WE HAVE been learning the language. The language consists merely of
tyeb. With tyeb in its various accents and inflections, you can carry
on an extended conversation. I have heard two Arabs talking for a half
hour, in which one of them used no word for reply or response except
tyeb “good.”
Tyeb is used for assent, agreement, approval, admiration, both
interrogatively and affectionately. It does the duty of the Yankee “all
right” and the vulgarism “that's so” combined; it has as many meanings
as the Italian va bene, or the German So! or the English girl's yes!
yes? ye-e-s, ye-e-as? yes (short), 'n ye-e-es in doubt and really a
negative—ex.:—“How lovely Blanche looks to-night!” “'n ye-e-es.” You may
hear two untutored Americans talking, and one of them, through a long
interchange of views will utter nothing except, “that's so,” “that's
so?” “that's so,” “that's so.” I think two Arabs meeting could come to a
perfect understanding with:
“Tyeb?'
“Tyeb.”
“Tyeb!” (both together).
“Tyeb?” (showing something).
“Tyeb” (emphatically, in admiration).
“Tyeb” (in approval of the other's admiration).
“Tyeb Ketér” (“good, much”).
“Tyeb Keter?”
“Tyeb.”
“Tyeb.” (together, in ratification of all that has been said).
I say tyeb in my satisfaction with you; you say tyeb in pleasure at my
satisfaction; I say tyeb in my pleasure at your pleasure. The
servant says tyeb when you give him an order; you say tyeb upon his
comprehending it. The Arabic is the richest of languages. I believe
there are three hundred names for earth, a hundred for lion, and so
on. But the vocabulary of the common people is exceedingly limited. Our
sailors talk all day with the aid of a very few words.
But we have got beyond tyeb. We can say eiwa (“yes”)—or nam, when we
wish to be elegant—and la (“no”). The universal negative in Nubia,
however, is simpler than this—it is a cluck of the tongue in the left
check and a slight upward jerk of the head. This cluck and jerk makes
“no,” from which there is no appeal. If you ask a Nubian the price
of anything—be-kam dee?—and he should answer khamsa (“five”), and you
should offer thelata (“three”), and he should kch and jerk up his
head, you might know the trade was hopeless; because the kch expresses
indifference as well as a negative. The best thing you could do would be
to say bookra (“to-morrow”), and go away—meaning in fact to put off the
purchase forever, as the Nubian very well knows when he politely adds,
tyeb.
But there are two other words necessary to be mastered before the
traveller can say he knows Arabic. To the constant call for “backsheesh”
and the obstructing rabble of beggars and children, you must be able to
say mafeesh (“nothing”), and im'shee (“getaway,” “clear out,” “scat.”)
It is my experience that this im'shee is the most necessary word in
Egypt.
We do nothing all day but drift, or try to drift, against the north
wind, not making a mile an hour, constantly turning about, floating from
one side of the river to the other. It is impossible to row, for the
steersman cannot keep the boat's bow to the current.
There is something exceedingly tedious, even to a lazy and resigned man,
in this perpetual drifting hither and thither. To float, however slowly,
straight down the current, would be quite another thing. To go sideways,
to go stern first, to waltz around so that you never can tell which bank
of the river you are looking at, or which way you are going, or what the
points of the compass are, is confusing and unpleasant. It is the
one serious annoyance of a dahabeëh voyage. If it is calm, we go on
delightfully with oars and current; if there is a southerly breeze
we travel rapidly, and in the most charming way in the world. But our
high-cabined boats are helpless monsters in this wind, which continually
blows; we are worse than becalmed, we are badgered.
However, we might be in a worse winter country, and one less
entertaining. We have just drifted in sight of a dahabeëh, with the
English flag, tied up to the bank. On the shore is a picturesque crowd;
an awning is stretched over high poles; men are busy at something under
it—on the rock near sits a group of white people under umbrellas. What
can it be? Are they repairing a broken yard? Are they holding a court
over some thief? Are they performing some mystic ceremony? We take the
sandal and go to investigate.
