EAGERNESS to see Africa brings us on deck at dawn. The low coast is not
yet visible. Africa, as we had been taught, lies in heathen darkness. It
is the policy of the Egyptian government to make the harbor difficult
of access to hostile men-of-war, and we, who are peacefully inclined,
cannot come in till daylight, nor then without a pilot.
The day breaks beautifully, and the Pharos is set like a star in the
bright streak of the East. Before we can distinguish land, we see the
so-called Pompey's Pillar and the light-house, the palms, the minarets,
and the outline of the domes painted on the straw-color of the sky—a
dream-like picture. The curtain draws up with Eastern leisure—the sun
appears to rise more deliberately in the Orient than elsewhere; the
sky grows more brilliant, there are long lines of clouds, golden and
crimson, and we seem to be looking miles and miles into an enchanted
country. Then ships and boats, a vast number of them, become visible
in the harbor, and as the light grows stronger, the city and land lose
something of their beauty, but the sky grows more softly fiery till the
sun breaks through. The city lies low along the flat coast, and seems
at first like a brownish white streak, with fine lines of masts,
palm-trees, and minarets above it.
The excitement of the arrival in Alexandria and the novelty of
everything connected with the landing can never be repeated. In one
moment the Orient flashes upon the bewildered traveler; and though he
may travel far and see stranger sights, and penetrate the hollow shell
of Eastern mystery, he never will see again at once such a complete
contrast to all his previous experience. One strange, unfamiliar form
takes the place of another so rapidly that there is no time to fix
an impression, and everything is so bizarre that the new-comer has no
points of comparison. He is launched into a new world, and has no time
to adjust the focus of his observation. For myself, I wished the
Orient would stand off a little and stand still so that I could try
to comprehend it. But it would not; a revolving kaleidoscope never
presented more bewildering figures and colors to a child, than the port
of Alexandria to us.
Our first sight of strange dress is that of the pilot and the crew who
bring him off—they are Nubians, he is a swarthy Egyptian. “How black
they are,” says the Baroness; “I don't like it.” As the pilot steps on
deck, in his white turban, loose robe of cotton, and red slippers,
he brings the East with him; we pass into the influence of the Moslem
spirit. Coming into the harbor we have pointed out to us the batteries,
the palace and harem of the Pasha (more curiosity is felt about a harem
than about any other building, except perhaps a lunatic asylum), and
the new villas along the curve of the shore. It is difficult to see any
ingress, on account of the crowd of shipping.
The anchor is not down before we are surrounded by rowboats, six or
eight deep on both sides, with a mob of boatmen and guides, all standing
up and shouting at us in all the broken languages of three continents.
They are soon up the sides and on deck, black, brown, yellow, in
turbans, in tarbooshes, in robes of white, blue, brown, in brilliant
waist-shawls, slippered, and bare-legged, bare-footed, half-naked,
with little on except a pair of cotton drawers and a red fez, eager,
big-eyed, pushing, yelping, gesticulating, seizing hold of passengers
and baggage, and fighting for the possession of the traveler's goods
which seem to him about to be shared among a lot of pirates. I saw a
dazed traveler start to land, with some of his traveling-bags in
one boat, his trunk in a second, and himself in yet a third, and a
commissionaire at each arm attempting to drag him into two others. He
evidently couldn't make up his mind, which to take.
We have decided upon our hotel, and ask for the commissionaire of it. He
appears. In fact there are twenty or thirty of him. The first one is a
tall, persuasive, nearly naked Ethiop, who declares that he is the only
Simon Pure, and grasps our handbags. Instantly, a fluent, business-like
Alexandrian pushes him aside—“I am the commissionaire”—and is about to
take possession of us. But a dozen others are of like mind, and Babel
begins. We rescue our property, and for ten minutes a lively and most
amusing altercation goes on as to who is the representative of the
hotel. They all look like pirates from the Barbary coast, instead of
guardians of peaceful travelers. Quartering an orange, I stand in the
center of an interesting group, engaged in the most lively discussion,
pushing, howling and fiery gesticulation. The dispute is finally between
two:
“I Hotel Europe!”
“I Hotel Europe; he no hotel.”
“He my brother, all same me.”
“He! I never see he before,” with a shrug of the utmost contempt.
