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

raised 2 feet from the ground and matted, to the left of the gate. A crowd of Copts collected and squatted about, and we were joined by the mason who was repairing the church, a fine, burly, rough-bearded old Mussulman, who told how the Sheykh buried in the church of Bibbeh had appeared to him three nights running at Cairo and ordered him to leave his work and go to Bibbeh and mend his church, and how he came and offered to do so without pay if the Copts would find the materials. He spoke with evident pride, as one who had received a Divine command, and the Copts all confirmed the story and everyone was highly gratified by the miracle. I asked Omar if he thought it was all true, and he had no doubt of it. The mason he knew to be a respectable man in full work, and Girgis added that he had tried to get a man to come for years for the purpose without success. It is not often that a dead saint contrives to be equally agreeable to Christians and Mussulmans, and here was the staunch old 'true believer' working away in the sanctuary which they would not allow an English fellow-Christian to enter.

Whilst we sat hearing all these wonders, the sheep and cattle pushed in between us, coming home at eve. The venerable old priest looked so like Father Abraham, and the whole scene was _so_ pastoral and Biblical that I felt quite as if my wish was fulfilled to live a little a few thousands of years ago. They wanted me to stay many days, and then Girgis said I must stop at Feshn where he had a fine house and garden, and he would go on horseback and meet me there, and would give me a whole troop of Fellaheen to pull the boat up quick. Omar's eyes twinkled with fun as he translated this, and said he knew the Sitt would cry out, as she always did about the Fellaheen, as if she were hurt herself. He told Girgis that the English customs did not allow people to work without pay, which evidently seemed very absurd to the whole party.

GEBEL SHEYK EMBARAK, _Thursday_.

I stopped last night at Feshn, but finding this morning that my Coptic friends were not expected till the afternoon, I would not spend the whole day, and came on still against wind and stream. If I could speak Arabic I should have enjoyed a few days with Girgis and his family immensely, to learn their _Ansichten_ a little; but Omar's English is too imperfect to get beyond elementary subjects. The thing that strikes me most is the tolerant spirit that I see everywhere. They say 'Ah! it is your custom,' and express no sort of condemnation, and Muslims and Christians appear perfectly good friends, as my story of Bibbeh goes to prove. I have yet to see the much-talked-of fanaticism, at present I have not met with a symptom of it. There were thirteen Copt families at Bibbeh and a considerable Muslim population, who had elected Girgis their headman and kissed his hand very heartily as our procession moved through the streets. Omar said he was a very good man and much liked.

The villages look like slight elevations in the mud banks cut into square shapes. The best houses have neither paint, whitewash, plaster, bricks nor windows, nor any visible roofs. They don't give one the notion of human dwellings at all at first, but soon the eye gets used to the absence of all that constitutes a house in Europe, the impression of wretchedness wears off, and one sees how picturesque they are, with palm-trees and tall pigeon-houses, and here and there the dome over a saint's tomb. The men at work on the river-banks are exactly the same colour as the Nile mud, with just the warmer hue of the blood circulating beneath the skin. Prometheus has just formed them out of the universal material at hand, and the sun breathed life into them. Poor fellows--even the boatmen, ragged crew as they are--say 'Ah, Fellaheen!' with a contemptuous pity when they see me watch the villagers at work.

The other day four huge barges passed us towed by a steamer and crammed with hundreds of the poor souls torn from their homes to work at the Isthmus of Suez, or some palace of the Pasha's, for a nominal piastre a day, and find their own bread and water and cloak. One of my crew, Andrasool, a black savage whose function is always to jump overboard whenever the rope gets entangled or anything is wanted, recognised some relations of his from a village close to Assouan. There was much shouting and poor Andrasool looked very mournful all day. It may be his turn next. Some of the crew disloyally remarked that they were sure the men there wished they were working for a Sitti Ingleez, as Andrasool told them he was. Think too what splendid pay it must be that the boat-owner can give out of 25 pounds a month to twelve men, after taking his own profits, the interest of money being enormous.

