Letters from Egypt by Lucy Duff Gordon (classic literature books txt) 📖

teeth and eyes. '_Alhamdulillah_,' you reply; and it is worth thanking God for. The days of the beauty of Cairo are numbered. The mosques are falling to decay, the exquisite lattice windows rotting away and replaced by European glass and jalousies. Only the people and the Government remain unchanged. Read all the pretty paragraphs about civilisation here, and then say, Bosh!

If you know anyone coming here and wanting a good servant and dragoman, recommend my dear Omar Abou el-Halaweh of Alexandria. He has been my friend and companion, as well as my cook and general servant, now for six months, and we are very sad at our approaching separation. I am to spend a day in his house with his young wife at Alexandria, and to eat his bread. He sadly wants to go with me to Europe and to see my children. Sally, I think, is almost as fond of the Arabs as I am, and very popular. My poor ragged crew were for ever calling out 'Yah Sara' for some assistance or other, hurt fingers or such calamities; and the quantity of doctoring I did was fearful. Sally was constantly wishing for you to see all manner of things and to sketch. What a yarn I have made!


May 12, 1863: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

ALEXANDRIA,
_May_ 12, 1863.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have been here a fortnight, but the climate disagrees so much with me that I am going back to Cairo at once by the advice of the doctor of the Suez Canal. I cannot shake off my cough here. Mr. Thayer kindly lends me his nice little bachelor house, and I take Omar back again for the job. It is very hot here, but with a sea-breeze which strikes me like ice; strong people enjoy it, but it gives even Janet cold in the head. She is very well, I think, and seems very happy. She is _Times_ correspondent and does it very well.

I am terribly disappointed at not being as materially better as I had hoped I should be while in Upper Egypt. I cannot express the longing I have for home and my children, and how much I feel the sort of suspense it all causes to you and to Alick, and my desire to be with you.

One must come to the East to understand absolute equality. As there is no education and no reason why the donkey-boy who runs behind me may not become a great man, and as all Muslims are _ipso facto_ equal; money and rank are looked on as mere accidents, and my _savoir vivre_ was highly thought of because I sat down with Fellaheen and treated everyone as they treat each other. In Alexandria all that is changed. The European ideas and customs have extinguished the Arab altogether, and those who remain are not improved by the contact. Only the _Bedaween_ preserve their haughty _nonchalance_. I found the Mograbee bazaar full of them when I went to buy a white cloak, and was amused at the way in which one splendid bronze figure, who lay on the shop-front, moved one leg to let me sit down. They got interested in my purchase, and assisted in making the bargain and wrapping the cloak round me Bedawee fashion, and they too complimented me on having 'the face of the Arab,' which means Bedaween. I wanted a little Arab dress for Rainie, but could not find one, as at her age none are worn in the desert.

I dined one day with Omar, or rather I ate at his house, for he would not eat with me. His sister-in-law cooked a most admirable dinner, and everyone was delighted. It was an interesting family circle. A very respectable elder brother a confectioner, whose elder wife was a black woman, a really remarkable person, who speaks Italian perfectly, and gave me a great deal of information and asked such intelligent questions. She ruled the house but had no children, so he had married a fair, gentle-looking Arab woman who had six children, and all lived in perfect harmony. Omar's wife is a tall, handsome girl of his own age, with very good manners. She had been outside the door of the close little court which constituted the house _once_ since her marriage. I now begin to understand all about the _wesen_ with the women. There is a good deal of chivalry in some respects, and in the respectable lower and middle classes the result is not so bad. I suspect that among the rich few are very happy. But I don't know them, or anything of the Turkish ways. I will go and see the black woman again and hear more, her conversation was really interesting.


May 12, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

ALEXANDRIA,
_May_ 12, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

I only got your letter an hour ago, and the mail goes out at four. I enclose to you the letter I had written to my mother, so I need not repeat about my plans. Continue to write here, a letter comes as soon and safer. My general health is so much stronger and better--especially before I had this last severe attack--that I still hope, though it is a severe trial of patience not to throw it up and come home for good. It would be delightful to have you at Cairo now I have pots and pans and all needful for a house, but a carpet and a few mattresses, if you could camp with me _a l'Arabe_.