As soon as we select one of them, the tumult subsides, the enemies
become friends and cordially join in loading our luggage. In the first
five minutes of his stay in Egypt the traveler learns that he is to
trust and be served by people who haven't the least idea that lying is
not a perfectly legitimate means of attaining any desirable end. And he
begins to lose any prejudice he may have in favor of a white complexion
and of clothes. In a decent climate he sees how little clothing is
needed for comfort, and how much artificial nations are accustomed to
put on from false modesty.
We begin to thread our way through a maze of shipping, and hundreds of
small boats and barges; the scene is gay and exciting beyond expression.
The first sight of the colored, pictured, lounging, waiting Orient is
enough to drive an impressionable person wild; so much that is novel
and picturesque is crowded into a few minutes; so many colors and flying
robes, such a display of bare legs and swarthy figures. We meet flat
boats coming down the harbor loaded with laborers, dark, immobile groups
in turbans and gowns, squatting on deck in the attitude which is the
most characteristic of the East; no one stands or sits—everybody
squats or reposes cross-legged. Soldiers are on the move; smart Turkish
officers dart by in light boats with half a dozen rowers; the crew of an
English man-of-war pull past; in all directions the swift boats fly, and
with their freight of color, it is like the thrusting of quick shuttles,
in the weaving of a brilliant carpet, before our eyes.
We step on shore at the Custom-House. I have heard travelers complain of
the delay in getting through it. I feel that I want to go slowly, that I
would like to be all day in getting through—that I am hurried along
like a person who is dragged hastily through a gallery, past striking
pictures of which he gets only glimpses. What a group this is on shore;
importunate guides, porters, coolies. They seize hold of us, We want
to stay and look at them. Did ever any civilized men dress so gaily, so
little, or so much in the wrong place? If that fellow would untwist
the folds of his gigantic turban he would have cloth enough to clothe
himself perfectly. Look! that's an East Indian, that's a Greek, that's
a Turk that's a Syrian-Jew? No, he's Egyptian, the crook-nose is not
uncommon to Egyptians, that tall round hat is Persian, that one is from
Abys—there they go, we haven't half seen them! We leave our passports at
the entrance, and are whisked through into the baggage-room, where our
guide pays a noble official three francs for the pleasure of his chance
acquaintance; some nearly naked coolie-porters, who bear long cords,
carry off our luggage, and before we know it we are in a carriage, and a
rascally guide and interpreter—Heaven knows how he fastened himself upon
us in the last five minutes—is on the box and apparently owns us? (It
took us half a day and liberal backsheesh to get rid of the evil-eyed
fellow) We have gone only a little distance when half a dozen of the
naked coolies rush after us, running by the carriage and laying hold of
it, demanding backsheesh. It appears that either the boatman has cheated
them, or they think he will, or they havn't had enough. Nobody trusts
anybody else, and nobody is ever satisfied with what he gets, in Egypt.
These blacks, in their dirty white gowns, swinging their porter's ropes
and howling like madmen, pursue us a long way and look as if they
would tear us in pieces. But nothing comes of it. We drive to the Place
Mehemet Ali, the European square,—having nothing Oriental about it,
a square with an equestrian statue of Mehemet Ali, some trees and a
fountain—surrounded by hotels, bankers' offices and Frank shops.
There is not much in Alexandria to look at except the people, and the
dirty bazaars. We never before had seen so much nakedness, filth
and dirt, so much poverty, and such enjoyment of it, or at least
indifference to it. We were forced to strike a new scale of estimating
poverty and wretchedness. People are poor in proportion as their wants
are not gratified. And here are thousands who have few of the wants
that we have, and perhaps less poverty. It is difficult to estimate the
poverty of those fortunate children to whom the generous sun gives a
warm color for clothing, who have no occupation but to sit in the same,
all day, in some noisy and picturesque thoroughfare, and stretch out the
hand for the few paras sufficient to buy their food, who drink at
the public fountain, wash in the tank of the mosque, sleep in
street-corners, and feel sure of their salvation if they know the
direction of Mecca. And the Mohammedan religion seems to be a sort of
soul-compass, by which the most ignorant believer can always orient
himself. The best-dressed Christian may feel certain of one thing, that
he is the object of the cool contempt of the most naked, opthalmic,
flea-attended, wretched Moslem he meets. The Oriental conceit is a peg
above ours—it is not self-conscious.