An English gentleman has shot two crocodiles, and his people are
skinning them, stuffing the skin, and scraping the flesh from the bones,
preparing the skeletons for a museum. Horrible creatures they are, even
in this butchered condition. The largest is twelve feet long; that is
called a big crocodile here; but last winter the gentleman killed one
that was seventeen feet long; that was a monster.
In the stomach of one of these he found two pairs of bracelets, such
as are worn by Nubian children, two “cunning” little leathern bracelets
ornamented with shells—a most useless ornament for a crocodile.
The animal is becoming more and more shy every year, and it is very
difficult to get a shot at one. They come out in the night, looking for
bracelets. One night we nearly lost Ahmed, one of our black boys; he had
gone down upon the rudder, when an enquiring crocodile came along and
made a snap at him—when the boy climbed on deck he looked white even by
starlight.
The invulnerability of the crocodile hide is exaggerated. One of these
had two bullet-holes in his back. His slayer says he has repeatedly put
bullets through the hide on the back.
When we came away we declined steaks, but the owner gave us some eggs,
so that we might raise our own crocodiles.
Gradually we drift out of this almost utterly sterile country, and come
to long strips of palm-groves, and to sakiyas innumerable, shrieking on
the shore every few hundred feet. We have time to visit a considerable
village, and see the women at their other occupation (besides
lamentation) braiding each other's hair; sitting on the ground,
sometimes two at a head, patiently twisting odds and ends of loose hair
into the snaky braids, and muddling the whole with sand, water,
and clay, preparatory to the oil. A few women are spinning with a
hand-spindle and producing very good cotton-thread. All appear to have
time on their hands. And what a busy place this must be in summer, when
the heat is like that of an oven! The men loaf about like the women, and
probably do even less. Those at work are mostly slaves, boys and girls
in the slightest clothing; and even these do a great deal of “standing
round.” Wooden hoes are used.
The desert over which we walked beyond the town was very different
from the Libyan with its drifts and drifts of yellow sand. We went over
swelling undulations (like our rolling prairies), cut by considerable
depressions, of sandstone with a light sand cover but all strewn with
shale or shingle. This black shale is sometimes seen adhering like a
layer of glazing to the coarse rock; and, though a part of the rock, it
has the queer appearance of having been a deposit solidified upon it and
subsequently broken off. On the tops of these hills we found everywhere
holes scooped out by the natives in search of nitre; the holes showed
evidence, in dried mud, of the recent presence of water.
We descended into a deep gorge, in which the rocks were broken
squarely down the face, exhibiting strata of red, white, and variegated
sandstone; the gorge was a Wady that ran far back into the country among
the mountains; we followed it down to a belt of sunt acacias and palms
on the river. This wady was full of rocks, like a mountain stream
at home; a great torrent running long in it, had worn the rocks into
fantastic shapes, cutting punch-bowls and the like, and water had
recently dried in the hollows. But it had not rained on the river.
This morning we are awakened by loud talking and wrangling on deck,
that sounds like a Paris revolution. We have only stopped for milk! The
forenoon we spend among the fashionable ladies of Derr, the capital of
Nubia, studying the modes, in order that we may carry home the latest.
This is an aristocratic place. One of the eight-hundred-years-old
sycamore trees, of which we made mention, is still vigorous and was
bearing the sycamore fig. The other is in front of a grand mud-house
with latticed windows, the residence of the Kashefs of Sultan Selim
whose descendants still occupy it, and, though shorn of authority, are
said to be proud of their Turkish origin. One of them, Hassan Kashef, an
old man in the memory of our dragoman, so old that he had to lift up
his eyelids with his finger when he wanted to see, died only a few years
ago. This patriarch had seventy-two wives as his modest portion in this
world; and as the Koran allows only four, there was some difficulty in
settling the good man's estate. The matter was referred to the Khedive,
but he wisely refused to interfere. When the executor came to divide the
property among the surviving children, he found one hundred and five to
share the inheritance.
The old fellow had many other patriarchal ways. On his death-bed he left
a legacy of both good and evil wishes, requests to reward this friend,
and to “serve out” that enemy, quite in the ancient style, and in the
Oriental style, recalling the last recorded words of King David, whose
expiring breath was an expression of a wish for vengeance upon one of
his enemies, whom he had sworn not to kill. It reads now as if it might
have been spoken by a Bedawee sheykh to his family only yesterday:—“And,
behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of
Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day when I went to
Mahanaim; but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him
by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword. Now
therefore hold him not guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and knowest
what thou oughtest to do unto him; but his hoar head bring thou down to
the grave with blood. So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in
the city of David.”
