THE HIGHWAY OF EGYPT
Of course you have been in a cinematograph theatre, and there, seated
comfortably, have watched the various scenes pass before you. The great
charm of these scenes is that the people really did do the things which
we here see them doing, even down to the smallest gestures. But often
the pleasure is spoilt by knowing that the actors were only making these
gestures for the purpose of being photographed; also the scenes are
sometimes disconnected and scrappy, and seldom indeed is it that they
are represented in colour, and then, though the colour is clever enough,
it is not like that of nature.
To-day we are watching a cinematograph which has none of these
drawbacks. We are seated in a leather-lined railway carriage running
from Cairo southward up the country to a place called Luxor, and passing
before us every minute are vivid pictures of the life of Egypt. The
railway runs along the middle of Egypt, just as the Nile does, but we do
not often see the river from the line, for at this time of the year it
flows low down between its banks. It is on the other side of the railway
that the main interest lies. Here there is a canal as straight as the
line and close beside it, and on the far side of it is a sort of raised
tow-path--the great highway of Egypt. We see it against a fringe of
bushy palm trees at one minute, and the next against a field of tall,
green-growing stuff, which looks exactly like those rushes found on the
banks of our own rivers. This, however, is maize, or, as you probably
know it better, Indian corn, which forms the staple food of the people.
The brown feathery heads wave in the wind, but the corn itself is tucked
away in the thickness of the stalk. You must have seen a "cob" of Indian
corn some time, with all the flat yellow grains nestling in a honeycomb
of little cells. To-day in Egypt you will see everyone eating them; even
the solemn baby seated astride its mother's shoulder picks out the
grains and nibbles them like a little monkey. The straw part of the
plant is used for many things: it feeds the numerous domestic animals of
the Egyptians to begin with--the donkeys, camels, buffaloes, bullocks,
goats--and it forms thatch for the huts and makes bedding.
Notice that man over there in the field; his cotton gown is of the
purest blue, which shows up richly against the vivid green of the maize
stalks. There is another seated far back on the rump of a small donkey
who is tripping along on its stiff little legs. It wears no harness of
any kind beyond a cord round its neck, which enables anyone to catch
hold of it. The man has no saddle and he holds his long legs straight
forward to prevent his feet from touching the ground, and from time to
time he guides or goads the donkey with a little sharp-pointed stick.
Close behind him, walking fast to keep up, is a tall woman in black with
a black shawl covering her mouth, her dress is a mass of grey dust as
far as the waist, and drags up the dust in clouds as she moves. On her
head is a large bundle and on her hip a large baby. She is the wife of
the lordly individual riding so comfortably ahead, and she takes this
state of affairs as a matter of course. The scene arouses anger in the
breast of a nice American with a grey moustache and keen grey eyes, who
shares our compartment.
[Illustration: "MAN AND WIFE."]
"So long as they treat their womenfolk like that they'll never rise to
anything better," he says emphatically. "The higher the civilisation of
a nation is the higher the position of its women. A nation of men who
ride and let the women carry the burdens is bound to be rotten and
flabby."
Next there passes across our window-frame a flock of goats, but they are
not much like those we know--they are dark brown and black, with thick
rough coats and cheeky tufted tails; numbers of kids dance up and down
the steep sides of the tow-path after the manner of kids all the world
over. A small boy, dressed in what appears to be a striped flannel
night-shirt, with a tiny skull-cap on his head, is driving them. He
pulls his single garment up to his waist as he dances and pirouettes as
if the joy of living were almost too much for him. He is enveloped in a
cloud of dust raised by the goats, but he snatches handfuls of the dust
from the ground and flings it in the air around as if he could never get
enough of it!
"The Lady of Shalott," in Tennyson's poem, who watched in her mirror all
who went down to Camelot, cannot ever have seen anything half so
interesting as this.
Presently we meet a long string of fine-looking camels, one of them pure
white; they are fastened by a connecting rope and so covered with loads
of bristling twigs that each looks like a walking bush, out of which the
great padded feet are planted with deliberate steps and the haughty
heads swaying at the ends of the long necks stick out. It is the scrub
of the cotton bush that they are carrying; you will see fields of it
presently, some of it bursting into fluffy pods, for cotton growing is
one of the most extensive and profitable of Egyptian industries. The
twigs and branches are used as fuel by the people, who have a happy
knack of letting nothing be wasted.
