Part 27

Now I will say good-bye, for I am tired, and will write anon to the rest. Let Mutter have this. I was very poorly till I got above Siout, and then gradually mended--constant blood spitting and great weakness and I am very thin, but, by the protection of Abu-l-Hajjaj I suppose I am already much better, and begin to eat again. I have not been out yet since the first day, having much to do in the house to get to rights. I felt very dreary on Christmas-day away from you all, and Omar's plum-pudding did not cheer me at all, as he hoped it would. He begs me to kiss your hand for him, and every one sends you salaam, and all lament that you are not the new Consul at Cairo.

Kiss my chicks, and love to you all. Janet, I hope is in Egypt ere this.

January 3, 1866: Maurice Duff Gordon

To Maurice Duff Gordon.

LUXOR, January 3, 1866.

MY DARLING MAURICE,

I was delighted to get your note, which arrived on New Year's day in the midst of the hubbub of the great festival in honour of the Saint of Luxor. I wish you could have seen two young Arabs (real Arabs from the Hedjaz, in Arabia) ride and play with spears and lances. I never saw anything like it--a man who played the tom-fool stood in the middle, and they galloped round and round him, with their spears crossed and the points resting on the ground, in so small a circle that his clothes whisked round with the wind of the horses' legs. Then they threw jereeds and caught them as they galloped: the beautiful thing was the perfect mastery of the horses: they were 'like water in their hands,' as Sheykh Hassan remarked. I perceived that I had never seen real horsemanship in my life before.

I am now in the 'palace' at Luxor with my dahabieh, 'Arooset er-Ralee' (the Darling Bride), under my windows; quite like a Pasha.

In coming up we had an alarm of robbers. Under the mountain called Gebel Foodah, we were entangled in shoals, owing to a change in the bed of the river, and forced to stay all night; and at three in the morning, the Reis sent in the boy to say he had seen a man creeping on all fours--would I fire my pistol? As my revolver had been stolen in Janet's house, I was obliged to beg him to receive any possible troop of armed robbers very civilly, and to let them take what they pleased. However, Omar blazed away with your father's old cavalry pistols (which had no bullets) and whether the robbers were frightened, or the man was only a wolf, we heard no more of the affair. My crew were horribly frightened, and kept awake till daybreak.

The last night before reaching Keneh, the town forty miles north of Luxor, my men held a grand fantasia on the bank. There was no wind, and we found a lot of old maize stalks; so there was a bonfire, and no end of drumming, singing and dancing. Even Omar relaxed his dignity so far as to dance the dance of the Alexandria young men; and very funny it all was. I laughed consumedly; especially at the modest airs and graces of a great lubberly fellow--one Hezayin, who acted the bride--in a representation of a Nubian wedding festivity. The new song of this year is very pretty--a declaration of love to a young Mohammed, sung to a very pretty tune. There is another, rather like the air of 'Di Provenza al mar' in the 'Traviata,' with extremely pretty words. As in England, every year has its new song, which all the boys sing about the streets.

I hope, darling, you are sapping this year, and intend to make up a bit for lost time. I hear you have lost no time in growing tall at all events--'ill weeds, etc.'--you know Omar desires all sorts of messages to you.

January 15, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

Monday, January 15, 1866.

DEAREST ALICK,

I hear that Mr. and Miss North are to be here in a day or two. I hope you may have sent my saddle by them, for I want it sadly--mine is just possible for a donkey, but quite too broken for a horse.

Two great Sheykhs of Bishareen and Abab'deh came here and picked me up out walking alone. We went and sat in a field, and they begged me to communicate to the Queen of England that they would join her troops if she would invade Egypt. One laid my hand on his hand and said 'Thou hast 3,000 men in thy hand.' The other rules 10,000. They say there are 30,000 Arabs (bedaween) ready to join the English, for they fear that the Viceroy will try to work and rob them like the fellaheen, and if so they will fight to the last, or else go off into Syria. I was rather frightened--for them, I mean, and told them that our Queen could do nothing till 600 Sheykhs and 400 Ameers had talked in public--all whose talk was printed and read at Stambool and Cairo, and that they must not think of such a thing from our Queen, but if things became bad, it would be better for them to go off into Syria. I urged great caution upon them, and I need not repeat that to you, as the lives of thousands may be endangered. It might be interesting to be known in high places and in profound secret, as one of the indications of what is coming here.