When I call my crew black, don't think of negroes. They are elegantly-shaped Arabs and all gentlemen in manners, and the black is transparent, with amber _reflets_ under it in the sunshine; a negro looks _blue_ beside them. I have learned a great deal that is curious from Omar's confidences, who tells me his family affairs and talks about the women of his family, which he would not to a man. He refused to speak to his brother, a very grand dragoman, who was with the Prince of Wales, and who came up to us in the hotel at Cairo and addressed Omar, who turned his back on him. I asked the reason, and Omar told me how his brother had a wife, 'An old wife, been with him long time, very good wife.' She had had three children--all dead. All at once the dragoman, who is much older than Omar, declared he would divorce her and marry a young woman. Omar said, 'No, don't do that; keep her in your house as head of your home, and take one of your two black slave girls as your Hareem.' But the other insisted, and married a young Turkish wife; whereupon Omar took his poor old sister-in-law to live with him and his own young wife, and cut his grand brother dead. See how characteristic!--the urging his brother to take the young slave girl 'as his Hareem,' like a respectable man--that would have been all right; but what he did was 'not good.' I'll trouble you (as Mrs. Grote used to say) to settle these questions to everyone's satisfaction. I own Omar seemed to me to take a view against which I had nothing to say. His account of his other brother, a confectioner's household with two wives, was very curious. He and they, with his wife and sister-in-law, all live together, and one of the brother's wives has six children--three sleep with their own mother and three with their _other_ mother--and all is quite harmonious.

SIOUT,
_December_ 10.

I could not send a letter from Minieh, where we stopped, and I visited a sugar manufactory and a gentlemanly Turk, who superintended the district, the Moudir. I heard a boy singing a _Zikr_ (the ninety-nine attributes of God) to a set of dervishes in a mosque, and I think I never heard anything more beautiful and affecting. Ordinary Arab singing is harsh and nasal, but it can be wonderfully moving. Since we left Minieh we have suffered dreadfully from the cold; the chickens died of it, and the Arabs look blue and pinched. Of course it is _my weather_ and there never was such cold and such incessant contrary winds known. To-day was better, and Wassef, a Copt here, lent me his superb donkey to go up to the tomb in the mountain. The tomb is a mere cavern, so defaced, but the view of beautiful Siout standing in the midst of a loop of the Nile was ravishing. A green deeper and brighter than England, graceful minarets in crowds, a picturesque bridge, gardens, palm-trees, then the river beyond it, the barren yellow cliffs as a frame all around that. At our feet a woman was being carried to the grave, and the boys' voices rang out the Koran full and clear as the long procession--first white turbans and then black veils and robes--wound along. It is all a dream to me. You can't think what an odd effect it is to take up an English book and read it and then look up and hear the men cry, 'Yah Mohammad.' 'Bless thee, Bottom, how art thou translated;' it is the reverse of all one's former life when one sat in England and read of the East. '_Und nun sitz ich mitten drein_' in the real, true Arabian Nights, and don't know whether 'I be I as I suppose I be' or not.

Tell Alick the news, for I have not written to any but you. I do so long for my Rainie. The little Copt girls are like her, only pale; but they don't let you admire them for fear of the evil-eye.


December 20, 1862: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

THEBES,
_December_ 20, 1862.

DEAR ALICK,

I have had a long, dawdling voyage up here, but enjoyed it much, and have seen and heard many curious things. I only stop here for letters and shall go on at once to Wady Halfeh, as the weather is very cold still, and I shall be better able to enjoy the ruins when I return about a month hence, and shall certainly prefer the tropics now. I can't describe the kindness of the Copts. The men I met at a party in Cairo wrote to all their friends and relations to be civil to me. Wassef's attentions consisted first in lending me his superb donkey and accompanying me about all day. Next morning arrived a procession headed by his clerk, a gentlemanly young Copt, and consisting of five black memlooks carrying a live sheep, a huge basket of the most delicious bread, a pile of cricket-balls of creamy butter, a large copper caldron of milk and a cage of poultry. I was confounded, and tried to give a good baksheesh to the clerk, but he utterly declined. At Girgeh one Mishrehgi was waiting for me, and was in despair because he had only time to get a few hundred eggs, two turkeys, a heap of butter and a can of milk. At Keneh one Issa (Jesus) also lent a donkey, and sent me three boxes of delicious Mecca dates, which Omar thought stingy. Such attentions are agreeable here where good food is not to be had except as a gift. They all made me promise to see them again on my return and dine at their houses, and Wassef wanted to make a fantasia and have dancing girls. How