How you would revel in old Masr el-Kahira, peep up at lattice windows, gape like a _gasheem_ (green one) in the bazaar, go wild over the mosques, laugh at portly Turks and dignified Sheykhs on their white donkeys, drink sherbet in the streets, ride wildly about on a donkey, peer under black veils at beautiful eyes and feel generally intoxicated! I am quite a good cicerone now of the glorious old city. Omar is in raptures at the idea that the Sidi el Kebir (the Great Master) might come, and still more if he brought the 'little master.' He plans meeting you on the steamboat and bringing you to me, that I may kiss your hand first of all. Mashallah! How our hearts would be dilated!


May 21, 1863: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

MASR EL-KAHIRA, CAIRO,
_May_ 21, 1863.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I came here on Saturday night. To-day is Wednesday, and I am already much better. I have attached an excellent donkey and his master, a delightful youth called Hassan, to my household for fifteen piastres (under two shillings) a day. They live at the door, and Hassan cleans the stairs and goes errands during the heat of the day, and I ride out very early, at six or seven, and again at five. The air is delicious now. It is very hot for a few hours, but not stifling, and the breeze does not chill one as it does at Alexandria. I live all day and all night with open windows, and plenty of fresh warm air is the best of remedies. I can do no better than stay here till the heat becomes too great. I left little Zeyneb at Alexandria with Janet's maid Ellen who quite loves her, and begged to keep her 'for company,' and also to help in their removal to the new house. She clung about me and made me promise to come back to her, but was content to stop with Ellen, whose affection she of course returns. It was pleasant to see her so happy, and how she relished being 'put to bed' with a kiss by Ellen or Sally. Her Turkish master, whom she pronounces to have been _batal_ (bad), called her Salaam es-Sidi (the Peace of her Master); but she said that in her own village she used to be Zeyneb, and so we call her. She has grown fatter and, if possible, blacker. Mahbrooka (Good Fortune), the elder wife of Hegab, the confectioner, was much interested in her, as her fate had been the same. She was bought by an Italian who lived with her till his death, when she married Hegab. She is a pious Muslimeh, and invoked the intercession of Seyidna Mohammad for me when I told her I had no intention of baptizing Zeyneb by force, as had been done to her.

The fault of my lodging here is the noise. We are on the road from the railway and there is no quiet except in the few hot hours, when nothing is heard but the cool tinkle of the Sakka's brass cup as he sells water in the street, or perchance _erksoos_ (liquorice-water), or caroub or raisin sherbet. The _erksoos_ is rather bitter and very good. I drink it a good deal, for drink one must; a gulleh of water is soon gone. A gulleh is a wide-mouthed porous jar, and Nile water drunk out of it without the intervention of a glass is delicious. Omar goes to market every morning with a donkey--I went too, and was much amused--and cooks, and in the evening goes out with me if I want him. I told him I had recommended him highly, and hoped he would get good employment; but he declares that he will go with no one else so long as I come to Egypt, whatever the difference of wages may be. 'The bread I eat with you is sweet'--a pretty little unconscious antithesis to Dante. I have been advising his brother Hajjee Ali to start a hotel at Thebes for invalids, and he has already set about getting a house there; there is _one_. Next winter there will be steamers twice a week--to Assouan! Juvenal's distant Syene, where he died in banishment. My old washerwoman sent me a fervent entreaty through Omar that I would dine with her one day, since I had made Cairo delightful with my presence. If one will only devour these people's food, they are enchanted; they like that much better than a present. So I will honour her house some day. Good old Hannah, she is divorced for being too fat and old, and replaced by a young Turk whose family sponge on Hajjee Ali and are condescending. If I could afford it, I would have a sketch of a beloved old mosque of mine, falling to decay, and with three palm-trees growing in the middle of it. Indeed, I would have a book full, for all is exquisite, and alas, all is going. The old Copt quarter is _entame_, and hideous, shabby French houses, like the one I live in, are being run up; and in this weather how much better would be the Arab courtyard, with its mastabah and fountain!

There is a quarrel now in the street; how they talk and gesticulate, and everybody puts in a word; a boy has upset a cake-seller's tray, '_Naal Abu'k_!' (Curses on your father) he claims six piastres damages, and everyone gives an opinion _pour ou contre_. We all look out of the window; my opposite neighbour, the pretty Armenian woman, leans out, and her diamond head-ornaments and earrings glitter as she laughs like a child. The Christian dyer is also very active in the row, which, like all Arab rows, ends in nothing; it evaporates in fine