
And perhaps I may as well say here that Cairo is the wildest, freest
place in Christendom. The confluence of Upper and Lower Egypt--the Delta
and the Nile--here on the edge of the desert, it is the veritable
jumping-off place where all conventions melt away. It is the neutral
ground where East and West meet--each to adopt the special privilege and
license of the other--madly to compete in lavishness of dress and the
reckless joy of living. In the language of the Reprobates, "One gets his
money's worth in Cairo, if he makes his headquarters at Shepheard's and
sits in the game." But he will require a certain capital to make good
his ante. If I hadn't found that pocket-book at Alexandria I should have
taken my meals with the Arabs in the back basement.
The Arab, by-the-way, is the general servitor in the Egyptian hotel. You
ring three times when you want him, and he is as picturesque and gentle
a Bedouin as ever held up a camel train or slew a Christian to glorify
his faith. He is naive and noiseless, and whatever you ask him for he
says "Yes," and if you ask him if he understands he says "Yes," and you
will never know whether he does or not until you see what he brings. It
does not help matters to talk loudly to the Arab. Volume of sound does
not increase his lingual gifts, and spelling the article is likewise
wasted effort. Ladies sometimes try that method. The trunk of one of our
party had not reached her room--and she needed it.
"My trunk," she said to the Arab. "_You_ know, trunk--t-r-u-n-k,
trunk--yes, trunk, with my name on it--_you_ know--n-a-m-e--my initials,
I mean, _you_ know--T. D.--T. D. on both ends."
The Arab did know "trunk"; the rest was mere embroidery.
XXXVII
THE SMILE OF THE SPHINX
There was not much left of the afternoon when we reached Cairo, but some
of us wandered off here and there to get the habit of the place, as it
were. Laura and I came to a trolley-line presently, and found that it
ran out to the Pyramids and Sphinx. We were rather shocked at the
thought, but recovered and decided to steal a march on the others by
slipping out there and having those old wonders all to ourselves, at
sunset.
It is a long way. You pass through streets of many kinds and by houses
of many sorts, and you cross the Nile and glide down an avenue of palms
where there are glimpses of water--the infinite desert stretching away
into the evening. Long before we reached them we saw the outlines of the
three pyramids against the sky, and then we made out the Sphinx--that
old group which is perhaps the most familiar picture that children know.
Yet, somehow, it could not be true that this was the reality of the
pictures we had seen. The likeness was very great, certainly, but those
pictures had represented something in a realm of books and romance--the
unattainable land--while these were here; we were actually going to
them, and in a trolley-car! It required all the spell of Egypt
then--the palms, the desert, and the evening sky--to fit the reality
into its old place in the hall of dreams.
We had thought to have a quiet view, but this was a miscalculation.
There is no such thing as a quiet view of the Pyramids. At any hour of
the day or night you are immediately beset by beggars and
fortune-tellers and would-be guides, and you are pulled and dragged and
distracted by their importunities until you have lost all interest in
your original purpose in a general desire to start a plague or a
massacre that will wipe out the whole pestiferous crew. There is no
hope, except in the employment of one or two of the guides--the
strongest-looking ones, who will in a certain measure keep off the
others--and you will have to engage donkeys, and perhaps have your
fortune told. Otherwise these creatures will follow you and surround
you, insisting that they want no money; that they only love you; that it
makes them happy even to be near you; that they love all Americans;
that, in short, for a shilling, just a shilling, and a baksheesh (a
piastre), one little baksheesh, they will become your guide, your slave,
the dirt under your feet--"Ah, mister--ze Sphinkis, ze Pyramid,
aevry-zing!" It is a disgrace to Egypt, and to England who is in charge
here now, that such persecution is permitted in the shadow of one of the
world's most revered and imposing ruins.
We engaged donkeys, at last, after there had been several fights over
us, and set out up the road to the Great Pyramid, assailed every little
way by bandits lying in wait. The Great Pyramid does not improve with
close acquaintance. It has been too much damaged by time and criminal
assault. It loses its clean-cut outlines as you come near and becomes
little more than a stupendous heap of stones. I think we were a trifle
disappointed with a close inspection, to tell the truth, for even the
largest pictures do not give one quite the impression of the reality. It
was as if we had been gazing at some marvellous painting, and then had
walked up very near to see how the work was done.
The charm came back as we rode off a little and turned to view it now
and again in the evening light. The irregularities disappeared; the
outlines became clean against the sky; I was no longer disappointed in
that giant of architecture whose shadow (it lay now just at our feet)
began marking time at a period when the world had no recorded history.
Yet in one or two respects the reality differed from the dream. Usually
stone grows gray with age and takes on moss and lichen--the mould of
time. The Pyramids are entirely bare, and they are not gray. The stones
might have been laid up yesterday so far as any vegetable increment is
concerned, and their color is a tawny gold--luminous gold in the sunset,
like the barren hills beyond. The daily sandblast of the desert will
level these monuments in time, no doubt, but the last fragment in that
remote age will still be bare and in color unchanged.