We call at the sand-covered temple at A'mada, and crawl into it; a very
neat little affair, with fresh color and fine sculptures, and as old as
the time of Osirtasen III. (the date of the obelisk of Heliopolis, of
the Tombs of Beni Hassan, say about fifteen hundred years before Rameses
II.); and then sail quickly down to Korosko, passing over in an hour or
so a distance that required a day and a half on the ascent.
At Korosko there are caravans in from Kartoom; the camel-drivers wear
monstrous silver rings, made in the interior, the crown an inch high and
set with blood-stone. I bought from the neck of a pretty little boy
a silver “charm,” a flat plate with the name of Allah engraved on it.
Neither the boy nor the charm had been washed since they came into
being.
The caravan had brought one interesting piece of freight, which had
just been sent down the river. It was the head of the Sultan of Darfoor,
preserved in spirits, and forwarded to the Khedive as a present. This
was to certify that the Sultan was really killed, when Darfoor was
captured by the army of the Viceroy; though I do not know that there is
any bounty on the heads of African Sultans. It is an odd gift to send to
a ruler who wears the European dress and speaks French, and whose chief
military officers are Americans.
The desolate hills behind Korosko rise a thousand feet, and we climbed
one of the peaks to have a glimpse of the desert route and the country
towards Kartoom. I suppose a more savage landscape does not exist. The
peak of black disintegrated rocks on which we stood was the first of an
assemblage of such as far as we could see south; the whole horizon was
cut by these sharp peaks; and through these thickly clustering hills the
caravan trail made its way in sand and powdered dust. Shut in from
the breeze, it must be a hard road to travel, even with a winter sun
multiplying its rays from all these hot rocks; in the summer it would be
frightful. But on these summits, or on any desert swell, the air is
an absolute elixir of life; it has a quality of lightness but not the
rarity that makes respiration difficult.
At a village below Korosko we had an exhibition of the manner of
fighting with the long Nubian war-spear and the big round shield made of
hippopotamus-hide. The men jumped about and uttered frightening cries,
and displayed more agility than fight, the object being evidently to
terrify by a threatening aspect; but the scene was as barbarous as any
we see in African pictures. Here also was a pretty woman (pretty for
her) with beautiful eyes, who wore a heavy nose-ring of gold, which she
said she put on to make her face beautiful; nevertheless she would sell
the ring for nine dollars and a half. The people along here will
sell anything they have, ornaments, charms to protect them from the
evil-eye,—they will part with anything for money. At this village we
took on a crocodile ten feet long, which had been recently killed, and
lashed it to the horizontal yard. It was Abd-el-Atti's desire to present
it to a friend in Cairo, and perhaps he was not reluctant, when we
should be below the cataract, to have it take the appearance, in the
eyes of spectators, of having been killed by some one on this boat.
We obtained above Korosko one of the most beautiful animals in the
world—a young gazelle—to add to our growing menagerie; which consists
of a tame duck, who never gets away when his leg is tied; a timid desert
hare, who has lived for a long time in a tin box in the cabin, trembling
like an aspen leaf night and day; and a chameleon.
The chameleon ought to have a chapter to himself. We have reason to
think that he has the soul of some transmigrating Egyptian. He is the
most uncanny beast. We have made him a study, and find very little good
in him. His changeableness of color is not his worst quality. He has the
nature of a spy, and he is sullen and snappish besides. We discovered
that his color is not a purely physical manifestation, but that it
depends upon his state of mind, upon his temper. When everything is
serene, he is green as a May morning, but anger changes him instantly
for the worse. It is however true that he takes his color mainly from
the substance upon which he dwells, not from what he eats; for he eats
flies and allows them to make no impression on his exterior. When he was
taken off an acacia-tree, this chameleon was of the bright-green color
of the leaves. Brought into our cabin, his usual resting-place was on
the reddish maroon window curtains, and his green changed muddily into
the color of the woollen. When angry, he would become mottled with dark
spots, and have a thick cloudy color. This was the range of his changes
of complexion; it is not enough (is it?) to give him his exaggerated
reputation.