In a fifteen minutes walk in the streets the stranger finds all the
pictures that he remembers in his illustrated books of Eastern life.
There is turbaned Ali Baba, seated on the hindquarters of his sorry
donkey, swinging his big feet in a constant effort to urge the beast
forward; there is the one-eyed calender who may have arrived last night
from Bagdad; there is the water-carrier, with a cloth about his loins,
staggering under a full goat-skin—the skin, legs, head, and all the
members of the brute distended, so that the man seems to be carrying a
drowned and water-soaked animal: there is the veiled sister of Zobeide
riding a grey donkey astride, with her knees drawn up, (as all women
ride in the East), entirely enveloped in a white garment which covers
her head and puffs out about her like a balloon—all that can be seen
of the woman are the toes of her pointed yellow slippers and two black
eyes; there is the seller of sherbet, a waterish, feeble, insipid drink,
clinking his glasses; and the veiled woman in black, with hungry eyes,
is gliding about everywhere. The veil is in two parts, a band about
the forehead, and a strip of black which hangs underneath the eyes and
terminates in a point at the waist; the two parts are connected by an
ornamented cylinder of brass, or silver if the wearer can afford it,
two and a half inches long and an inch in diameter. This ugly cylinder
between the restless eyes, gives the woman an imprisoned, frightened
look. Across the street from the hotel, upon the stone coping of the
public square, is squatting hour after hour in the sun, a row of these
forlorn creatures in black, impassive and waiting. We are told that they
are washerwomen waiting for a job. I never can remove the impression
that these women are half stifled behind their veils and the shawls
which they draw over the head; when they move their heads, it is like
the piteous dumb movement of an uncomplaining animal.
But the impatient reader is waiting for Pompey's Pillar. We drive
outside the walls, though a thronged gateway, through streets and among
people wretched and picturesque to the last degree. This is the road to
the large Moslem cemetery, and to-day is Thursday, the day for visiting
the graves. The way is lined with coffee-shops, where men are smoking
and playing at draughts; with stands and booths for the sale of
fried cakes and confections; and all along, under foot, so that it is
difficult not to tread on them, are private markets for the sale of
dates, nuts, raisins, wheat, and doora; the bare-legged owner sits on
the ground and spreads his dust-covered untempting fare on a straw
mat before him. It is more wretched and forlorn outside the gate than
within. We are amid heaps of rubbish, small mountains of it, perhaps the
ruins of old Alexandria, perhaps only the accumulated sweepings of the
city for ages, piles of dust, and broken pottery. Every Egyptian town
of any size is surrounded by these—the refuse of ages of weary
civilization.
What a number of old men, of blind men, ragged men—though rags are no
disgrace! What a lot of scrawny old women, lean old hags, some of them
without their faces covered—even the veiled ones you can see are only
bags of bones. There is a derweesh, a naked holy man, seated in the
dirt by the wall, reading the Koran. He has no book, but he recites the
sacred text in a loud voice, swaying his body backwards and forwards.
Now and then we see a shrill-voiced, handsome boy also reading the Koran
with all his might, and keeping a laughing eye upon the passing world.
Here comes a novel turn-out. It is a long truck-wagon drawn by one
bony-horse. Upon it are a dozen women, squatting about the edges, facing
each other, veiled, in black, silent, jolting along like so many bags of
meal. A black imp stands in front, driving. They carry baskets of food
and flowers, and are going to the cemetery to spend the day.
We pass the cemetery, for the Pillar is on a little hillock overlooking
it. Nothing can be drearier than this burying-ground—unless it may be
some other Moslem cemetery. It is an uneven plain of sand, without a
spear of grass or a green thing. It is covered thickly with ugly stucco,
oven-like tombs, the whole inconceivably shabby and dust covered; the
tombs of the men have head-stones to distinguish them from the women.
