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

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_Tuesday_.--We have a family quarrel going on. Mohammed's wife, a girl of eighteen or so, wanted to go home on Bairam day for her mother to wash her head and unplait her hair. Mohammed told her not to leave him on that day, and to send for a woman to do it for her; whereupon she cut off her hair, and Mohammed, in a passion, told her to 'cover her face' (that is equivalent to a divorce) and take her baby and go home to her father's house. Ever since he has been mooning about the yard and in and out of the kitchen very glum and silent. This morning I went into the kitchen and found Omar cooking with a little baby in his arms, and giving it sugar. 'Why what is that?' say I. 'Oh don't say anything. I sent Achmet to fetch Mohammed's baby, and when he comes here he will see it, and then in talking I can say so and so, and how the man must be good to the _Hareem_, and what this poor, small girl do when she big enough to ask for her father.' In short, Omar wants to exercise his diplomacy in making up the quarrel. After writing this I heard Mohammed's low, quiet voice, and Omar's boyish laugh, and then silence, and went to see the baby and its father. My kitchen was a pretty scene. Mohammed, in his ample brown robes and white turban, lay asleep on the floor with the baby's tiny pale face and little eyelids stained with kohl against his coffee-brown cheek, both fast asleep, baby in her father's arms. Omar leant against the _fournaise_ in his house-dress, a white shirt open at the throat and white drawers reaching to the knees, with the red tarboosh and red and yellow _kufyeh_ (silk handkerchief) round it turban-wise, contemplating them with his great, soft eyes. The two young men made an excellent contrast between Upper and Lower Egypt. Mohammed is the true Arab type--coffee-brown, thin, spare, sharp-featured, elegant hands and feet, bright glittering small eyes and angular jaw--not a handsome Arab, but _bien characterise_. Omar, the colour of new boxwood or old ivory, pale, with eyes like a cow, full lips, full chin and short nose, not the least negro, but perfectly Egyptian, the eyes wide apart--unlike the Arab--moustache like a woman's eyebrow, curly brown hair, bad hands and feet and not well made, but graceful in movement and still more in countenance, very inferior in beauty to the pure Arab blood which prevails here, but most sweet in expression. He is a true _Akh-ul-Benat_ (brother of girls), and truly chivalrous to _Hareem_. How astonished Europeans would be to hear Omar's real opinion of their conduct to women. He mentioned some Englishman who had divorced his wife and made her frailty public. You should have seen him spit on the floor in abhorrence. Here it is quite blackguard not to forfeit the money and take all the blame in a divorce.

_Friday_.--We have had better weather again, easterly wind and pretty cool, and I am losing the cough and languor which the damp of the Simoom brought me. Sheykh Yussuf has just come back from Keneh, whither he and the Kadee went on their donkeys for some law business. He took our saddle bags at Omar's request, and brought us back a few pounds of sugar and some rice and tobacco (isn't it like Fielding's novels?). It is two days' journey, so they slept in the mosque at Koos half way. I told Yussuf how Suleyman's child has the smallpox and how Mohammed only said it was _Min Allah_ (from God) when I suggested that his baby should be vaccinated at once. Yussuf called him in and said: 'Oh man, when thou wouldst build a house dost thou throw the bricks in a heap on the ground and say the building thereof is from God, or dost thou use the brains and hands which God has given thee, and then pray to Him to bless thy work? In all things do the best of thy understanding and means, and then say _Min Allah_, for the end is with Him!' There is not a pin to choose in fatalism here between Muslim and Christian, the lazy, like Mohammed and Suleyman (one Arab the other Copt), say _Min Allah_ or any form of dawdle you please; but the true Muslim doctrine is just what Yussuf laid down--'do all you can and be resigned to whatever be the result.' _Fais ce que dois advienne qui pourra_ is good doctrine. In fact, I am very much puzzled to discover the slightest difference between Christian and Muslim morality or belief--if you exclude certain dogmas--and in fact, very little is felt here. No one attempts to apply different standards of morals or of piety to a Muslim and a Copt. East and West is the difference, not Muslim and Christian. As to that difference I could tell volumes. Are they worse? Are they better? Both and neither. I am, perhaps, not quite impartial, because I am _sympathique_ to the Arabs and they to me, and I am inclined to be 'kind' to their virtues if not 'blind' to their faults, which are visible to the most inexperienced traveller. You see all our own familiar 'bunkum' (excuse the vulgarity) falls so flat on their ears, bravado about 'honour,' 'veracity,' etc., etc., they look blank and bored at. The schoolboy morality as set forth by Maurice is current here among grown men. Of course we tell lies to Pashas and Beys, why shouldn't we? But shall I call in that ragged sailor and give him an order to bring me up 500 pounds in cash from Cairo when he happens to come? It would not be an unusual proceeding. I sleep every night in a _makaab_ (sort of verandah) open to all Luxor, and haven't a door that has a lock. They bother me for backsheesh; but oh how poor they are, and how rich must be a woman whose very servants drink sugar to their coffee! and who lives in the _Kasr_ (palace) and is respectfully visited by Ali Bey--and, come to that, Ali Bey would like a present even better than the poorest fellah, who also loves to give one. When I know, as I now do thoroughly, all Omar's complete integrity--without any sort of mention of it--his self-denial in going ragged and shabby to save his money for his wife and child (a very great trial to a good-looking young Arab), and the equally unostentatious love he has shown to me, and the delicacy and real nobleness of feeling which come out so oddly in the midst of sayings which, to our ideas, seem very shabby and time-serving, very often I wonder if there be anything as good in the civilized West. And as Sally most justly says, 'All their goodness is quite their own. God knows there is no one to teach anything but harm!'

