Part 37

There is a man here from Girgeh, who says he is married to a Ginneeyeh (fairy) princess. I have asked to be presented to her, but I suspect there will be some hitch about it. It will be like Alexis's Allez, Madame, vous etes trop incredule. {334} The unintelligible thing is the motive which prompts wonders and miracles here, seeing that the wonder workers do not get any money by it; and indeed, very often give, like the Indian saint I told you of who gave me four dollars. His miracles were all gratis, which was the most miraculous thing of all in a saint. I am promised that the Ginneeyeh shall come through the wall. If she should do so I shall be compelled to believe in her, as there are no mechanical contrivances in Luxor. All the Hareem here believe it, and the man's human wife swears she waits on her like a slave, and backs her husband's lie or delusion fully. I have not seen the man, but I should not wonder if it were a delusion--real bona fide visions and revelations are so common, and I think there is but little downright imposture. Meanwhile familiarity breeds contempt. Jinns, Afreets and Shaitans inspire far less respect than the stupidest ghost at home, and the devil (Iblees) is reduced to deplorable insignificance. He is never mentioned in the pulpit, or in religious conversation, with the respect he enjoys in Christian countries. I suppose we may console ourselves with the hope that he will pay off the Muslims for their neglect of him hereafter.

I cannot describe to you the misery here now, indeed it is wearisome even to think of: every day some new tax. Now every beast; camel, cow, sheep, donkey, horse, is made to pay. The fellaheen can no longer eat bread, they are living on barley meal, mixed with water and new green stuff, vetches etc., which to people used to good food is terrible, and I see all my acquaintances growing seedy and ragged and anxious. Yussuf is clear of debt, his religion having kept him from borrowing, but he wants to sell his little slave girl, and has sold his donkey, and he is the best off. The taxation makes life almost impossible--100 piastres per feddan, a tax on every crop, on every annual fruit, and again when it is sold in the market; on every man, on charcoal, on butter, on salt, on the dancing girls. I wonder I am not tormented for money--not above three people have tried to beg or borrow.

Thanks for the Westminster epilogue; it always amuses me much. So Terence was a nigger. There is no trace of the negro 'boy' in his Davus. My nigger has grown huge, and has developed a voice of thunder. He is of the elephantine rather than the tiger species, a very mild young savage. I shall be sorry when Palgrave takes him. I am tempted to buy Yussuf's nice little Dinka girl to replace him, only a girl is such an impossibility where there is no regular hareem. In the boat Achmet is enough under Omar; but in this large dusty house, and with errands to run, and comers and goers to look after, pipes and coffee and the like, it takes two boys to be comfortable. Mabrook too washes very well. It is surprising how fast the boys learn, and how well they do their work. Achmet, who is quite little, would be a perfectly sufficient servant for a man alone; he can cook, wash, clean the rooms, make the beds, do all the table service, knife and plate cleaning, all fairly well, and I believe now he would get along even without Omar's orders. Mabrook is slower, but he has the same merit our poor Hassan had, {336} he never forgets what he has been once told to do, and he is clean in his work, though hopelessly dirty as to his clothes. He cannot get used to them, and takes a roll in the dust, or leans against a dirty wall, oblivious of his clean-washed blue shirt. Achmet is quicker and more careless, but they both are good boys and very fond of Omar. 'Uncle Omar' is the form of address, though he scolds them pretty severely if they misbehave; and I observe that the high jinks take place chiefly when only I am in the way, and Omar gone to market or to the mosque. The little rogues have found out that their laughing does not 'affect my nerves,' and I am often treated to a share in the joke. How I wish Rainie could see the children: they would amuse her. Yussuf's girl, 'Meer en Nezzil,' is a charming child, and very clever; her emphatic way of explaining everything to me, and her gestures, would delight you. Her cousin and future husband, age five (she is six), broke the doll which I had given her, and her description of it was most dramatic, ending with a wheedling glance at the cupboard and 'of course there are no more dolls there; oh no, no more.' She is a fine little creature, far more Arab than fellaha; quite a Shaitan, her father says. She came in full of making cakes for Bairam, and offered her services; 'Oh my aunt, if thou wantest anything I can work,' said she, tucking up her sleeves.