Yet, shabby as all the details of this crumbling cheap place of
sepulture are, nothing could be gayer or more festive than the scene
before us. Although the women are in the majority, there are enough men
and children present, in colored turbans, fezes, and gowns, and shawls
of Persian dye, to transform the graveyard into the semblance of a
parterre of flowers. About hundreds of the tombs are seated in a circle
groups of women, with their food before them, and the flowers laid upon
the tomb, wailing and howling in the very excess of dry-eyed grief. Here
and there a group has employed a “welee” or holy man, or a boy, to read
the Koran for it—and these Koran-readers turn an honest para by their
vocation. The women spend nearly the entire day in this sympathetic
visit to their departed friends—it is a custom as old as history, and
the Egyptians used to build their tombs with a visiting ante-chamber for
the accommodation of the living. I should think that the knowledge that
such a group of women were to eat their luncheon, wailing and roosting
about one's tomb every week, would add a new terror to death.
The Pillar, which was no doubt erected by Diocletian to his own honor,
after the modest fashion of Romans as well as Egyptians, is in its
present surroundings not an object of enthusiasm, though it is almost a
hundred feet high, and the monolith shaft was, before age affected it,
a fine piece of polished Syenite. It was no doubt a few thousand years
older than Diocletian, and a remnant of that oldest civilization; the
base and capital he gave it are not worthy of it. Its principal use
now is as a surface for the paint-brushes and chisels of distinguished
travelers, who have covered it with their precious names. I cannot
sufficiently admire the naïveté and self-depreciation of those travelers
who paint and cut their names on such monuments, knowing as they must
that the first sensible person who reads the same will say, “This is an
ass.”
We drive, still outside the walls, towards the Mahmoodéeh canal, passing
amid mounds of rubbish, and getting a view of the desert-like
country beyond. And now heaves in sight the unchanged quintessence of
Orientalism—there is our first camel, a camel in use, in his native
setting and not in a menagerie. There is a line of them, loaded with
building-stones, wearily shambling along. The long bended neck apes
humility, but the supercilious nose in the air expresses perfect
contempt for all modern life. The contrast of this haughty
“stuck-up-ativeness” (it is necessary to coin this word to express the
camel's ancient conceit) with the royal ugliness of the brute, is both
awe-inspiring and amusing. No human royal family dare be uglier than the
camel. He is a mass of bones, faded tufts, humps, lumps, splay-joints
and callosities. His tail is a ridiculous wisp, and a failure as an
ornament or a fly-brush. His feet are simply big sponges. For skin
covering he has patches of old buffalo robes, faded and with the hair
worn off. His voice is more disagreeable than his appearance. With a
reputation for patience, he is snappish and vindictive. His endurance is
over-rated—that is to say he dies like a sheep on an expedition of any
length, if he is not well fed. His gait moves every muscle like an ague.
And yet this ungainly creature carries his head in the air, and regards
the world out of his great brown eyes with disdain. The Sphinx is not
more placid. He reminds me, I don't know why, of a pyramid. He has a
resemblance to a palm-tree. It is impossible to make an Egyptian picture
without him. What a Hapsburg lip he has! Ancient, royal? The very poise
of his head says plainly, “I have come out of the dim past, before
history was; the deluge did not touch me; I saw Menes come and go; I
helped Shoofoo build the great pyramid; I knew Egypt when it hadn't
an obelisk nor a temple; I watched the slow building of the pyramid at
Sakkara. Did I not transport the fathers of your race across the
desert? There are three of us; the date-palm, the pyramid, and myself.
Everything else is modern. Go to!”
Along the canal, where lie dahabeëhs that will by and by make their way
up the Nile, are some handsome villas, palaces and gardens. This is
the favorite drive and promenade. In the gardens, that are open to the
public, we find a profusion of tropical trees and flowering shrubs;
roses are decaying, but the blossoms of the yellow acacia scent the air;
there are Egyptian lilies; the plant with crimson leaves, not native
here, grows as high as the arbutilon tree; the red passion-flower is in
bloom, and morning-glories cover with their running vine the tall and
slender cypresses. The finest tree is the sycamore, with great gnarled
trunk, and down-dropping branches. Its fruit, the sycamore fig, grows
directly on the branch, without stem. It is an insipid fruit, sawdust-y,
but the Arabs like it, and have a saying that he who eats one is sure to
return to Egypt. After we had tried to eat one, we thought we should not
care to return. The interior was filled with lively little flies; and a
priest who was attending a school of boys taking a holiday in the grove,
assured us that each fig had to be pierced when it was green, to let
the flies out, in order to make it eatable. But the Egyptians eat them,
flies and all.
