Letters from Egypt - Lucy Duff Gordon (best story books to read TXT) 📗

no objection at all. She will have to say that her father would not allow it, for of course a handsome offer deserves a civil refusal. Sally's proposals would be quite an ethnological study; Mustapha asked what I should require as dowry for her. Fancy Sally as Hareem of the Sheykh-el-Beled of Luxor!

I am so charmed with my house that I begin seriously to contemplate staying here all the time. Cairo is so dear now, and so many dead cattle are buried there, that I think I should do better in this place. There is a huge hall, so large and cold now as to be uninhabitable, which in summer would be glorious. My dear old captain of steamer XII. would bring me up coffee and candles, and if I 'sap' and learn to talk to people, I shall have plenty of company.

The cattle disease has not extended above Minieh to any degree, and here there has not been a case. _Alhamdulillah_! Food is very good here, rather less than half Cairo prices even now; in summer it will be half that. Mustapha urges me to stay, and proposes a picnic of a few days over in the tombs with his Hareem as a diversion. I have got a photo, for a stereoscope, which I send you, of my two beloved, lovely palm-trees on the river-bank just above and looking over Philae.

Hitherto my right side has been the bad one, but now one side is uneasy and the other impossible to lie on. It does not make one sleep pleasantly, and the loss of my good, sound sleep tries me, and so I don't seem well. We shall see what hot weather will do; if that fails I will give up the contest, and come home to see as much as I shall have time for of you and my chicks.


February 7, 1864: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

_Sunday_, _February_ 7, 1864

DEAREST MUTTER,

We have had our winter pretty sharp for three weeks, and everybody has had violent colds and coughs--the Arabs, I mean.

I have been a good deal ailing, but have escaped any violent cold altogether, and now the thermometer is up to 64 degrees, and it feels very pleasant. In the sun it is always very hot, but that does not prevent the air from being keen, and chapping lips and noses, and even hands; it is curious how a temperature, which would be summer in England, makes one shiver at Thebes--_Alhamdulillah_! it is over now.

My poor Sheykh Yussuf is in great distress about his brother, also a young Sheykh (_i.e._, one learned in theology and competent to preach in the mosque). Sheykh Mohammed is come home from studying in 'El-Azhar' at Cairo--I fear to die. I went with Sheykh Yussuf, at his desire, to see if I could help him, and found him gasping for breath and very, very ill. I gave him a little soothing medicine, and put mustard plasters on him, and as it relieved him, I went again and repeated them. All the family and a lot of neighbours crowded in to look on. There he lay in a dark little den with bare mud walls, worse off, to our ideas, than any pauper; but these people do not feel the want of comforts, and one learns to think it quite natural to sit with perfect gentlemen in places inferior to our cattle-sheds. I pulled some blankets up against the wall, and put my arm behind Sheykh Mohammed's back to make him rest while the poultices were on him, whereupon he laid his green turban on my shoulder, and presently held up his delicate brown face for a kiss like an affectionate child. As I kissed him, a very pious old moollah said _Bismillah_ (In the name of God) with an approving nod, and Sheykh Mohammed's old father, a splendid old man in a green turban, thanked me with effusion, and prayed that my children might always find help and kindness. I suppose if I confessed to kissing a 'dirty Arab' in a 'hovel' the English travellers would execrate me; but it shows how much there is in 'Mussulman bigotry, unconquerable hatred, etc.,' for this family are Seyyids (descendents of the Prophet) and very pious. Sheykh Yussuf does not even smoke, and he preaches on Fridays. You would love these Saeedees, they are such thorough gentlemen. I rode over to the village a few days ago to see a farmer named Omar. Of course I had to eat, and the people were enchanted at my going alone, as they are used to see the English armed and guarded. Sidi Omar, however, insisted on accompanying me home, which is the civil thing here. He piled a whole stack of green fodder on his little nimble donkey, and hoisted himself atop of it without saddle or bridle (the fodder was for Mustapha A'gha), and we trotted home across the beautiful green barley-fields, to the amazement of some European young men out shooting. We did look a curious pair, certainly, with my English saddle and bridle, habit, hat and feather, on horseback, and Sidi Omar's brown shirt, brown legs and white turban, guiding his donkey with his chibouque. We were laughing very merrily, too, over my blundering Arabic.

