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

good fact, for the promotion is more likely to fall on a bad slave than on a good or intelligent free man. Thus, the only honourable class are those who have nothing to hope from the great--I won't say anything to fear, for all have cause for that. Hence the high respectability and _gentility_ of the merchants, who are the most independent of the Government. The English would be a little surprised at Arab judgments of them; they admire our veracity and honesty, and like us on the whole, but they blame the men for their conduct to women. They are shocked at the way Englishmen talk about Hareem among themselves, and think the English hard and unkind to their wives, and to women in general. English Hareemat is generally highly approved, and an Arab thinks himself a happy man if he can marry an English girl. I have had an offer for Sally from the chief man here for his son, proposing to allow her a free exercise of her religion and customs as a matter of course. I think the influence of foreigners is much more real and much more useful on the Arabs than on the Turks, though the latter show it more in dress, etc. But all the engineers and physicians are Arabs, and very good ones, too. Not a Turk has learnt anything practical, and the dragomans and servants employed by the English have learnt a strong appreciation of the value of a character for honesty, deserved or no; but many do deserve it. Compared to the couriers and _laquais de place_ of Europe, these men stand very high. Omar has just run in to say a boat is going, so good-bye, and God bless you.


March 22, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_March_ 22, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

I am glad my letters amuse you. Sometimes I think they must breathe the unutterable dulness of Eastern life: not that it is dull to me, a curious spectator, but how the men with nothing to do can endure it is a wonder. I went yesterday to call on a Turk at Karnac; he is a gentlemanly man, the son of a former Moudir, who was murdered, I believe, for his cruelty and extortion. He has 1,000 feddans (acres, or a little more) of land, and lives in a mud house, larger but no better than any fellahs, with two wives and the brother of one of them. He leaves the farm to his fellaheen altogether, I fancy. There was one book, a Turkish one; I could not read the title-page, and he did not tell me what it was. In short, there was no means of killing time but the narghile, no horse, no gun, nothing, and yet they did not seem bored. The two women are always clamorous for my visits, and very noisy and school-girlish, but apparently excellent friends and very good-natured. The gentleman gave me a _kufyeh_ (thick head kerchief for the sun), so I took the ladies a bit of silk I happened to have. You never heard anything like his raptures over Maurice's portrait, '_Mashallah_, _Mashallah_, _Wallahy zay el ward_' (It is the will of God, and by God he is like a rose). But I can't 'cotton to' the Turks. I always feel that they secretly dislike us European women, though they profess huge admiration and pay _personal_ compliments, which an Arab very seldom attempts. I heard Seleem Effendi and Omar discussing English ladies one day lately while I was inside the curtain with Seleem's slave girl, and they did not know I heard them. Omar described Janet, and was of the opinion that a man who was married to her could want nothing more. 'By my soul, she rides like a Bedawee, she shoots with the gun and pistol, and rows the boat; she speaks many languages, works with the needle like an Efreet, and to see her hands run over the teeth of the music-box (keys of piano) amazes the mind, while her singing gladdens the soul. How then should her husband ever desire the coffee-shop? _Wallahy_! she can always amuse him at home. And as to my lady, the thing is not that she does not know. When I feel my stomach tightened, I go to the divan and say to her, 'Do you want anything, a pipe, or sherbet, or so and so?' and I talk till she lays down her book and talks to me, and I question her and amuse my mind, and, by God! if I were a rich man and could marry one English Hareem like that I would stand before her and serve her like her memlook. You see I am only this lady's servant, and I have not once sat in the coffee-shop because of the sweetness of her tongue. Is it not therefore true that the man who can marry such Hareem is rich more than with money?' Seleem seemed disposed to think a little more of looks, though he quite agreed with all Omar's enthusiasm, and asked if Janet were beautiful. Omar answered with decorous vagueness that she was a 'moon,' but declined mentioning her hair, eyes, etc. (it is a liberty to describe a woman minutely). I nearly laughed out at hearing Omar relate his manoeuvres to make me 'amuse his mind'; it seems I am in no danger of being discharged for being dull.

