Part 33

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

OFF BOULAK, September 21, 1886.

I am better again now and go on very comfortably with my two little boys. Omar is from dawn till night at work at my boat, so I have only Mahbrook and Achmet, and you would wonder to see how well I am served. Achmet cooks a very good dinner, serves it and orders Mahbrook about. Sometimes I whistle and hear hader (ready) from the water and in tumbles Achmet, with the water running 'down his innocent nose' and looking just like a little bronze triton of a Renaissance fountain, with a blue shirt and white skull-cap added. Mahbrook is a big lubberly lad of the laugh-and-grow-fat breed, clumsy, but not stupid, and very good and docile. You would delight in his guffaws, and the merry games and hearty laughter of my menage is very pleasant to me. Another boy swims over from Goodah's boat (his Achmet), and then there are games at piracy, and much stealing of red pots from the potter's boats. The joke is to snatch one under the owner's very nose, and swim off brandishing it, whereupon the boatman uses eloquent language, and the boys out-hector him, and everybody is much amused. I only hope Palgrave won't come back from Sookum Kaleh to fetch Mahbrook just as he has got clever--not at stealing jars, but in his work. He already washes my clothes very nicely indeed; his stout black arms are made for a washer-boy. Achmet looked forward with great eagerness to your coming. He is mad to go to England, and in his heart planned to ingratiate himself with you, and go as a 'general servant.' He is very little, if at all, bigger than a child of seven, but an Arab boy 'ne doute de rien' and does serve admirably. What would an English respectable cook say to seeing 'two dishes and a sweet' cooked over a little old wood on a few bricks, by a baby in a blue shirt? and very well cooked too, and followed by incomparable coffee.

You will be pleased to hear that your capital story of the London cabman has its exact counterpart here. 'Oh gracious God, what aileth thee, oh Achmet my brother, and why is thy bosom contracted that thou hast not once said to me d------n thy father, or son of a dog or pig, as thou art used to do.'

Can't you save up your holidays and come for four months next winter with my Maurice? However perhaps you would be bored on the Nile. I don't know. People either enjoy it rapturously or are bored, I believe. I am glad to hear from Janet that you are well. I am much better. The carpenter will finish in the boat to-day, then the painter begins and in a week, Inshallah, I shall get back into her.

September 21, 1886: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

OFF BOULAK, September 21, 1886.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I am a good deal better again; the weather is delightful, and the Nile in full flood, which makes the river scenery from the boat very beautiful. Alick made my mouth water with his descriptions of his rides with Janet about the dear old Surrey country, having her with him seems to have quite set him up. I have seen nothing and nobody but my 'next boat' neighbour, Goodah Effendi, as Omar has been at work all day in the boat, and I felt lazy and disinclined to go out alone. Big Hassan of the donkeys has grown too lazy to go about and I don't care to go alone with a small boy here. However I am out in the best of air all day and am very well off. My two little boys are very diverting and serve me very well. The news from Europe is to my ignorant ideas desolant, a degringolade back into military despotism, which would have excited indignation with us in our fathers' days, I think. I get lots of newspapers from Ross, which afterwards go to an Arab grocer, who reads the Times and the Saturday Review in his shop in the bazaar! what next? The cargo of books which Alick and you sent will be most acceptable for winter consumption. If I were a painter I would take up the Moslem traditions of Joseph and Mary. He was not a white-bearded old gentleman at all you must know, but young, lovely and pure as Our Lady herself. They were cousins, brought up together; and she avoided the light conversation of other girls, and used to go to the well with her jar, hand in hand with Joseph carrying his. After the angel Gabriel had announced to her the will of God, and blown into her sleeve, whereby she conceived 'the Spirit of God,' Joseph saw her state with dismay, and resolved to kill her, as was his duty as her nearest male relation. He followed her, knife in hand, meaning always to kill her at the next tree, and each time his heart failed him, until they reached the well and the tree under which the Divine messenger stood once more and said, 'Fear not oh Joseph, the daughter of thy uncle bears within her Eesa, the Messiah, the Spirit of God.' Joseph married his cousin without fear. Is it not pretty? the two types of youthful purity and piety, standing hand in hand before the angel. I think a painter might make something out of the soft-eyed Syrian boy with his jar on his shoulder (hers on the head), and the grave, modest maiden who shrank from all profane company.

