O CAIRO! Cairo! Masr-el-Kaherah, The Victorious! City of the Caliphs, of
Salah-e'-deen, of the Memlooks! Town of mediaeval romance projected
into a prosaic age! More Oriental than Damascus, or Samarcand. Vast,
sprawling city, with dilapidated Saracenic architecture, pretentious
modern barrack-palaces, new villas and gardens, acres of compacted,
squalid, unsunned dwellings. Always picturesque, lamentably dirty, and
thoroughly captivating.
Shall we rhapsodize over it, or attempt to describe it? Fortunately,
writers have sufficiently done both. Let us enjoy it. We are at
Shepherd's. It is a caravansary through which the world flows. At
its table d'hote are all nations; German princes, English dukes and
shopkeepers, Indian officers, American sovereigns; explorers, savants,
travelers; they have come for the climate of Cairo, they are going
up the Nile, they are going to hunt in Abyssinia, to join an advance
military party on the White Nile; they have come from India, from Japan,
from Australia, from Europe, from America.
We are in the Frank quarter called the Ezbekeëh, which was many years
ago a pond during high water, then a garden with a canal round it, and
is now built over with European houses and shops, except the square
reserved for the public garden. From the old terrace in front of the
hotel, where the traveler used to look on trees, he will see now only
raw new houses and a street usually crowded with passers and rows of
sleepy donkeys and their voluble drivers. The hotel is two stories only,
built round a court, damp in rainy or cloudy weather (and it is learning
how to rain as high up the Nile as Cairo), and lacking the comforts
which invalids require in the winter. It is kept on an ingenious
combination of the American and European plans; that is, the traveler
pays a fixed sum per day and then gets a bill of particulars, besides,
which gives him all the pleasures of the European system. We heard that
one would be more Orientally surrounded and better cared for at the
Hotel du Nil; and the Khedive, who tries his hand at everything, has set
up a New Hotel on the public square; but, somehow, one enters Shepherd's
as easy as he goes into a city gate.
They call the house entirely European. But there are pelicans walking
about in the tropical garden; on one side is the wall of a harem, a
house belonging to the Khedive's mother, a harem with closed shutters,
but uninteresting, because there is no one in it, though ostriches are
strutting in its paved court; in the rear of the house stretches a great
grove of tall date-palms standing in a dusty, débris-strown field—a lazy
wind is always singing through their tops, and a sakiya (a cow-impelled
water-wheel) creaks there day and night; we never lock the doors of our
rooms; long-gowned attendants are always watching in the passages, and,
when we want one, in default of bells, we open the door and clap the
hands. All this, with a juggler performing before the house; dragomans
and servants and merchants in Oriental costume; the monotonous strumming
of an Arab band in a neighboring cafe, bricklayers on the unfinished
house opposite us, working in white night-gowns and turbans, who might
be mistaken at a distance for female sleepwalkers; and from a minaret
not far away, the tenor-voiced muezzins urging us in the most
musical invitation ever extended to unbelievers, to come to prayer at
daylight—this cannot be called European.
An end of the dinner-table, however, is occupied by a loud party of
young Englishmen, a sprinkling of dukes and earls and those attendants
and attentive listeners of the nobility who laugh inordinately when my
lord says a good thing, and are encouraged when my lord laughs loudly at
a sally of theirs and declares, “well, now, that's very good;” a party
who seem to regard Cairo as beyond the line of civilization and its
requirements. They talk loud, roar in laughing, stare at the ladies, and
light their cigars before the latter have withdrawn. My comrade notices
that they call for champagne before fish; we could overlook anything but
that. Some travelers who are annoyed at their boisterousness speak to
the landlord about them, without knowing their rank—supposing that
one could always tell an earl by his superior manners. These young
representatives of England have demanded that the Khedive shall send
them on their hunting-tour in Africa, and he is to do so at considerable
cost; and it is said that he pays their hotel bills in Cairo. The desire
of the Khedive to stand well with all the European powers makes him an
easy prey to any nobleman who does not like to travel in Egypt at his
own expense. (It ought to be added that we encountered on the Nile an
Englishman of high rank who had declined the Khedive's offer of a free
trip).
Cairo is a city of vast distances, especially the new part which is laid
out with broad streets, and built up with isolated houses having perhaps
a garden or a green court; open squares are devoted to fountains and
flower-beds. Into these broad avenues the sun pours, and through them
the dust swirls in clouds; everything is covered with it; it imparts
its grey tint to the town and sifts everywhere its impalpable powder.