I confess that I almost hated him, and perhaps cannot do him justice.
He is a crawling creature at best, and his mode of getting about is
disagreeable; his feet have the power of clinging to the slightest
roughness, and he can climb anywhere; his feet are like hands; besides,
his long tail is like another hand; it is prehensile like the monkey's.
He feels his way along very carefully, taking a turn with his tail about
some support, when he is passing a chasm, and not letting go until his
feet are firmly fixed on something else. And, then, the way he uses his
eye is odious. His eye-balls are stuck upon the end of protuberances on
his head, which protuberances work like ball-and-socket joints—as if
you had your eye on the end of your finger. When he wants to examine
anything, he never turns his head; he simply swivels his eye round and
brings it to bear on the object. Pretending to live in cold isolation on
the top of a window curtain, he is always making clammy excursions round
the cabin, and is sometimes found in our bed-chambers. You wouldn't like
to feel his cold tail dragging over you in the night.
The first question every morning, when we come to breakfast, is,
“Where is that chameleon?”
He might be under the table, you know, or on the cushions, and you might
sit on him. Commonly he conceals his body behind the curtain, and just
lifts his head above the roller. There he sits, spying us, gyrating his
evil eye upon us, and never stirring his head; he takes the color of
the curtain so nearly that we could not see him if it was not for that
swivel eye. It is then that he appears malign, and has the aspect of a
wise but ill-disposed Egyptian whose soul has had ill luck in getting
into any respectable bodies for three or four thousand years. He lives
upon nothing,—you would think he had been raised in a French pension.
Few flies happen his way; and, perhaps he is torpid out of the sun so
much of the time, he is not active to catch those that come. I carried
him a big one the other day, and he repaid my kindness by snapping my
finger. And I am his only friend.
Alas, the desert hare, whom we have fed with corn, and greens, and tried
to breed courage in for a long time, died this morning at an early hour;
either he was chilled out of the world by the cold air on deck, or he
died of palpitation of the heart; for he was always in a flutter of
fear, his heart going like a trip-hammer, when anyone approached him.
He only rarely elevated his long silky ears in a serene enjoyment of
society. His tail was too short, but he was, nevertheless, an animal to
become attached to.
Speaking of Hassan Kashef's violation of the Moslem law, in taking more
than four wives, is it generally known that the women in Mohammed's
time endeavored also to have the privileges of men? Forty women who
had cooked for the soldiers who were fighting the infidels and had done
great service in the campaign, were asked by the Prophet to name their
reward. The chief lady, who was put forward to prefer the request of
the others, asked that as men were permitted four wives women might be
allowed to have four husbands. The Prophet gave them a plain reason for
refusing their petition, and it has never been renewed. The legend shows
that long ago women protested against their disabilities.
The strong north wind, with coolish weather, continues. On Sunday we are
nowhere in particular, and climb a high sandstone peak, and sit in the
shelter of a rock, where wandering men have often come to rest. It is a
wild, desert place, and there is that in the atmosphere of the day which
leads to talk of the end of the world.
Like many other Moslems, Abd-el-Atti thinks that these are the
last days, bad enough days, and that the end draws near. We have
misunderstood what Mr. Lane says about Christ coming to “judge” the
world. The Moslems believe that Christ, who never died, but was taken up
into heaven away from the Jews,—a person in his likeness being crucified
in his stead,—will come to rule, to establish the Moslem religion and a
reign of justice (the Millenium); and that after this period Christ will
die, and be buried in Medineh, not far from Mohammed. Then the world
will end, and Azrael, the angel of death, will be left alone on the
earth for forty days. He will go to and fro, and find no one; all will
be in their graves. Then Christ and Mohammed and all the dead will rise.
But the Lord God will be the final judge of all.
“Yes, there have been many false prophets. A man came before Haroun e'
Rasheed pretending to be a prophet.
“'What proof have you that you are one? What miracle can you do?'.rdquo;
“'Anything you like.'.rdquo;
“'Christ, on whom be peace, raised men from the dead.'.rdquo;
“'So will I.' This took place before the king and the chief-justice.