If the saddle comes, as I hope, I may very likely go up to Assouan, and leave the boat and servants, and go into the desert for a few days to see the place of the Bishareen. They won't take anyone else: but you may be quite easy about me 'in the face' of a Sheykh-el-Arab. Handsome Sheykh Hassan, whom you saw at Cairo, will go with me. But if my saddle does not appear, I fear I should be too tired with riding a camel.

The little district of Koos, including Luxor, has been mulcted of camels, food for them and drivers, to the amount of 6,000 purses--last week--18,000 pounds, fact. I cast up the account, and it tallied with what I got from a sub employe, nor is the discontent any longer whispered. Everyone talks aloud--and well they may.

February 7, 1886: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

Tuesday, 7 Ramadan.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have just received your letter of Christmas-day, and am glad to answer it with a really amended report of myself. I had a very slight return a week ago, but for the last five or six days the daily flushing and fever has also ceased. I sent for one of the Arab doctors of the Azizeeyeh steamer to see Omar, and myself also, and he was very attentive, and took a note of medicines to send me from Cairo by a confrere: and when I offered a fee he said, 'God forbid--it is only our duty to do anything in the world for you.' Likewise a very nice Dr. Ingram saw some of my worst cases for me, and gave me good advice and help; but I want better books--Kesteven is very useful, as far as it goes, but I want something more ausfuhrlich and scientific. Ramadan is a great trouble to me, though Sheykh Yussuf tells the people not to fast, if I forbid it: but many are ill from having begun it, and one fine old man of about fifty-five died of apoplexy on the fourth night. My Christian patient is obstinate, and fasts, in spite of me, and will, I think, seal his fate; he was so much better after the blistering and Dr. Ingram's mixture. I wish you could have seen a lad of eighteen or so, who came here to-day for medicine. I think I never saw such sweet frank, engaging manners, or ever heard any one express himself better: quite une nature distinguee, not the least handsome, but the most charming countenance and way of speaking.

My good friend the Maohn spent the evening with me, and told me all the story of his marriage, though quite 'unfit to meet the virtuous eyes of British propriety--' as I read the other day in some paper apropos of I forget what--it will give you an idea of the feelings of a Muslim honnete homme, which Seleem is through and through. He knew his wife before he married her, she being twenty-five or twenty-six, and he a boy; she fell in love with him, and at seventeen he married her, and they have had ten children, all alive but two, and a splendid race they are. He told me how she courted him with glasses of sherbet and trays of sweatmeats, and how her mother proposed the marriage, and how she hesitated on account of the difference of age, but, of course, at last consented: all with the naivest vanity in his own youthful attractions, and great extolling of her personal charms, and of her many virtues. When he was sent up here she would not, or could not, leave her children. On the Sitt's arrival his slave girl was arrogant, and refused to kiss her hand, and spoke saucily of her age, whereupon Seleem gave her in marriage to a black man and pays for her support, as long as she likes to suckle the child he (Seleem) had by her, which child will in due time return to his house. Kurz, the fundamental idea in it all, in the mind of an upright man, is, that if a man 'takes up' with a woman at all, he must make himself responsible for her before the world; and above all for the fate of any child he may have by her (you see the Prophet of the Arabs did not contemplate ladies qui savent nager so well in the troubled waters of life as we are now blessed with. I don't mean to say that many men are as scrupulous as my excellent friend Seleem, either here or even in our own moral society). All this was told with expressions quite incompatible with our manners, though not at all leste--and he expatiated on his wife's personal charms in a very quaint way; the good lady is now hard upon sixty and looks it fully; but he evidently is as fond of her as ever. As a curious trait of primitive manners, he told me of her piety and boundless hospitality; how when some friends came late one evening, unexpectedly, and there was only a bit of meat, she killed a sheep and cooked it for them with her own hands. And this is a Cairene lady, and quite a lady too, in manners and appearance. The day I dined there she was dressed in very ragged, old cotton clothes, but spotlessly clean; and she waited on me with a kind, motherly pleasure, that quite took away the awkwardness I felt at sitting down while she stood. In a few days she and her husband are to dine with me, a thing which no Arab couple ever did before (I mean dine out together), and the old lady was immensely amused at the idea. Omar will cook and all male visitors will be sent to the kitchen. Now that I understand all that is said to me, and a great deal of the general conversation, it is much more amusing. Seleem Effendi jokes me a great deal about my blunders, especially my lack of politikeh, the Greek word for what we should call flummery; and my saying lazim (you must, or rather il faut), instead of humble entreaties. I told him to teach me better, but he laughed heartily, and said, 'No, no, when you say lazim, it is lazim, and nobody wants the stick to force him to say Hadr (ready) O Sheykh-el-Arab, O Emeereh.'