I now know all about Sheykh Seleem, and why he sits naked on the river bank; from very high authority--a great Sheykh to whom it has been revealed. He was entrusted with the care of some of the holy she camels, like that on which the Prophet rode to Jerusalem in one night, and which are invisible to all but the elect, and he lost one, and now he is God's prisoner till she is found.

A letter from aunt Charley all about her own and Rainie's country life, school feasts etc., made me quite cry, and brought before me--oh, how vividly--the difference between East and West, not quite all to the advantage of home however, though mostly. What is pleasant here is the primitive ways. Three times since I have been here lads of most respectable families of Luxor have come to ask hospitality, which consists in a place on the deck of the boat, and liberty to dip their bread in the common dish with my slave boy and Achmet. The bread they brought with them, 'bread and shelter' were not asked, as they slept sub dio. In England I must have refused the hospitality, on account of gene and expense. The chief object to the lads was the respectability of being under my eye while away from their fathers, as a satisfaction to their families; and while they ate and slept like beggars, as we should say, they read their books and chatted with me, when I was out on the deck, on perfectly equal terms, only paying the respect proper to my age. I thought of the 'orphanages and institutions' and all the countless difficulties of that sort, and wondered whether something was not to be said for this absence of civilization in knives, forks, beds, beer, and first and second tables above all. Of course climate has a good deal to do with the facility with which widows and orphans are absorbed here.

Goodbye dearest Mutter: to-day is post day, and Reis Mohammed is about to trudge into town in such a dazzling white turban and such a grand black robe. His first wife, whom he was going to divorce for want of children, has brought him a son, and we jeer him a little about what he may find in Luxor from the second, and wish him a couple of dozen.

October 15, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

CAIRO, October 15, 1866.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have been back in my own boat four days, and most comfortable she is. I enlarged the saloon, and made a good writing table, and low easy divans instead of benches, and added a sort of pantry and sleeping cabin in front; so that Omar has not to come through the saloon to sleep; and I have all the hareem part to myself. Inside there is a good large stern cabin, and wash-closet and two small cabins with beds long enough even for you. Inshallah, you and Maurice will come next winter and go up the Nile and enjoy it with me. I intend to sail in ten days and to send back the 'Urania' to seek work for the winter. We had a very narrow escape of being flooded this year. I fear a deal of damage has been done to the dourrah and cotton crops. It was sad to see the villagers close by here trying to pull up a little green dourrah as the Nile slowly swallowed up the fields.

I was forced to flog Mabrook yesterday for smoking on the sly, a grave offence here on the part of a boy; it is considered disrespectful; so he was ordered, with much parade, to lie down, and Omar gave him two cuts with a rope's end, an apology for a flogging which would have made an Eton boy stare. The stick here is quite nominal, except in official hands. I can't say Mabrook seemed at all impressed, for he was laughing heartily with Omar in less than ten minutes; but the affair was conducted with as much solemnity as an execution.

'Sheykh' Stanley's friend, Gezawee, has married his negro slave to his own sister, on the plea that he was the best young man he knew. What would a Christian family say to such an arrangement?

