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

proved guilty--besides poor old El-Bedrawee declared he had not the faintest idea what he was accused of or how he had offended Effendina.

I listened to all this in extreme amazement, and he said, 'Ah! I know you English manage things very differently; I have heard all about your excellent justice.'

He was a stout, dignified-looking fair man, like a Turk, but talking broad Lower Egypt fellah talk, so that I could not understand him, and had to get Mustapha and Omar to repeat his words. His father was an Arab, and his mother a Circassian slave, which gave the fair skin and reddish beard. He must be over fifty, fat and not healthy; of course he is _meant_ to die up in Fazoghlou, especially going at this season. He owns (or owned, for God knows who has it now) 12,000 feddans of fine land between Tantah and Samanhoud, and was enormously rich. He consulted me a great deal about his health, and I gave him certainly very good advice. I cannot write in a letter which I know you will show what drugs a Turkish doctor had furnished him with to 'strengthen' him in the trying climate of Fazoghlou. I wonder was it intended to kill him or only given in ignorance of the laws of health equal to his own?

After a while the pretty boy became better and recovered consciousness, and his poor father, who had been helping me with trembling hands and swimming eyes, cried for joy, and said, 'By God the most high, if ever I find any of the English, poor or sick or afflicted up in Fazoghlou, I will make them know that I Abu Mahommed never saw a face like the pale face of the English lady bent over my sick boy.' And then El-Bedrawee and his fellah kinsman, and all the crew blessed me and the Captain, and the cawass said it was time to sail. So I gave directions and medicine to Abu Mahommed, and kissed the pretty boy and went out. El-Bedrawee followed me up the bank, and said he had a request to make--would I pray for him in his distress. I said, 'I am not of the Muslimeen,' but both he and Mustapha said, _Maleysh_ (never mind), for that it was quite certain I was not of the _Mushkireen_, as they hate the Muslimeen and their deeds are evil--but blessed be God, many of the English begin to repent of their evil, and to love the Muslims and abound in kind actions. So we parted in much kindness. It was a strange feeling to me to stand on the bank and see the queer savage-looking boat glide away up the stream, bound to such far more savage lands, and to be exchanging kind farewells quite in a homely manner with such utter 'aliens in blood and faith.' 'God keep thee Lady, God keep thee Mustapha.' Mustapha and I walked home very sad about poor El-Bedrawee.

_Friday_, _July_ 7.--It has been so 'awfully' hot that I have not had pluck to go on with my letter, or indeed to do anything but lie on a mat in the passage with a minimum of clothes quite indescribable in English. _Alhamdulilah_! laughs Omar, 'that I see the clever English people do just like the lazy Arabs.' The worst is not the positive heat, which has not been above 104 and as low as 96 degrees at night, but the horrible storms of hot wind and dust which are apt to come on at night and prevent one's even lying down till twelve or one o'clock. Thebes is bad in the height of summer on account of its expanse of desert, and sand and dust. The Nile is pouring down now gloriously, and _really_ red as blood--more crimson than a Herefordshire lane--and in the distance the reflection of the pure blue sky makes it deep violet. It had risen five cubits a week ago; we shall soon have it all over the land here. It is a beautiful and inspiriting sight to see the noble old stream as young and vigorous as ever. No wonder the Egyptians worshipped the Nile: there is nothing like it. We have had all the plagues of Egypt this year, only the lice are commuted for bugs, and the frogs for mice; the former have eaten me and the latter have eaten my clothes. We are so ragged! Omar has one shirt left, and has to sleep without and wash it every night. The dust, the drenching perspiration, and the hard-fisted washing of Mahommed's slave-women destroys everything.

Mustapha intends to give you a grand _fantasia_ if you come, and to have the best dancing girls down from Esneh for you; but I am consternated to hear that you can't come till December. I hoped you would have arrived in Cairo early in November, and spent a month there with me, and come up the river in the middle of December when Cairo gets very cold.