The weather has set in so hot that I have shifted my quarters out of my fine room to the south-west into one with only three sides looking over a lovely green view to the north-east, with a huge sort of solid veranda, as large as the room itself, on the open side; thus I live in the open air altogether. The bats and the swallows are quite sociable; I hope the serpents and scorpions will be more reserved. '_El Khamaseen_' (the fifty) has begun, and the wind is enough to mix up heaven and earth, but it is not distressing like the Cape south-easter, and, though hot, not choking like the Khamseen in Cairo and Alexandria. Mohammed brought me a handful of the new wheat just now. Think of harvest in March and April! These winds are as good for the crops here as a 'nice steady rain' is in England. It is not necessary to water so much when the wind blows strong. As I rode through the green fields along the dyke, a little boy sang as he turned round on the musically-creaking Sakiah (the water-wheel turned by an ox) the one eternal Sakiah tune--the words are _ad libitum_, and my little friend chanted 'Turn oh Sakiah to the right and turn to the left--who will take care of me if my father dies? Turn oh Sakiah, etc., pour water for the figs and the grass and for the watermelons. Turn oh Sakiah!' Nothing is so pathetic as that Sakiah song.

I passed the house of the Sheykh-el-Ababdeh, who called out to me to take coffee. The moon was splendid and the scene was lovely. The handsome black-brown Sheykh in dark robes and white turban, Omar in a graceful white gown and red turban, and the wild Ababdeh in all manner of dingy white rags, and with every kind of uncouth weapon, spears, matchlocks, etc., in every kind of wild and graceful attitude, with their long black ringlets and bare heads, a few little black-brown children quite naked and shaped like Cupids. And there we sat and looked so romantic and talked quite like ladies and gentlemen about the merits of Sakna and Almas, the two great rival women-singers of Cairo. I think the Sheykh wished to display his experiences of fashionable life.

The Copts are now fasting and cross. They fast fifty-five days for Lent; no meat, fish, eggs, or milk, no exception for Sundays, no food till after twelve at noon, and no intercourse with the hareem. The only comfort is lots of arrak, and what a Copt can carry decently is an unknown quantity; one seldom sees them drunk, but they imbibe awful quantities. They offer me wine and arrak always, and can't think why I don't drink it. I believe they suspect my Christianity in consequence of my preference for Nile water. As to that, though, they scorn all heretics, _i.e._, all Christians but themselves and the Abyssinians, more than they do the Muslims, and dislike them more; the procession of the Holy Ghost question divides us with the Gulf of Jehannum. The gardener of this house is a Copt, such a nice fellow, and he and Omar chaff one another about religion with the utmost good humour; indeed they are seldom touchy with the Moslems. There is a pretty little man called Michail, a Copt, vakeel to M. Mounier. I wish I could draw him to show a perfect specimen of the ancient Egyptian race; his blood must be quite unmixed. He came here yesterday to speak to Ali Bey, the Moudir of Keneh, who was visiting me (a splendid handsome Turk he is); so little Michail crept in to mention his business under my protection, and a few more followed, till Ali Bey got tired of holding a durbar in my divan and went away to his boat. You see the people think the _courbash_ is not quite so handy with an English spectator. The other day Mustapha A'gha got Ali Bey to do a little job for him--to let the people in the Gezeereh (the island), which is Mustapha's property, work at a canal there instead of at the canal higher up for the Pasha. Very well, but down comes the Nazir (the Moudir's _sub_.), and courbashes the whole Gezeereh, not Mustapha, of course, but the poor _fellaheen_ who were doing his corvee instead of the Pasha's by the Moudir's order. I went to the Gezeereh and thought that Moses was at work again and had killed a firstborn in every house by the crying and wailing, when up came two fellows and showed me their bloody feet, which their wives were crying over like for a death, _Shorghl el Mizr_--things of Egypt--like _Cosas de Espana_.

_Wednesday_.--Last night I bored Sheykh Yussuf with Antara and Abou-Zeyd, maintaining the greater valour of Antara who slew 10,000 for the love of Ibla; you know Antara. Yussuf looks down on such profanities, and replied, 'What are Antara and Abou-Zeyd compared to the combats of our Lord Moses with Og and other infidels of might, and what is the love of Antara for Ibla compared to that of our Lord Solomon for Balkees (Queen of Sheba), or their beauty and attractiveness to that of our Lord Joseph?' And then he related the combat of _Seyyidna Mousa_ with Og; and I thought, 'hear O ye Puritans, and give ear O ye Methodists, and learn how religion and romance are one to those whose manners and ideas are the manners and ideas of the Bible, and how Moses was not at all a crop-eared Puritan, but a gallant warrior!' There is the Homeric element in the religion here, the Prophet is a hero like Achilles, and like him directed by God--Allah instead of Athene. He fights, prays, teaches, makes love, and is truly a _man_, not an abstraction; and as to wonderful events, instead of telling one to 'gulp them down without looking' (as children are told with a nasty dose, and as we are told about Genesis, etc.) they believe