My boat is beautifully buoyant now, and has come up by the bows in fine style. I have not sailed her yet, but have doubt she will 'walk well' as the Arabs say. Omar got 10 pounds by the sale of old wood and nails, and also gave me 2000 piastres, nearly 12 pounds, which the workmen had given him as a sort of backsheesh. They all pay one, two or three piastres daily to any wakeel (agent) who superintends; that is his profit, and it is enormous at that rate. I said, 'Why did you not refuse it?' But Omar replied they had pay enough after that reduction, which is always made from them, and that in his opinion therefore, it came out of the master's pocket, and was 'cheatery.' How people have been talking nonsense about Jamaica chez vous. I have little doubt Eyre did quite right, and still less doubt that the niggers have had enough of the sort of provocation which I well know, to account for the outbreak. Baker's effusion is a very poor business. There may be blacks like tigers (and whites too in London for that matter). I myself have seen at least five sorts of blacks (negroes, not Arabs), more unlike each other than Swedes are unlike Spaniards; and many are just like ourselves. Of course they want governing with a strong hand, like all ignorant, childish creatures. But I am fully convinced that custom and education are the only real differences between one set of men and another, their inner nature is the same all the world over.

My Reis spoke such a pretty parable the other day that I must needs write it. A Coptic Reis stole some of my wood, which we got back by force and there was some reviling of the Nazarenes in consequence from Hoseyn and Ali; but Reis Mohammed said: 'Not so; Girgis is a thief, it is true, but many Christians are honest; and behold, all the people in the world are like soldiers, some wear red and some blue; some serve on foot, others on horseback, and some in ships; but all serve one Sultan, and each fights in the regiment in which the Sultan has placed him, and he who does his duty best is the best man, be his coat red or blue or black.' I said, 'Excellent words, oh Reis, and fit to be spoken from the best of pulpits.' It is surprising what happy sayings the people here hit upon; they cultivate talk for want of reading, and the consequence is great facility of narration and illustration. Everybody enforces his ideas like Christ, in parables. Hajjee Hannah told me two excellent fairy tales, which I will write for Rainie with some Bowdlerizing, and several laughable stories, which I will leave unrecorded, as savouring too much of Boccaccio's manner, or that of the Queen of Navarre. I told Achmet to sweep the floor after dinner just now. He hesitated, and I called again: 'What manner is this, not to sweep when I bid thee?' 'By the most high God,' said the boy, 'my hand shall not sweep in thy boat after sunset, oh Lady; I would rather have it cut off than sweep thee out of thy property.' I found that you must not sweep at night, nor for three days after the departure of a guest whose return you desire, or of the master of the house. 'Thinkest thou that my brother would sweep away the dust of thy feet from the floors at Luxor,' continued Achmet, 'he would fear never to see thy fortunate face again.' If you don't want to see your visitor again you break a gulleh (water-jar) behind him as he leaves the house, and sweep away his footsteps.

What a canard your papers have in Europe about a constitution here. I won't write any politics, it is all too dreary; and Cairo gossip is odious, as you may judge by the productions of Mesdames Odouard and Lott. Only remember this, there is no law nor justice but the will, or rather the caprice, of one man. It is nearly impossible for any European to conceive such a state of things as really exists. Nothing but perfect familiarity with the governed, i.e. oppressed, class will teach it; however intimate a man may be with the rulers he will never fully take it in. I am a l'index here, and none of the people I know dare come to see me; Arab I mean. It was whispered in my ear in the street by a friend I met. Ismael Pasha's chief pleasure is gossip, and a certain number of persons, chiefly Europeans, furnish him with it daily, true or false. If the farce of the constitution ever should be acted here it will be superb. Something like the Consul going in state to ask the fellaheen what wages they got. I could tell you a little of the value of consular information; but what is the use? Europe is enchanted with the enlightened Pasha who has ruined this fine country.

I long so to see you and Rainie! I don't like to hope too much, but Inshallah, next year I shall see you all.

October 19, 1866: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

OFF BOULAK, October 19, 1866.

I shall soon sail up the river. Yesterday Seyd Mustapha arrived, who says that the Greeks are all gone, and the poor Austrian at Thebes is dead, so I shall represent Europe in my single person from Siout to, I suppose, Khartoum.