"I never!" exclaims the American. "If that isn't like them!" We are
overtaking a second string of camels, precisely similar to the first,
and similarly laden, stepping gingerly and protestingly in the opposite
direction from the first, having just passed them. "Why couldn't they
arrange things better?" demands the American. "If one lot is going this
way and the other that, an exchange would have saved time and labour."
In America labour is costly and all sorts of inventions for saving time
have been invented; in this eastern land time is of no value at all, and
a man working all day in the fields is content to earn a shilling.
Perhaps the contrast with their own country is the reason of the
fascination Egypt has for Americans!
What are those strange-looking beasts mincing along like gigantic
peacocks? As we draw nearer we see that they are camels too, each
bearing a load of sword-bladed leaves, which hang down over their
hindquarters exactly like the folded fan-tail of a peacock. Upon my
word I never noticed it before, but a camel walks just like a peacock,
with the same hesitating "Don't-care-a-hang-for-you" stride. The bundles
so arranged hide the animals' hind legs and bring out the resemblance.
But what is it they are carrying? Not maize stalks this time, nor bushy
cotton twigs, for these stalks are a dull crimson at the upper end. It
is sugar-cane, which grows in quantities here, and forms a more
profitable crop than maize. You will see it sold at the stations; the
people buy it, and, breaking off a joint, eat it with pleasure.
We cannot tear ourselves away from this fascinating window even for a
moment; far in the distance across the green fields and waving palm
trees we see glimpses of the desert, looking pinkish-yellow, and rising
up in it, changing with every mile we travel, are many pyramids, not
only those famous ones at Gizeh we visited yesterday, but others
stretching farther and farther away. You will notice that the favourite
colour for the dress of the peasants, or fellaheen, as they are called,
is a glorious blue, but that all the women are in black--most unsuitable
of hues, as they live and move and have their being amid drab-coloured
dust; khaki would be much better.
As our breakfast, though better than that in France, was nothing so very
wonderful, we begin to feel hungry, and are ready to go along early to
the luncheon-car; we had a good dinner in that one on the train coming
up from Port Said to Cairo, and anticipate something of the same kind.
As we get up the American remarks casually, "Best pull in your belts and
have a smoke--there isn't any."
No luncheon-car! No means of getting any kind of refreshment on the
train! And we, having started at eight, are in for a journey of fourteen
hours! Lively this! It is one of the little incidental discomforts of
travel! The American is in the same plight himself. But he found out
soon after we started that there was no restaurant-car; it only runs
three times a week, for the season hasn't begun yet!
We call the Egyptian attendant to find out if there is any prospect of
buying anything on the way. He stands grinning very affably but doesn't
understand a word of English. Presently, however, he seems to
understand, and dashes off, to return triumphantly with a feather-brush
in his hand with which he violently flops the seats of the carriages and
all our personal belongings until we are choked and smothered with the
dust.
In English fashion we have kept the windows open, not realising that in
this country it is impossible, and that slowly we have been silted up
with a layer of fine soft dust; but we didn't feel the inconvenience of
it much until this idiot stirred it up and made it unendurable.
Having accomplished this great feat he stands still, grinning and
holding out a broad palm. Officials on the trains are probably forbidden
to utter the wicked word "Bakshish," meaning tips, but they can ask
quite as well without it.
Having got rid of him, we turn in despair to the station at which we
have just pulled up. There is a fine mingled crowd on the platform.
Lying in the sun, awaiting their master's pleasure, are two beautifully
kept white donkeys, with their hides clipped in neat patterns, very
superior creatures indeed to what we know as donkeys, more like mules in
size. A group of children, fascinated by our strange faces, draw nearer
and gaze their fill unwinkingly; one poor little mite of about four has
a mass of flies crawling all over its face, especially about the eyes.
It never attempts to brush them off, for long habit has made it callous.
Formerly very many children were so afflicted, and the crawling flies,
carrying disease, made them blind; but since the British took the matter
in hand the evil is much less. Yet so indifferent are the mothers, that
in many cases even when lotion is supplied free for the children's faces
they will not trouble to use it!