'Let the head of the chief-justice be cut off,' said the pretended
prophet, 'and I will restore him to life.'.rdquo;
“'Oh,' cried the chief-justice, 'I believe that the man is a real
prophet. Anyone who does not believe can have his head cut off, and try
it.'.rdquo;
“A woman also claimed to be a prophetess. 'But,' said the Khalif Haroun
e' Rasheed, 'Mohammed declared that he was the last man who should be a
prophet.'.rdquo;
“'He didn't say that a woman shouldn't be,' the woman she answer.”
The people vary in manners and habits here from village to village, much
more than we supposed they would. Walking this morning for a couple of
miles through the two villages of Maharraka—rude huts scattered under
palm-trees—we find the inhabitants, partly Arab, partly Barabra, and
many negro slaves, more barbaric than any we have seen; boys and girls,
till the marriageable age, in a state of nature, women neither so shy
nor so careful about covering themselves with clothing as in other
places, and the slaves wretchedly provided for. The heads of the young
children are shaved in streaks, with long tufts of hair left; the women
are loaded with tawdry necklaces, and many of them, poor as they
are, sport heavy hoops of gold in the nose, and wear massive silver
bracelets.
The slaves, blacks and mulattoes, were in appearance like those seen
formerly in our southern cotton-fields. I recall a picture, in abolition
times, representing a colored man standing alone, and holding up his
arms, in a manner beseeching the white man, passing by, to free him.
To-day I saw the picture realized. A very black man, standing nearly
naked in the midst of a bean-field, raised up both his arms, and cried
aloud to us as we went by. The attitude had all the old pathos in it.
As the poor fellow threw up his arms in a wild despair, he cried
“Backsheesh, backsheesh, O! howadji!”
For the first time we found the crops in danger. The country was overrun
with reddish-brown locusts, which settled in clouds upon every green
thing; and the people in vain attempted to frighten them from their
scant strip of grain. They are not, however, useless. The attractive
women caught some, and, pulling off the wings and legs, offered them to
us to eat. They said locusts were good; and I suppose they are such as
John the Baptist ate. We are not Baptists.
As we go down the river we take in two or three temples a day, besides
these ruins of humanity in the village,—-Dakkeh, Gerf Hossâyn, Dendoor.
It is easy to get enough of these second-class temples. That at
Gerf Hossâyn is hewn in the rock, and is in general arrangement like
Ipsambool—it was also made by Rameses II.—but is in all respects
inferior, and lacks the Colossi. I saw sitting in the adytum four
figures whom I took to be Athos, Parthos, Aramis, and D'Artignan—though
this edifice was built long before the day of the “Three Guardsmen.”
The people in the village below have such a bad reputation that the
dragoman in great fright sent sailors after us, when he found we were
strolling through the country alone. We have seen no natives so well
off in cattle, sheep, and cooking-utensils, or in nose-rings, beads, and
knives; they are, however, a wild, noisy tribe, and the whole village
followed us for a mile, hooting for backsheesh. The girls wear a
nose-ring and a girdle; the boys have no rings or girdles. The men are
fierce and jealous of their wives, perhaps with reason, stabbing and
throwing them into the river on suspicion, if they are caught talking
with another man. So they say. At this village we saw pits dug in the
sand (like those described in the Old Testament), in which cattle, sheep
and goats were folded; it being cheaper to dig a pit than to build a
stone fence.
At Kalâbshee are two temples, ruins on a sufficiently large scale to
be imposing; sculptures varied in character and beautifully colored;
propylons with narrow staircases, and concealed rooms, and deep windows
bespeaking their use as fortifications and dungeons as well as temples;
and columns of interest to the architect; especially two, fluted (time
of Rameses II.) with square projecting abacus like the Doric, but
with broad bases. The inhabitants are the most pestilent on the river,
crowding their curiosities upon us, and clamoring for money. They have
for sale gazelle-horns, and the henna (which grows here), in the form of
a green powder.