No doubt the health of Cairo is greatly improved and epidemics are
lessened, by the destruction of the pestilent old houses and by running
wide streets through the old quarters of twisting lanes and sunless
alleys. But the wide streets are uninteresting, and the sojourner in the
city likes to escape out of their glare and dust into the cool and
shady recesses of the old town. And he has not far to go to do so. A
few minutes walk from the Ezbekeëh brings one into a tangle like the
crossing paths of an ants nest, into the very heart of the smell and
color of the Orient, among people among shops, in the presence of
manners, habits, costumes, occupations, centuries old, into a life in
which the western man recognizes nothing familiar.
Cairo, between the Mokattam hill of limestone and the Nile, covers a
great deal of ground—about three square miles—on which dwell somewhere
from a third to a half of a million of people. The traveler cannot see
its stock-sights in a fortnight, and though he should be there months he
will find something novel in the street-life daily, even though he does
not, as Mr. Lane has so admirably done, make a study of the people. And
“life” goes on in the open streets, to an extent which always surprises
us, however familiar we may be with Italian habits. People eat, smoke,
pray, sleep, carry on all their trades in sight of the passers by—only
into the recesses of the harem and the faces of the women one may not
look. And this last mystery and reserve almost outweighs the openness
of everything else. One feels as if he were in a masquerade; the part of
the world which is really most important—womankind—appears to him only
in shadow and flitting phantasm. What danger is he in from these wrapped
and veiled figures which glide by, shooting him with a dark and perhaps
wicked eye; what peril is he in as he slips through these narrow streets
with their masked batteries of latticed windows! This Eastern life is
all open to the sun; and yet how little of its secrets does the stranger
fathom. I seem to feel, always, in an Eastern town, that there is a mask
of duplicity and concealment behind which the Orientals live; that they
habitually deceive the traveler in his “gropings after truth.”
The best way of getting about Cairo and its environs is on the donkey.
It is cheap and exhilarating. The donkey is easily mounted and easily
got off from; not seldom he will weaken in his hind legs and let his
rider to the ground—a sinking operation which destroys your confidence
in life itself. Sometimes he stumbles and sends the rider over his head.
But the good donkey never does either. He is the best animal, of his
size and appearance, living. He has the two qualities of our greatest
general, patience and obstinacy. The good donkey is easy as a
rocking-chair, sure-footed as a chamois; he can thread any crowd and
stand patiently dozing in any noisy thoroughfare for hours. To ride him
is only a slight compromise of one's independence in walking. One is so
near the ground, and so absent-mindedly can he gaze at what is around
him, that he forgets that there is anything under him. When the donkey,
in the excitement of company on the open street and stimulated by the
whacks and cries of his driver, breaks into the rush of a gallop, there
is so much flying of legs and such a general flutter that the rider
fancies he is getting over the ground at an awful rate, running a
breakneck race; but it does not appear so to an observer. The rider has
the feeling of the swift locomotion of the Arab steed without its danger
or its expense. Besides, a long-legged man, with a cork hat and a flying
linen “duster,” tearing madly along on an animal as big as a sheep, is
an amusing spectacle.
The donkey is abused, whacked, beaten till he is raw, saddled so that
all the straps gall him, hard-ridden, left for hours to be assailed by
the flies in the street, and ridiculed by all men. I wish we could know
what sort of an animal centuries of good treatment would have made of
him. Something no doubt quite beyond human deserts; as it is, he is
simply indispensable in Eastern life. And not seldom he is a pet; he
wears jingling bells and silver ornaments around his neck; his hair is
shaved in spots to give him a variegated appearance, and his mane and
tail are dyed with henna; he has on an embroidered cloth bridle and a
handsome saddle, under which is a scarlet cloth worked with gold. The
length and silkiness of his ears are signs of his gentle breeding. I
could never understand why he is loaded with such an enormous saddle;
the pommel of it rising up in front of the rider as big as a half-bushel
measure. Perhaps it is thought well to put this mass upon his back so
that he will not notice or mind any additional weight.
The donkey's saving quality, in this exacting world, is inertia. And,
yet, he is not without ambition. He dislikes to be passed on the road by
a fellow; and if one attempts it, he is certain to sheer in ahead of
him and shove him off the track. “Donkey jealous one anoder,” say the
drivers.
Each donkey has his driver or attendant, without whose presence, behind
or at the side, the animal ceases to go forward. These boys, and some
of them are men in stature, are the quickest-witted, most importunate,
good-natured vagabonds in this world. They make a study of human nature,
and accurately measure every traveler the moment he appears. They
are agile to do errands, some of them are better guides than the
professionals, they can be entrusted with any purchases you may make,
they run, carrying their slippers in their hand, all day beside the
donkey, and get only a pittance of pay. They are however a jolly,
larkish set, always skylarking with each other, and are not unlike the
newspaper boys of New York; now and then one of them becomes a trader or
a dragoman and makes his fortune.