I remain very well in general health, but my cough has been troublesome again. I do not feel at all like breathing cold damp air again. This depresses me very much as you may suppose. You will have to divorce me, and I must marry some respectable Kadee. I have been too 'lazy Arab,' as Omar calls it, to go on with my Arabic lessons, and Yussuf has been very busy with law business connected with the land and the crops. Every harvest brings a fresh settling of the land. Wheat is selling at 1 pound the ardeb {188} here _on the threshing-floor_, and barley at one hundred and sixteen piastres; I saw some Nubians pay Mustapha that. He is in comic perplexity about saying _Alhamdulillah_ about such enormous gains--you see it is rather awkward for a Muslim to thank God for dear bread--so he compounds by very lavish almsgiving. He gave all his fellaheen clothes the other day--forty calico shirts and drawers. Do you remember my describing an Arab _emancipirtes Fraulein_ at Siout? Well, the other day I saw as I thought a nice-looking lad of sixteen selling corn to my opposite neighbour, a Copt. It was a girl. Her father had no son and is infirm, so she works in the field for him, and dresses and does like a man. She looked very modest and was quieter in her manner than the veiled women often are.

I am so glad to hear such good accounts of my Rainie and Maurice. I can hardly bear to think of another year without seeing them. However it is fortunate for me that 'my lines have fallen in pleasant places,' so long a time at the Cape or any Colony would have become intolerable. Best love to Janet, I really can't write, it's too hot and dusty. Omar desires his salaam to his great master and to that gazelle Sittee Ross.


August 13, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_August_ 13, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

For the last month we have had a purgatory of hot wind and dust, such as I never saw--impossible to stir out of the house. So in despair I have just engaged a return boat--a _Gelegenheit_--and am off to Cairo in a day or two, where I shall stop till _Inshallah_! you come to me. Can't you get leave to come at the beginning of November? Do try, that is the pleasant time in Cairo.

I am a 'stupid, lazy Arab' now, as Omar says, having lain on a mat in a dark stone passage for six weeks or so, but my chest is no worse--better I think, and my health has not suffered at all--only I am stupid and lazy. I had a pleasant visit lately from a great doctor from Mecca--a man so learned that he can read the Koran in seven different ways, he is also a physician of European _Hekmeh_ (learning). Fancy my wonder when a great Alim in gorgeous Hegazee dress walked in and said: '_Madame, tout ce qu'on m'a dit de vous fait tellement l'eloge de votre coeur et de votre esprit que je me suis arrete pour tacher de me procurer le plaisir de votre connaissance_!' A lot of Luxor people came in to pay their respects to the great man, and he said to me that he hoped I had not been molested on account of religion, and if I had I must forgive it, as the people here were so very ignorant, and _barbarians were bigots everywhere_. I said, '_Wallahy_, the people of Luxor are my brothers!' and the Maohn said, 'True, the fellaheen are like oxen, but not such swine as to insult the religion of a lady who has served God among them like this one. She risked her life every day.' 'And if she _had_ died,' said the great theologian, 'her place was made ready among the martyrs of God, because she showed more love to her brothers than to herself!'

Now if this was humbug it was said in Arabic before eight or ten people, by a man of great religious authority.

Omar was _aux anges_ to hear his Sitt spoken of 'in such a grand way for the religion.' I believe that a great change is taking place among the Ulema, that Islam is ceasing to be a mere party flag, just as occurred with Christianity, and that all the moral part is being more and more dwelt on. My great Alim also said I had practised the precepts of the Koran, and then laughed and added, 'I suppose I ought to say the Gospel, but what matters it, _el Hakh_ (the truth) is one, whether spoken by Our Lord Jesus or by Our Lord Mahommed!' He asked me to go with him to Mecca next winter for my health, as it was so hot and dry there. I found he had fallen in with El-Bedrawee and the Khartoum merchant at Assouan. The little boy was well again, and I had been outrageously extolled by them. We are now sending off all the corn. I sat the other evening on Mustapha's doorstep and saw the Greeks piously and zealously attending to the divine command to spoil the Egyptians. Eight months ago a Greek bought up corn at 60 piastres the ardeb (he follows the Coptic tax-gatherer like a vulture after a crow), now wheat is at 170 piastres the ardeb here, and the fellah has paid 3.5 _per cent. a month_ besides. Reckon the profit! Two men I know are quite ruined, and have sold all they had. The cattle disease forced them to borrow at these ruinous rates, and now alas, the Nile is sadly lingering in its rise, and people are very anxious. Poor Egypt! or rather, poor Egyptians! Of course, I need not say that there is great improvidence in those who can be fleeced as they are fleeced. Mustapha's household is a pattern of muddling hospitality, and Mustapha is generous and mean by turns; but what chance have people like these, so utterly uncivilized and so isolated, against Europeans of unscrupulous characters.

I can't write more in the wind and dust. You shall hear again from Cairo.


October 9, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

CAIRO,
_October_ 9, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have not written for a long time because I have had a fever.