However, Kalâbshee has educational facilities. I saw there a boys'
school in full operation. In the open air, but in the sheltering angle
of a house near the ruins, sat on the ground the schoolmaster. Behind
him leaned his gun against the wall; before him lay an open Koran; and
in his hand he held a thin palm rod with which he enforced education. He
was dictating sentences from the book to a scrap of a scholar, a boy who
sat on the ground, with an inkhorn beside him, and wrote the sentences
on a board slate, repeating the words in aloud voice as he wrote. Nearby
was another urchin, seated before a slate leaning against the angle of
of the wall, committing the writing on it to memory, in a loud voice
also. When he looked off the stick reminded him to attend to his slate.
I do not know whether he calls this a private or a public school.
Quitting these inhospitable savages as speedily as we can, upon the
springing up of a south wind, we are going down stream at a spanking
rate, leaving a rival dahabeëh, belonging to an English lord, behind,
when the adversary puts it into the head of our pilot to steer across
the river, and our prosperous career is suddenly arrested on a sandbar.
We are fast, and the English boat, keeping in the channel, shows us her
rudder and disappears round the bend.
Extraordinary confusion follows; the crew are in the water, they are on
deck, the anchor is got out, there are as many opinions, as people, and
no one obeys. The long pilot is a spectacle, after he has been wading
about in the stream and comes on deck. His gown is off and his turban
also; his head is shaved; his drawers are in tatters like lace-work. He
strides up and down beating his breast, his bare poll shining in the
sun like a billiard ball. We are on the sand nearly four hours, and the
accident, causing us to lose this wind, loses us, it so happens, three
days. By dark we tie up near the most excruciating Sakiya in the world.
It is suggested to go on shore and buy the property and close it out.
But the boy who is driving will neither sell nor stop his cattle.
At Gertassee we have more ruins and we pass a beautiful, single column,
conspicuous for a long distance over the desert, as fine as the once
“nameless column” in the Roman forum, These temples, or places of
worship, are on the whole depressing. There was no lack of religious
privileges if frequency of religious edifices gave them. But the people
evidently had no part in the ceremonies, and went never into these dark
chambers, which are now inhabited by bats. The old religion does not
commend itself to me. Of what use would be one of these temples on
Asylum Hill, in Hartford, and how would the Rev. Mr. Twichell busy
himself in its dark recesses, I wonder, even with the help of the
deacons and the committee? The Gothic is quite enough for us.
This morning—we have now entered upon the month of February—for the
first time in Nubia, we have early a slight haze, a thin veil of it; and
passing between shores rocky and high and among granite breakers, we
are reminded of the Hudson river on a June morning. A strong north wind,
however, comes soon to puff away this illusion, and it blows so hard
that we are actually driven up-stream.
The people and villages under the crumbling granite ledges that this
delay enables us to see, are the least promising we have encountered;
women and children are more nearly barbarians in dress and manners; for
the women, a single strip of brown cotton, worn à la Bedawee, leaving
free the legs, the right arm and breast, is a common dress. And yet,
some of these women are not without beauty. One pretty girl sitting on
a rock, the sun glistening on the castor-oil of her hair, asked for
backsheesh in a sweet voice, her eyes sparkling with merriment. A flower
blooming in vain in this desert!
Is it a question of “converting” these people? Certainly, nothing but
the religion of the New Testament, put in practice here, bringing in
its train, industry, self-respect, and a desire to know, can awaken the
higher nature, and lift these creatures into a respectable womanhood.
But the task is more difficult than it would be with remote tribes in
Central Africa. These people have been converted over and over again.
They have had all sorts of religions during the last few thousand years,
and they remain essentially the same. They once had the old Egyptian
faith, whatever it was; and subsequently they varied that with the
Greek and Roman shades of heathenism. They then accepted the early
Christianity, as the Abyssinians did, and had, for hundreds of years,
opportunity of Christian worship, when there were Christian churches
all along the Nile from Alexander to Meroë, and holy hermits in every
eligible cave and tomb. And then came Mohammed's friends, giving them
the choice of belief or martyrdom, and they embraced the religion of
Mecca as cordially as any other.
They have remained essentially unchanged through all their changes. This
hopelessness of their condition is in the fact that in all the shiftings
of religions and of dynasties, the women have continued to soak their
hair in castor-oil. The fashion is as old as the Nile world. Many people
look upon castor-oil as an excellent remedy. I should like to know what
it has done for Africa.