Fancy my surprise the other day just when I was dictating letters to Sheykh Yussuf (letters of introduction for Ross's inspecting agent) with three or four other people here, in walked Miss North (Pop) whom I have not seen since she was a child. She and her father were going up the second cataract. She has done some sketches which, though rather unskilful, were absolutely true in colour and effect, and are the very first that I have seen that are so. I shall see something of them on their return. She seemed very pleasant. Mr. North looked rather horrified at the turbaned society in which he found himself. I suppose it did look odd to English eyes.

We have had three days of the south wind, which the 'Saturday Review' says I am not to call Samoom; and I was poorly, and kept in bed two days with a cold. Apropos, I will give you the Luxor contribution towards the further confusion of the Samoom (or Simoom) controversy. I told Sheykh Yussuf that an English newspaper, written by particularly clever people, said that I was wrong to call the bad wind here 'Samoom,' (it was in an article on Palgrave's book, I think). Sheykh Yussuf said, 'True, oh lady, no doubt those learned gentlemen' (politely saluting them with his hand) 'thought one such as thou shouldest have written classical Arabic (Arabi fossieh), and have called it "al Daboor;" nevertheless, it is proper to write it "Samoom," not, as some do "Simoom," which is the plural of sim (poison).' I shook my head, and said, I did not recollect al Daboor. Then my Reis, sitting at the door, offered his suggestion. 'Probably the English, who it is well known are a nation of sailors, use the name given to the land wind by el-baharieh (the boatmen), and call it el-mereeseh.' 'But,' said I, 'the clever gentlemen say that I am wrong altogether, and never can have seen a real Samoom, for that would have killed me in ten minutes.' Hereupon Sheykh Mohammed el-Abab'deh, who is not nearly so polished as his brother Hassan, burst into a regular bedawee roar of laughter, and said, 'Yah! do the Ganassil (Europeans) take thee for a rat, oh lady? Whoever heard of el Beni Adam (the children of Adam) dying of the wind? Men die of thirst quicker when the Samoom blows and they have no water. But no one ever died of the wind alone, except the rats--they do.' I give you the opinion of three 'representative men--' scholar, sailor, and bedawee; if that helps you to a solution of the controversy.

We have just had a scene, rather startling to notions about fatalism, etc. Owing to the importation of a good deal of cattle from the Soudan, there is an expectation of the prevalence of small-pox, and the village barbers are busy vaccinating in all directions to prevent the infection brought, either by the cattle or, more likely, by their drivers. Now, my maid had told me she had never been vaccinated, and I sent for Hajjee Mahmood to cut my hair and vaccinate her. To my utter amazement the girl, who had never shown any religious bigotry, and does not fast, or make any demonstrations, refused peremptorily. It appears that the priests and sisters appointed by the enlightened administration of Prussia instil into their pupils and penitents that vaccination is a 'tempting of God.' Oh oui, she said, je sais bien que chez nous mes parents pouvaient recevoir un proces verbal, mais il vaut mieux cela que d'aller contre la volonte de Dieu. Si Dieu le veut, j'aurai la petite-verole, et s'il ne veut pas, je ne l'aurai pas. I scolded her pretty sharply, and said it was not only stupid, but selfish. 'But what can one do?' as Hajjee Mahmood said, with a pitying shake of his head; 'these Christians are so ignorant!' He blushed, and apologized to me, and said, 'It is not their fault; all this want of sense is from the priests who talk folly to them for money, and to keep them afraid before themselves. Poor things, they don't know the Word of God.--"Help thyself, oh my servant, and I will help thee."' This is the second contest I have had on this subject. Last year it was with a Copt, who was all Allah kereem and so on about his baby, with his child of four dying of small-pox. 'Oh, man,' said Sheykh Yussuf, 'if the wall against which I am now sitting were to shake above my head, should I fold my feet under me and say Allah kereem, or should I use the legs God has given me to escape from it?'