If you prefer a carriage, good vehicles have become plenty of late
years, since there are broad streets for driving; and some very handsome
equipages are seen, especially towards evening on the Shoobra road, up
and down which people ride and drive to be seen and to see, as they do
in Central or Hyde parks. It is en règle to have a sais running before
the carriage, and it is the “swell thing” to have two of them. The
running sais before a rapidly driven carriage is the prettiest sight in
Cairo. He is usually a slender handsome black fellow, probably a Nubian,
brilliantly dressed, graceful in every motion, running with perfect ease
and able to keep up his pace for hours without apparent fatigue. In the
days of narrow streets his services were indispensable to clear the way;
and even now he is useful in the frequented ways where every one walks
in the middle of the street, and the chattering, chaffing throngs are as
heedless of anything coming as they are of the day of judgment. In red
tarboosh with long tassel, silk and gold embroidered vest and jacket,
colored girdle with ends knotted and hanging at the side, short silk
trousers and bare legs, and long staff, gold-tipped, in the hand, as
graceful in running as Antinous, they are most elegant appendages to a
fashionable turnout. If they could not be naturalized in Central Park,
it might fill some of the requirements of luxury to train a patriot from
the Green Isle to run before the horses, in knee-breeches, flourishing a
shillalah. Faith, I think he would clear the way.
Especially do I like to see the sais coming down the wind before a
carriage of the royal harem. The outriders are eunuchs, two in front
and two behind; they are blacks, dressed in black clothes, European cut,
except the tarboosh. They ride fine horses, English fashion, rising in
the saddle; they have long limbs, lank bodies, cruel, weak faces, and
yet cunning; they are sleek, shiny, emasculated. Having no sex, you
might say they have no souls. How can these anomalies have any virtue,
since virtue implies the opportunity of its opposite? These semblances
of men seem proud enough of their position, however, and of the part
they play to their masters, as if they did not know the repugnance they
excite. The carriage they attend is covered, but the silken hangings of
the glass windows are drawn aside, revealing the white-veiled occupants.
They indeed have no constitutional objections to being seen; the thin
veil enhances their charms, and the observer who sees their painted
faces and bright languishing eyes, no doubt gives them credit for as
much beauty as they possess; and as they flash by, I suppose that every
one, is convinced that he has seen one of the mysterious Circassian or
Georgian beauties.
The minute the traveler shows himself on the hotel terrace, the
donkey-boys clamor, and push forward their animals upon the sidewalk; it
is no small difficulty to select one out of the tangle; there is noise
enough used to fit out an expedition to the desert, and it is not till
the dragoman has laid vigorously about him with his stick that the
way is clear. Your nationality is known at a glance, and a donkey is
instantly named to suit you—the same one being called, indifferently,
“Bismarck” if you are German, “Bonaparte” if you are French, and “Yankee
Doodle” if you are American, or “Ginger Bob” at a venture.
We are going to Boulak, the so-called port of Cairo, to select a
dahabeëh for the Nile voyage. We are indeed only getting ready for this
voyage, and seeing the city by the way. The donkey-boys speak English
like natives—of Egypt. The one running beside me, a handsome boy in a
long cotton shirt, is named, royally, Mahmoud Hassan.
“Are you the brother of Hassan whom I had yesterday?”
“No. He, Hassan not my brother; he better, he friend. Breakfast, lunch,
supper, all together, all same; all same money. We friends.”