As with the Pyramids, our first impression of the Sphinx was one of
disappointment. It seemed small to us. It is small compared with a
pyramid, while the photographs give one another idea. The photographs
are made with the Sphinkis (Sphinx, I mean--one falls so easily into
the native speech) in the foreground, looking fully as big as the
second-size pyramid and quite able to have the third-size pyramid for
breakfast. Figures mean nothing in the face of a picture like that; you
comprehend them, but you do not realize them--visualize them, perhaps I
ought to say.
So the Sphinx seemed small to us as we approached, and even when we were
on the immediate brink of sand, gazing down upon it, its sixty-five feet
of stature seemed reduced from the image in our minds.
[Illustration: A VAST INDIFFERENCE TO ALL PUNY THINGS]
But the Sphinx grows on one. As the light faded and the shadows softened
its scarred features there came also a dignity and with it a feeling of
immensity, of grandeur, a vast indifference to all puny things. And
then--perhaps it was the light, perhaps it was because I stood at a
particular angle, but certainly--standing just there, at that moment, I
saw, or fancied I saw, about its serene lips the suggestion or beginning
of a smile. The more I looked, the more certain of it I became, and when
I spoke of it to Laura, she saw it, too. Yes, undoubtedly we had caught
the Sphinx smiling--not outwardly, at least not openly, but quietly,
quizzically--smiling inside as one might say. I could not understand it
then, but later it came to me.
* * * * *
Back at the hotel, to-night, I thought it out. I remembered that the
Sphinx had been there a long time; nobody knows how long, but _a very
long time indeed_. I remembered that it had seen a number of
things--_a very great number of things_. I remembered that it had seen
one very curious thing, to wit:
A long time ago, when a certain Pharaoh--we can only guess which
Pharaoh--ruled over Egypt, it saw a young man who had been sold into
bondage from Syria rise in the king's favor through certain dreams and
become his chief counsellor, even "ruler over all the land of Egypt." It
saw him in the height of his power and glory bring his family, who were
Syrian shepherds, down from their barren hills and establish them in the
favor of the Egyptian king. The Sphinx was old--a thousand years old, at
least, even then--and, being wise, heard with certain curiosity their
claim that they were a "chosen people," and thoughtfully watched them
multiply through a few brief centuries into a band of servitors who,
because of this tradition, held themselves a race apart, repeating tales
of a land of promise which they would some day inherit. Then at last,
during a period of visitation, the Sphinx saw them escape, taking what
they could lay their hands on, straggling away, with their families and
their flocks, toward the Red Sea. The Sphinx heard nothing more of that
tribe for about three thousand years.
Then an amazing thing happened. Among those who came to wonder at the
Sphinx's age and mystery were some who repeated tales of that runaway
band--tales magnified and embroidered almost beyond recognition--and,
what was more curious, accepted them--not as such tales are usually
accepted, with a heavy basis of discount--but as gospel; inspired truth;
the foundation of a mighty religion; the word of God.
Nor was that all. The Sphinx realized presently that not only were those
old stories accepted as gospel by the descendants of the race
themselves, but by a considerable number of the human race at
large--accepted and debated in a most serious manner, even to the point
of bloodshed.
Some details of this inspired chronology were wholly new to the Sphinx.
It was interesting, for example, to hear that there had been three
million of those people, and that before they started there had been a
time when the Nile had been turned to blood--twice, in fact: once by the
grace of God and once by magicians. The Sphinx did not remember a time
when the Nile had turned to blood. In the five thousand years and more
of its existence it had never heard of a magician who could produce that
result. It was interesting, too, to learn that the Red Sea had opened a
way for those people to cross, and that the hosts of Egypt, trying to
follow them, had been swallowed up and drowned. This was wholly new. The
Sphinx had been there and seen all that had happened, but she had
somehow missed those things.
Not that the Sphinx was surprised at these embroideries. She had seen
several mythologies created, and knew the general scale of enlargement
and glorification. It was only when she saw strong, cultured, and
enlightened nations still accepting the old Hebrew poem--with all its
stately figures and exaggerations--as gospel; heard them actually trying
to prove that a multitude as big as the census of Australia had marched
out with its chattels and its flocks; heard them vow that the Red Sea
had parted long enough to let this population pass through; heard them
maintain that this vast assembly had found shade and refreshment on the
other side by twelve wells of water and under seventy palm-trees: heard
them tell how the sea behind them had suddenly rushed together and
swallowed up all the Egyptian army (including the king himself, some
said)--it was only when the Sphinx heard learned men argue these things
as facts that a smile--scarcely perceptible, yet still a smile--began to
grow behind the stone lips.