Young Heathcote and Strutt called here, but were hurrying on up the river. I shall see more of them when they come down. Young Strutt is so like his mother I knew him in the street. I would like to give him a fantasia, but it is not proper for a woman to send for the dancing-girls, and as I am the friend of the Maohn (police magistrate), the Kadee, and the respectable people here, I cannot do what is indecent in their eyes. It is quite enough that they approve my unveiled face, and my associating with men; that is 'my custom,' and they think no harm of it.

To-morrow or next day Ramadan begins at the first sight of the new moon. It is a great nuisance, because everybody is cross. Omar did not keep it last year, but this year he will, and if he spoils my dinners, who can blame him? There was a wedding close by here last night, and about ten o'clock all the women passed under my windows with crys of joy 'ez-zaghareet' down to the river. I find, on inquiry, that in Upper Egypt, as soon as the bridegroom has 'taken the face' of his bride, the women take her down to 'see the Nile.' They have not yet forgotten that the old god is the giver of increase, it seems.

I have been reading Miss Martineau's book; the descriptions are excellent, but she evidently knew and cared nothing about the people, and had the feeling of most English people here, that the difference of manners is a sort of impassable gulf, the truth being that their feelings and passions are just like our own. It is curious that all the old books of travels that I have read mention the natives of strange countries in a far more natural tone, and with far more attempt to discriminate character, than modern ones, _e.g._, Niebuhr's Travels here and in Arabia, Cook's Voyages, and many others. _Have_ we grown so _very_ civilized since a hundred years that outlandish people seem like mere puppets, and not like real human beings? Miss M.'s bigotry against Copts and Greeks is droll enough, compared to her very proper reverence for 'Him who sleeps in Philae,' and her attack upon hareems outrageous; she implies that they are brothels. I must admit that I have not seen a Turkish hareem, and she apparently saw no other, and yet she fancies the morals of Turkey to be superior to those of Egypt. It is not possible for a woman to explain all the limitations to which ordinary people do subject themselves. Great men I know nothing of; but women can and do, without blame, sue their husbands-in-law for the full 'payment of debt,' and demand a divorce if they please in default. Very often a man marries a second wife out of duty to provide for a brother's widow and children, or the like. Of course licentious men act loosely as elsewhere. _Kulloolum Beni Adam_ (we are all sons of Adam), as Sheykh Yussuf says constantly, 'bad-bad and good-good'; and modern travellers show strange ignorance in talking of foreign natives _in the lump_, as they nearly all do.

_Monday_.--I have just heard that poor Sheykh Mohammed died yesterday, and was, as usual, buried at once. I had not been well for a few days, and Sheykh Yussuf took care that I should not know of his brother's death. He went to Mustapha A'gha, and told him not to tell anyone in my house till I was better, because he knew 'what was in my stomach towards his family,' and feared I should be made worse by the news. And how often I have been advised not to meddle with sick Arabs, because they are sure to suspect a Christian of poisoning those who die! I do grieve for the graceful, handsome young creature and his old father. Omar was vexed at not knowing of his death, because he would have liked to help to carry him to the grave.

I have at last learned the alphabet in Arabic, and can write it quite tidily, but now I am in a fix for want of a dictionary, and have written to Hekekian Bey to buy me one in Cairo. Sheykh Yussuf knows not a word of English, and Omar can't read or write, and has no notion of grammar or of _word for word_ interpretation, and it is very slow work. When I walk through the court of the mosque I give the customary coppers to the little boys who are spelling away loudly under the arcade, _Abba sheddeh o nusbeyteen_, _Ibbi sheddeh o heftedeen_, etc., with a keen sympathy with their difficulties and well-smudged tin slates. An additional evil is that the Arabic books printed in England, and at English presses here, require a 40-horse power microscope to distinguish a letter. The ciphering is like ours, but with other figures, and I felt very stupid when I discovered how I had reckoned Arab fashion from right to left all my life and never observed the fact. However, they 'cast down' a column of figures from top to bottom.

I am just called away by some poor men who want me to speak to the English travellers about shooting their pigeons. It is very thoughtless, but it is in great measure the fault of the servants and dragomans who think they must not venture to tell their masters that pigeons are private property. I have a great mind to put a notice on the wall of my house about it. Here, where there are never less than eight or ten boats lying for full three months, the loss to the _fellaheen_ is serious, and our Consul Mustapha A'gha is afraid to say anything. I have given my neighbours permission to call the pigeons mine, as they roost in flocks on my roof, and to go out and say that the Sitt objects to her poultry being shot, especially as I have had them shot off my balcony as they sat there.

I got a note from M. Mounier yesterday, inviting me to go and stay at El-Moutaneh, Halim Pasha's