Abd-el-Atti, our dragoman, is riding ahead on his grey donkey, and I
have no difficulty in following his broad back and short legs, even
though his donkey should be lost to sight in the press. He rides as
Egyptians do, without stirrups, and uses his heels as spurs. Since
Mohammed Abd-el-Atti Effendi first went up the Nile, it is many years
ago now, with Mr. Wm. C. Prime, and got his name prominently into the
Nile literature, he has grown older, stout, and rich; he is entitled by
his position to the distinction of “Effendi.” He boasts a good family,
as good as any; most of his relatives are, and he himself has been, in
government employ; but he left it because, as he says, he prefers one
master to a thousand. When a boy he went with the embassy of Mohammed
Ali to England, and since that time he has traveled extensively as
courier in Europe and the Levant and as mail-carrier to India. Mr. Prime
described him as having somewhat the complexion and features of the
North American Indian; it is true, but he has a shrewd restless eye,
and very mobile features, quick to image his good humor or the
reverse, breaking into smiles, or clouding over upon his easily aroused
suspicion. He is a good study of the Moslem and the real Oriental,
a combination of the easy, procrastinating fatalism, and yet with a
tindery temper and an activity of body and mind that we do not usually
associate with the East. His prejudices are inveterate, and he is an
unforgiving enemy and a fast, self-sacrificing friend. Not to be driven,
he can always be won by kindness. Fond of money and not forgetting the
last piastre due him, he is generous and lavish to a fault. A devout
Moslem, he has seen too much of the world not to be liberalized. He
knows the Koran and the legendary history of the Arabs, and speaks and
writes Arabic above the average. An exceedingly shrewd observer and
reader of character, and a mimic of other's peculiarities, he is a good
raconteur, in his peculiar English, and capital company. It is, by the
way, worth mentioning what sharp observers all these Eastern people
become, whose business it is to study and humor the whims and
eccentricities of travelers. The western man who thinks that the Eastern
people are childlike or effete, will change his mind after a few months
acquaintance with the shrewd Egyptians. Abd-el-Atti has a good deal of
influence and even authority in his sphere, and although his executive
ability is without system, he brings things to pass. Wherever he goes,
however, there is a ripple and a noise. He would like to go to Nubia
with us this winter, he says, “for shange of air.”
So much is necessary concerning the character who is to be our companion
for many months. No dragoman is better known in the East; he is
the sheykh of the dragomans of Cairo, and by reason of his age and
experience he is hailed on the river as the sultan of the Nile. He
dresses like an Englishman, except his fez.
The great worry of the voyager in Egypt, from the moment he lands, is
about a dragoman; his comfort and pleasure depend very much upon a right
selection. The dragoman and the dahabeëh interest him more than the
sphinx and the great pyramids. Taking strangers up the Nile seems to be
the great business of Egypt, and all the intricacies and tricks of it
are slowly learned. Ignorant of the language and of the character of the
people, the stranger may well be in a maze of doubt and perplexity. His
gorgeously attired dragoman, whose recommendations would fit him to
hold combined the offices of President of the American Bible Society and
caterer for Delmonico, often turns out to be ignorant of his simplest
duties, to have an inhabited but uninhabitable boat, to furnish a meagre
table, and to be a sly knave. The traveler will certainly have no peace
from the importunity of the dragomans until he makes his choice. One
hint can be given: it is always best in a Moslem country to take a
Moslem dragoman.
We are on our way to Boulak. The sky is full of white light. The air
is full of dust; the streets are full of noise color, vivid life and
motion. Everything is flowing, free, joyous. Naturally people fall into
picturesque groups, forming, separating, shifting like scenes on the
stage. Neither the rich silks and brilliant dyes, nor the tattered rags,
and browns and greys are out of place; full dress and nakedness are
equally en régie. Here is a grave, long-bearded merchant in full turban
and silk gown, riding his caparisoned donkey to his shop, followed by
his pipe-bearer; here is a half-naked fellah seated on the rear of his
sorry-eyed beast, with a basket of greens in front of him; here are a
group of women, hunched astride their donkeys, some in white silk and
some in black, shapeless in their balloon mantles, peeping at the world
over their veils; here a handsome sais runs ahead of a carriage with a
fat Turk lolling in it, and scatters the loiterers right and left; there
are porters and beggars fast asleep by the roadside, only their heads
covered from the sun; there are lines of idlers squatting in all-day
leisure by the wall, smoking, or merely waiting for tomorrow.
As we get down to Old Boulak the Saturday market is encountered. All
Egyptian markets occupy the street or some open place, and whatever is
for sale here, is exposed to the dust and the sun; fish, candy, dates,
live sheep, doora, beans, all the doubtful and greasy compounds on brass
trays which the people eat, nuts, raisins, sugar-cane, cheap jewelry.
It is difficult to force a way through the noisy crowd. The donkey-boy
cries perpetually, to clear the way, take care, “shimalak!” to the left,
“yemenak!” to the right, ya! riglak! look out for your left leg, look
out for your right leg, make way boy, make way old woman; but we joggle
the old woman, and just escape stepping on the children and babies
strewn in the street, and tread on the edge of mats spread on the
ground, upon which provisions are exposed (to the dust) for sale. In the
narrow, shabby streets, with dilapidated old balconies meeting overhead,
we encounter loaded camels, donkeys with double panniers, hawkers of
vegetables; and dodge through, bewildered by color and stunned by
noise. What is it that makes all picturesque? More dirt, shabbiness, and
nakedness never were assembled. That fellow who has cut armholes in a
sack for holding nuts, and slipped into it for his sole garment, would
not make a good figure on Broadway, but he is in place here, and as
fitly dressed as anybody. These rascals will wear a bit of old carpet as
if it were a king's robe, and go about in a pair of drawers that are all
rags and strings, and a coarse towel twisted about the head for turban,
with a gay insouciance that is pleasing. In fact, I suppose that a good,
well-fitting black or nice brown skin is about as good as a suit of
clothes.