There is nothing eatable being sold in the station except fruit, but
there seems plenty of that, and by the time the train starts again we
find ourselves with a fine assortment in rich colours of purple and
orange and scarlet. First there is a packet of dates which looks all
right on the top, but turning them out we find the purple side of one
had been placed carefully uppermost, and the rest are all hard, green,
and unripe, not in the least like the sweet juicy dates we are
accustomed to. The attendant, who is watching, scoops them up and
devours them as if he hadn't been fed for a month. Then comes a bit of
sugar-cane, stringy and sickly, which makes us feel as if we had bitten
into a piece of sweet wood when we try it. That great purple pomegranate
is, like all pomegranates, unsatisfactory and full of seeds, and though
the little green limes are refreshing for the moment while we suck the
juice, after a while our lips begin to smart as if they were raw, and we
both keep on furtively wiping them. It is a tantalising feast, and the
American smiles serenely as he smokes in his corner and refuses to have
anything to do with it. The only thing we do get out of it are some
really good green figs, which cannot, however, be eaten without
shameless messiness, as they are so difficult to peel.
When the afternoon sun grows scorchingly hot the grinning attendant
proves himself for once useful, by showing us that we can pull up
sun-shutters with wooden slats outside the glass ones. He has indeed
been anxious to pull them up all round the compartment ever since we
started, and nothing but physical force has restrained him, for he
cannot conceive how anyone could want to look out. Even now we keep down
those on the sunless side, which grieves him deeply.
So all the afternoon we watch the glorious scenes changing in sunlight;
we see the sailing boats, with their tapering white wings, laden with
cargoes of straw, drifting up the canal, driven by the strong north
wind; we pass innumerable villages, and some larger towns, where
market-day has attracted vast crowds.
The small villages are indeed wonderful, and the first one excited us
all three so much that we had to hurry to the window. Imagine a colony
of last year's swallows' nests under the eaves, or a collection of
ruined pigsties and sheds, only they are not ruins at all, but living,
thriving villages with healthy people in them. The houses are all made
of mud; a few are fashioned out of mud bricks, but many are merely of
mud stuck and moulded together as a child would form a mud house with
his hands. The doors and the holes for windows are crooked and lop-sided
as they would be in a childish attempt. The roof is covered over with an
untidy thatch of straw, thrown on anyhow, with piles of cotton scrub on
the top of it. This scrub is for firing, and it is kept up there in the
Egyptian's only storehouse; it is backed up by cakes of dried buffalo
dung used for the same purpose. As it never rains the fuel is quite safe
from damp.
Every man builds his own house as it pleases him, without regard to the
style or position of his neighbour's, consequently the streets are
narrow crooked passages of uneven levels; there is not a green thing in
them, and the people live in dust and eat it and wallow in it. Here and
there you can see a tray of flat cakes pushed out into the midst of the
dust to bake in the sun and form a playground for the flies and the
microbes, for the Egyptian has no respect for microbes, he is
germ-proof; for generations he and his forefathers have drunk the Nile
water, unfiltered and carried in goat-skins not too well cured. Yet the
people are happy and the children apparently a gay set of youngsters.
Little Gassim or Achmed, in the single unchanged and unwashed garment
that covers their little brown bodies, dance and roll and sing and drive
the loathly black buffaloes to the water and eat scraps of sugar-cane,
and are as happy as the day is long. They work hard, it is true, from
the time they can toddle, but so does everyone else, and all the animals
do their share of toil, day in and day out. "I can't understand why they
don't find a way of harnessing the turkeys," says the American
sarcastically as we pass a lordly camel, stepping, with protest in every
movement, alongside a sturdy bullock who helps to drag a primitive
plough. The plough merely scratches the surface of the ground, but that
is enough, for the Egyptian will never go deeper than he need.
[Illustration: A WATER-CARRIER.]
We are getting very hungry indeed! Six hours more! How are we going to
stand it?
Hurrah! A bit of luck! The American has been along the corridor and come
across some friends who are getting out at the next station. They have
presented him with the remains of a lunch-basket supplied by their
hotel, and he is generously willing to share it with us. Never was
prize-packet opened with greater eagerness; suppose it should only
contain enough for one?
[Illustration]
Amid the white wrappings of the open pannier we find slices of tongue,
rolls of bread, chicken legs, hard-boiled eggs, and a bottle of
soda-water!
Never did food taste better! We sit gnawing the chicken bones and
blessing the American!
Meantime the sun falls and a splendour you never yet have imagined fills
the air. Streaks of flaming colour shoot athwart the sky, bursting up
behind the tufted palms; the eastern sky catches the reflection and
shows softest blues and pinkest pinks in contrast. A veil of amber light
hangs like a curtain overhead and changes to orange and again to apricot
as the afterglow sweeps the sky before darkness falls like the curtain
on a scene at the theatre.
[Illustration: COLUMNS IN THE TEMPLE AT LUXOR.]