At Dabod is an interesting ruin, and a man sits there in front of his
house, weaving, confident that no rain will come to spoil his yarn.
He sits and works the treadle of his loom in a hole in the ground, the
thread being stretched out twenty or thirty feet on the wall before
him. It is the only industry of the village, and a group of natives are
looking on. The poor weaver asks backsheesh, and when I tell him I have
nothing smaller than an English sovereign, he says he can change it!
Here we find also a sort of Holly-Tree Inn, a house for charitable
entertainment, such as is often seen in Moslem villages. It is a square
mud-structure, entered by two doors, and contains two long rooms with
communicating openings. The dirt-floors are cleanly swept and fresh mats
are laid down at intervals. Any stranger or weary traveler, passing
by, is welcome to come in and rest or pass the night, to have a cup of
coffee and some bread. There are two cleanly dressed attendants, and
one of them is making coffee, within, over a handful of fire, in a
tiny coffee-pot. In front, in the sun, on neat mats, sit half a dozen
turbaned men, perhaps tired wanderers and pilgrims in this world, who
have turned aside to rest for an hour, for a day, or for a week. They
appear to have been there forever. The establishment is maintained by
a rich man of the place; but signs of an abode of wealth we failed to
discover in any of the mud-enclosures.
When we are under way again, we express surprise at finding here such an
excellent charity.
“You no think the Lord he take care for his own?” says Abd-el-Atti.
“When the kin' [king] of Abyssinia go to 'stroy the Kaabeh in Mecca”—
“Did you ever see the Kaabeh?”
“Many times. Plenty times I been in Mecca.”
“In what part of the Kaabeh is the Black Stone?”
“So. The Kaabeh is a building like a cube, about, I think him, thirty
feet high, built in the middle of the mosque at Mecca. It was built by
Abraham, of white marble. In the outside the east wall, near the corner,
'bout so (four feet) high you find him, the Black Stone, put there by
Abraham, call him haggeh el ashad, the lucky, the fortunate stone. It is
opposite the sunrise. Where Abraham get him? God knows. If any one sick,
he touch this stone, be made so well as he was. So I hunderstand.
The Kaabeh is in the centre of the earth, and has fronts to the four
quarters of the globe, Asia, Hindia, Egypt, all places, toward which
the Moslem kneel in prayer. Near the Kaabeh is the well, the sacred well
Zem-Zem, has clear water, beautiful, so lifely. One time a year, in the
month before Ramadan, Zem-Zem spouts up high in the air, and people come
to drink of it. When Hagar left Ishmael, to look for water, being very
thirsty, the little fellow scratched with his fingers in the sand, and a
spring of water rushed up; this is the well Zem-Zem. I told you the same
water is in the spring in Syria, El Gebel; I find him just the same;
come under the earth from Zem-Zem.”
“When the kin' of Abyssinia, who not believe, what you call infidel,
like that Englishman, yes, Mr. Buckle, I see him in Sinai and Petra—very
wise man, know a great deal, very nice gentleman, I like him very much,
but I think he not believe—when the kin' of Abyssinia came with all his
great army and his elephants to fight against Mecca, and to 'stroy the
Kaabeh as well the same time to carry off all the cattle of the people,
then the people they say, 'the cattle are ours, but the Kaabeh is the
Lord's, and he will have care over it; the Kaabeh is not ours.' There
was one of the elephants of the kin' of Abyssinia, the name of Mahmoud,
and he was very wise, more wise than anybody else. When he came in sight
of Mecca, he turned back and went the other way, and not all the spears
and darts of the soldiers could stop him. The others went on. Then the
Lord sent out of the hell very small birds, with very little stones,
taken out of hell, in their claws, no larger than mustard seeds; and
the birds dropped these on the heads of the soldiers that rode on the
elephants—generally three or four on an elephant. The little seeds went
right down through the men and through the elephants, and killed them,
and by this the army was 'stroyed.”
“When the kin', after that, come into the mosque, some power outside
himself made him to bow down in respect to the Kaabeh. He went away and
did not touch it. And it stands there the same now.”
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