But O! the wrinkled, flabby-breasted old women, who make a pretence of
drawing the shawl over one eye; the naked, big-stomached children with
spindle legs, who sit in the sand and never brush away the circle of
flies around each gummy eye! The tumble-down houses, kennels in which
the family sleep, the poverty of thousands of years, borne as if it were
the only lot of life! In spite of all this, there is not, I venture to
say, in the world beside, anything so full of color, so gay and bizarre
as a street in Cairo. And we are in a squalid suburb.
At the shore of the swift and now falling Nile, at Boulak, are moored,
four or five deep, the passenger dahabeëhs, more than a hundred of them,
gay with new paint and new carpets, to catch the traveler. There are
small and large, old and new (but all looking new); those that were
used for freight during the summer and may be full of vermin, and those
reserved exclusively for strangers. They can be hired at from sixty
pounds to two hundred pounds a month; the English owner of one
handsomely furnished wanted seven hundred and fifty pounds for a
three-months' voyage. The Nile trip adds luxury to itself every year,
and is getting so costly that only Americans will be able to afford it.
After hours of search we settle upon a boat that will suit us, a large
boat that had only made a short trip, and so new that we are at
liberty to christen it; and the bargaining for it begins. That is, the
bargaining revolves around that boat, but glances off as we depart in a
rage to this or that other, until we appear to me to be hiring half
the craft on the river. We appear to come to terms; again and again
Abd-el-Atti says, “Well, it is finish,” but new difficulties arise.
The owners were an odd pair: a tall Arab in soiled gown and turban,
named Ahmed Aboo Yoosef, a mild and wary Moslem; and Habib Bagdadli, a
furtive little Jew in Frank dress, with a cast in one of his pathetic
eyes and a beseeching look, who spoke bad French fluently. Aboo Yoosef
was ready to come to terms, but Bagdadli stood out; then Bagdadli
acquiesced but Aboo made conditions. Ab-del-Atti alternately coaxed and
stormed; he pulled the Arab's beard; and he put his arm round his neck
and whispered in his ear.
“Come, let us to go, dis Jews make me mad. I can't do anything with dis
little Jews.”
Our dragoman's greatest abhorrence is a Jew. Where is this one from? I
ask.
“He from Algiers.” The Algerian Jews have a bad reputation.
“No, no, monsieur, pas Algiers;” cries the little Jew, appealing to me
with a pitiful look; “I am from Bagdad.” In proof of this there was his
name—Habib Bagdadli.
The bargaining goes on, with fine gesticulation, despairing attitudes,
tones of anger and of grief, violent protestations and fallings into
apathy and dejection. It is Arab against Arab and a Jew thrown in.
“I will have this boat, but I not put you out of the way on it;” says
Abd-el-Atti, and goes at it again.
My sympathies are divided. I can see that the Arab and the Jew will be
ruined if they take what we offer. I know that we shall be ruined if we
give what they ask. This pathetic-eyed little Jew makes me feel that I
am oppressing his race; and yet I am quite certain that he is trying to
overreach us. How the bargain is finally struck I know not, but made it
seems to be, and clinched by Aboo reluctantly pulling his purse from
his bosom and handing Abd-el-Atti a napoleon. That binds the bargain;
instead of the hirer paying something, the lessor gives a pledge.
Trouble, however, is not ended. Certain alterations and additions are to
be made, and it is nearly two weeks before the evasive couple complete
them. The next day they offer us twenty pounds to release them. The pair
are always hanging about for some mitigation or for some advance. The
gentle Jew, who seems to me friendless, always excites the ire of our
dragoman; “Here comes dis little Jews,” he exclaims as he encounters him
in the street, and forces him to go and fulfil some neglected promise.
The boat is of the largest size, and has never been above the Cataract;
the owners guarantee that it can go, and there is put in the contract a
forfeit of a hundred pounds if it will not. We shall see afterwards
how the owners sought to circumvent us. The wiles of the Egyptians are
slowly learned by the open-minded stranger.
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