That is the smile we saw to-night--a quiet smile, a gracious smile, a
compassionate smile--and as it has grown so slowly, so it will not soon
depart. For by-and-by, when these ages have passed, and with them their
story and their gospels--when those old chronicles of the Jews have been
relegated to the realm of mythology for a thousand years--there may come
another band who will establish their traditions as God's holy word, and
the Sphinx--still remaining, still observing, still looking across the
encompassing sands to the sunrise--will smile, and dream old dreams.
XXXVIII
WAYS THAT ARE EGYPTIAN
I wonder why we are always taken first to the mosques, or why, when our
time is pretty limited, we are taken to them at all. Mosques are well
enough, but when you have seen a pretty exhaustive line of them in
Turkey and Syria, Egypt cannot furnish any very startling attractions in
this field. For mosques are modern (anything less than a thousand years
old is modern to us now), and Egypt is not a land of modern things.
Besides, here in Cairo there are such a number of fascinating
out-of-the-way corners which we are dying to see--unholy side-streets,
picturesquely hidden nooks, and mysterious, shut-in life; besides all
the bazaars--
Never mind; the mosques did have a certain interest, especially the
mosque of Al-Azhar, which is nine hundred years old and built about a
great court--an old mosque when America was still undiscovered--and the
mosque of Hassan, "whose prayer will nevair be accept," Abraham said
(Abraham being our guide), "because when ze architec' have finish, ze
Sultan Hassan have cut off hees han' so he cannot produce him again."
Napoleon's first gun in Egypt hit a minaret of Hassan's mosque, it is
said, and it has had bad luck generally, perhaps because of the cruel
act of its royal builder. We were not even required to put on slippers
to enter it, so it cannot be held in very great veneration. Then there
is the mosque of Mohammed Ali, built within the last century and modern
throughout, the only mosque in the world, I believe, to have electric
lights!
It was Mohammed Ali who settled the Mameluke problem in the conclusive
way which sultans adopt at times. The Mamelukes were the Janizaries of
Egypt, though fewer in number. Still, there were enough of them to make
trouble and keep matters stirred up, and Ali grew tired of them. So did
the public, according to our guide:
"Ali, he say to some people, 'You like get rid of zose Mameluke?' an'
all ze people say, 'Yez, of course.' So Ali he make big dinner, an' ze
Mameluke come an' eat, an' have fine, big time."
It was on the 1st of March, 1811, that Ali issued his general invitation
to the Mameluke leaders to attend a function at the Citadel; and, after
entertaining them hospitably, invited them to march through a narrow
passageway, which was suddenly closed at each end, while from above
opened a musket-fire that presently concluded those Mamelukes--470 of
them--with the exception of one man, who is said to have leaped his
horse through a window down a hundred feet or so, where he "Jump from
hees horse and run--run fas' to Jaffa!" which was natural enough.
There was only one trouble with that story. Abraham did not explain how
this particular Mameluke came to have his horse at luncheon, and why,
with or without horses, a number of those other Mamelukes did not follow
him. Every Mameluke of my acquaintance would have gone through that
window, mounted or otherwise, and without calculating the distance to
the ground. However, Abraham showed us the passage and the place of the
leap, and later the graves of the 470, all of which was certainly
convincing. Following the removal of the leaders, a general burial of
Mamelukes took place throughout Egypt, since which time members of that
organization have been extremely hard to catch. It must have been Ali's
neat solution of the Mameluke problem which fifteen years later was
copied in Constantinople by Mahmoud II., when he disposed of the
Janizaries.
It was at the tomb of a distinguished pasha--a fine, inviting
place--that we saw a small green piece of the robe of Abraham. It was
incorporated in a very sacred rug, one of the twelve which Cairo,
Constantinople, and Damascus contribute to Mecca each year. We asked how
Abraham's robe could hold out this way, and his namesake shrugged and
smiled:
"Oh, zay take little piece of ze real robe an' roll him 'roun' an'
'roun' wiz many piece of goods, an' zay become _all_ ze robe of
Abraham."
Thus does a thread leaven a whole wardrobe.
Laura and I escaped then. We did not care for any more tombs and
mosques, and we did care a great deal for a street we had noticed where,
squatted on the ground on both sides of it, their wares spread in the
dust, were sellers of certain trinkets and jars which, though not of the
past, had a fatal lure we could not all forget. Our driver was a black,
scarred semi-Nubian who looked as if he had been through a fire, and had
possibly five words of English. It does not matter--Menelek (so we
named him) served us well, and will retain a place in my affections.
We took the back track, and presently were in the street of small
sellers, driving carefully, for there was barely room to pass between
their displayed goods. Here and there we stooped to inspect, and we
bought a water-jar for a piastre--an Egyptian piastre, which is really
money and worth exactly five cents. Beyond the jars was a woman selling
glass bracelets, such as the Arab women wear. I had wanted some of those
from the beginning. I picked out a gay handful, and then discovered I
had only a gold twenty-franc piece to pay with. The woman had never
owned twenty francs, and no seller in the neighborhood could furnish the
change. So I handed it to Menelek, who grinned and disappeared while we
sat there in the carriage waiting.