The splendors of Alexandria must be sought in books. The traveler will
see scarcely any remains of a magnificence which dazzled the world in
the beginning of our era. He may like to see the mosque that marks the
site of the church of St. Mark, and he may care to look into the Coptic
convent whence the Venetians stole the body of the saint, about a
thousand years ago. Of course we go to see that wonder of our childhood,
Cleopatra's Needles, as the granite obelisks are called that were
brought from Alexandria and set up before a temple of Caesar in the
time of Tiberius. Only one is standing, the other, mutilated, lies prone
beneath the soil. The erect one stands near the shore and in the midst
of hovels and incredible filth. The name of the earliest king it bears
is that of Thothmes III., the great man of Egypt, whose era of conquest
was about 1500 years before St. Mark came on his mission to Alexandria.
The city which has had as many vicissitudes as most cities, boasting
under the Cæsars a population of half a million, that had decreased to
6,000 in 1800, and has now again grown to over two hundred thousand,
seems to be at a waiting point; the merchants complain that the Suez
Canal has killed its trade. Yet its preeminence for noise, dirt and
shabbiness will hardly be disputed; and its bazaars and streets are much
more interesting, perhaps because it is the meeting-place of all races,
than travelers usually admit.
We had scarcely set foot in our hotel when we were saluted and waited
for by dragomans of all sorts. They knocked at our doors, they waylaid
us in the passages; whenever we emerged from our rooms half a dozen
rose up, bowing low; it was like being a small king, with obsequious
attendants waiting every motion. They presented their cards, they begged
we would step aside privately for a moment and look at the bundle of
recommendations they produced; they would not press themselves, but if
we desired a dragoman for the Nile they were at our service. They were
of all shades of color, except white, and of all degrees of oriental
splendor in their costume. There were Egyptians, Nubians, Maltese,
Greeks, Syrians. They speak well all the languages of the Levant and
of Europe, except the one in which you attempt to converse with them. I
never made the acquaintance of so many fine fellows in the same space
of time. All of them had the strongest letters of commendation from
travelers whom they had served, well-known men of letters and of
affairs. Travelers give these endorsements as freely as they sign
applications for government appointments at home.
The name of the handsome dragoman who walked with us through the bazaars
was, naturally enough, Ahmed Abdallah. He wore the red fez (tarboosh)
with a gay kuffia bound about it; an embroidered shirt without collar or
cravat; a long shawl of checked and bright-colored Beyrout silk girding
the loins, in which was carried his watch and heavy chain; a cloth coat;
and baggy silk trousers that would be a gown if they were not split
enough to gather about each ankle. The costume is rather Syrian than
Egyptian, and very elegant when the materials are fine; but with a
suggestion of effeminacy, to Western eyes.
The native bazaars, which are better at Cairo, reveal to the traveler,
at a glance, the character of the Orient; its cheap tinsel, its squalor,
and its occasional richness and gorgeousness. The shops on each side of
the narrow street are little more than good-sized wardrobes, with
room for shelves of goods in the rear and for the merchant to sit
cross-legged in front. There is usually space for a customer to sit with
him, and indeed two or three can rest on the edge of the platform. Upon
cords stretched across the front hang specimens of the wares for sale.
Wooden shutters close the front at night. These little cubbies are not
only the places of sale but of manufacture of goods. Everything goes on
in the view of all the world. The tailor is stitching, the goldsmith is
blowing the bellows of his tiny forge, the saddler is repairing the old
donkey-saddles, the shoemaker is cutting red leather, the brazier is
hammering, the weaver sits at his little loom with the treadle in the
ground—every trade goes on, adding its own clatter to the uproar.
What impresses us most is the good nature of the throng, under trying
circumstances. The street is so narrow that three or four people abreast
make a jam, and it is packed with those moving in two opposing currents.