_Tuesday_.--Two poor fellows have just come home from the Suez Canal work with gastric fever, I think. I hope it won't spread. The wife of one said to me yesterday, 'Are there more _Sittat_ (ladies) like you in your village?' 'Wallah,' said I, 'there are many better, and good doctors, Alhamdullillah!' 'Alhamdullillah,' said she, 'then the poor people don't want you so much, and by God you must stay here for _we_ can't do without you, so write to your family to say so, and don't go away and leave us.'

_Thursday_, _June_ 2,--A steamer has just arrived which will take this letter, so I can only say good-bye, my dearest Mutter, and God bless you. I continue very fairly well. The epidemic here is all but over; but my medical fame has spread so, that the poor souls come twenty miles (from Koos) for physic. The constant phrase of 'Oh our sister, God hath sent thee to look to us!' is so sad. _Such_ a little help is a wonder to my poor fellaheen. It is not so hot as it was I think, except at night, and I now sleep half the night outside the house. The cattle are all dead; perhaps five are left in all Luxor. _Allah kereem_! (God is merciful) said fellah Omar, 'I have one left from fifty-four.' The grain is unthreshed, and butter three shillings a pound! We get nothing here but by post; no papers, no nothing. I suppose the high Nile will bring up boats. Now the river is down at its lowest, and now I really know how Egyptians live.


June 12, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_Sunday_, _June_ 12, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

Three letters have I received from you within a few days, for the post of the Saeed is not that of the Medes and Persians. I have had an abominable toothache, which quite floored me, and was aggravated by the Oriental custom, namely, that all the _beau monde_ of Thebes _would_ come and sit with me, and suggest remedies, and look into my mouth, and make quite a business of my tooth. Sheykh Yussuf laid two fingers on my cheek and recited verses from the Koran, I regret to say with no effect, except that while his fingers touched me the pain ceased. I find he _is_ celebrated for soothing headaches and other nervous pains, and I daresay is an unconscious mesmeriser. The other day our poor Maohn was terrified by a communication from Ali Bey (Moudir of Keneh) to the effect that he had heard from Alexandria that someone had reported that the dead cattle had lain about the streets of Luxor and that the place was pestilential. The British mind at once suggested a counter-statement, to be signed by the most respectable inhabitants. So the Cadi drew it up, and came and read it to me, and took my deposition and witnessed my signature, and the Maohn went his way rejoicing, in that 'the words of the Englishwoman' would utterly defeat Ali Bey. The truth was that the worthy Maohn worked really hard, and superintended the horrible dead cattle business in person, which is some risk and very unpleasant. To dispose of three or four hundred dead oxen every day with a limited number of labourers is no trifle, and if a travelling Englishman smells one a mile off he calls us 'lazy Arabs.' The beasts could not be buried deep enough, but all were carried a mile off from the village. I wish some of the dilettanti who stop their noses at us in our trouble had to see or to do what I have seen and done.

_June_ 17.--We have had four or five days of such fearful heat with a Simoom that I have been quite knocked up, and literally could not write. Besides, I sit in the dark all day, and am now writing so--and at night go out and sit in the verandah, and can't have candles because of the insects. I sleep outside till about six a.m., and then go indoors till dark again. This fortnight is the hottest time. To-day the drop falls into the Nile at its source, and it will now rise fast and cool the country. It has risen one cubit, and the water is green; next month it will be blood colour. My cough has been a little troublesome again, I suppose