Through this mass comes a donkey with a couple of panniers of soil or of
bricks, or bundles of scraggly sticks; or a camel surges in, loaded
with building-joists or with lime; or a Turkish officer, with a gaily
caparisoned horse impatiently stamping; a porter slams along with
a heavy box on his back; the water-carrier with his nasty skin rubs
through; the vender of sweetmeats finds room for his broad tray; the
orange-man pushes his cart into the throng; the Jew auctioneer cries
his antique brasses and more antique raiment. Everybody is jostled and
pushed and jammed; but everybody is in an imperturbable good humor, for
no one is really in a hurry, and whatever is, is as it always has been
and will be. And what a cosmopolitan place it is. We meet Turks, Greeks,
Copts, Egyptians, Nubians, Syrians, Armenians, Italians; tattered
derweeshes, “welees” or holy Moslems, nearly naked, presenting the
appearance of men who have been buried a long time and recently dug up;
Greek priests, Jews, Persian Parsees, Algerines, Hindoos, negroes from
Darfoor, and flat-nosed blacks from beyond Khartoom.
The traveler has come into a country of holiday which is perpetual.
Under this sun and in this air there is nothing to do but to enjoy life
and attend to religion five times a day. We look into a mosque; In the
cool court is a fountain for washing; the mosque is sweet and quiet,
and upon its clean matting a row of Arabs are prostrating themselves
in prayer towards the niche that indicates the direction of Mecca. We
stroll along the open streets encountering a novelty at every step.
Here is a musician a Nubian playing upon a sort of tambour on a frame;
a picking, feeble noise he produces, but he is accompanied by the oddest
character we have seen yet. This is a stalwart, wild-eyed son of the
sand, coal-black, with a great mass of uncombed, disordered hair hanging
about his shoulders. His only clothing is a breech-cloth and a round
shaving-glass bound upon his forehead; but he has hung about his waist
heavy strings of goats' hoofs, and those he shakes, in time to the
tambour, by a tremulous motion of his big hips as he minces about.
He seems so vastly pleased with himself that I covet knowledge of his
language, in order to tell him that he looks like an idiot.
Near the Fort Napoleon, a hill by the harbor, we encounter another
scene peculiar to the East. A yellow-skinned, cunning-eyed conjurer has
attracted a ring of idlers about him, who squat in the blowing dust,
under the blazing sun, and patiently watch his antics. The conjurer
himself performs no wonders, but the spectators are a study of color
and feature. The costumes are brilliant red, yellow, and white. The
complexions exhaust the possibilities of human color. I thought I had
seen black people in South Carolina; but I saw a boy just now standing
in a doorway who would have been invisible but for his white shirt; and
here is a fat negress in a bright yellow gown and kerchief, whose
jet face has taken an incredible polish; only the most accomplished
boot-black could raise such a shine on a shoe; tranquil enjoyment oozes
out of her. The conjurer is assisted by two mites of children, a girl
and a boy (no clothing wasted on them), and between the three a great
deal of jabber and whacking with cane sticks is going on, but nothing
is performed except the taking of a long snake from a bag and tying it
round the little girl's neck. Paras are collected, however, and that is
the main object of all performances.
A little further on, another group is gathered around a storyteller,
who is reeling off one of the endless tales in which the Arab delights;
love-adventures, not always the most delicate but none the less enjoyed
for that, or the story of some poor lad who has had a wonderful career
and finally married the Sultan's daughter. He is accompanied in his
narrative by two men thumping upon darabooka drums, in a monotonous,
sleepy fashion, quite in accordance however with the everlasting leisure
that pervades the air. Walking about are the venders of sweets, and of
greasy cakes, who carry tripods on which to rest their brass trays, and
who split the air with their cries.
It is color, color, that makes all this shifting panorama so
fascinating, and hides the nakedness, the squalor, the wretchedness of
all this unconcealed poverty; color in flowing garments, color in the
shops, color in the sky. We have come to the land of the sun.
At night when we walk around the square we stumble over bundles of
rags containing men who are asleep, in all the corners, stretched on
doorsteps, laid away on the edge of the sidewalk. Opposite the hotel is
a casino, which is more Frank than Egyptian. The musicians are all women
and Germans or Bohemians; the waiter-girls are mostly Italian; one of
them says she comes from Bohemia, and has been in India, to which she
proposes to return. The habitués are mostly young Egyptians in Frank
dress except the tarboosh, and Italians, all effeminate fellows. All the
world of loose living and wandering meets here. Italian is much spoken.
There is little that is Oriental here, except it may be a complaisance
toward anything enervating and languidly wicked that Europe has to
offer. This cheap concert is, we are told, all the amusement at night
that can be offered the traveler, by the once pleasure-loving city of
Cleopatra, in the once brilliant Greek capital in which Hypatia was a
star.
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