March 6, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

LUXOR, March 6, 1867.

DEAREST MUTTER,

The warm weather has set in, and I am already as much the better for it as usual. I had a slight attack, not nearly so bad as that at Soden, but it lingered and I kept my bed as a measure of precaution. Dear Yussuf was with me the evening I was attacked, and sat up all night to give me my medicine every hour. At the prayer of dawn, an hour and a half before sunrise, I heard his supplications for my life and health, and for you and all my family; and I thought of what I had lately read, how the Greeks massacred their own patriots because the Turks had shown them mercy--a display of temper which I hope will enlighten Western Christendom as to what the Muslims have to expect, if they (the Western Christians) help the Eastern Christians to get the upper hand. Yussuf was asking about a lady the other day who has turned Catholic. 'Poor thing,' said he, 'the priests have drawn out her brains through her ears, no doubt: but never fear, her heart is good and her charity is great, and God will not deal hardly with those who serve Him with their hearts, though it is sad she should bow down before images. But look at thy slave Mabrook, can he understand one hundredth part of the thoughts of thy mind? Never-the-less he loves thee, and obeys thee with pleasure and alacrity; and wilt thou punish him because he knows not all thy ways? And shall God, who is so much higher above us as thou art above thy slave, be less just than thou?' I pinned him at once, and insisted on knowing the orthodox belief; but he quoted the Koran and the decisions of the Ulema to show that he stretched no point as far as Jews and Christians are concerned, and even that idolaters are not to be condemned by man. Yussuf wants me to write a short account of the faith from his dictation. Would anyone publish it? It annoys him terribly to hear the Muslims constantly accused of intolerance, and he is right--it is not true. They show their conviction that their faith is the best in the world with the same sort of naivete that I have seen in very innocent and ignorant English women; in fact, display a sort of religious conceit; but it is not often bitter or haineux, however much they are in earnest.

I am going to write to Palgrave and ask him to let me send another boy or the money for Mabrook, who can't endure the notion of leaving me. Achmet, who was always hankering after the fleshpots of Alexandria, got some people belonging to the boats to promise to take him, and came home and picked a quarrel and departed. Poor little chap; the Sheykh el-Beled 'put a spoke in his wheel' by informing him he would be wanted for the Pasha's works and must stay in his own place. Since he went Mabrook has come out wonderfully and does his own work and Achmet's with the greatest satisfaction. He tells me he likes it best so; he likes to be quiet. He just suits me and I him, it is humiliating to find how much more I am to the taste of savages than of the 'polite circles.'

The old lady of the Maohn proposed to come to me, but I would not let her leave her home, which would be quite an adventure to her. I knew she would be exclamatory, and lament over me, and say every minute, 'Oh my liver. Oh my eyes! The name of God be upon thee, and never mind! to-morrow please God, thou wilt be quite well,' and so forth. People send me such odd dishes, some very good. Yussuf's wife packed two calves' feet tight in a little black earthern pan, with a seasoning of herbs, and baked it in the bread oven, and the result was excellent. Also she made me a sort of small macaroni, extremely good. Now too we can get milk again, and Omar makes kishta, alias clotted cream.

Do send me a good edition of the 'Arabian Nights' in Arabic, and I should much like to give Yussuf Lane's Arabic dictionary. He is very anxious to have it. I can't read the 'Arabian Nights,' but it is a favourite amusement to make one of the party read aloud; a stray copy of 'Kamar ez-Zeman and Sitt Boodoora' went all round Luxor, and was much coveted for the village soirees. But its owner departed, and left us to mourn over the loss of his MSS.

I must tell you a black standard of respectability (it is quite equal to the English one of the gig, or the ham for breakfast). I was taking counsel with my friend Rachmeh, a negro, about Mabrook, and he urged me to buy him of Palgrave, because he saw that the lad really loved me. 'Moreover,' he said, 'the boy is of a respectable family, for he told me his mother wore a cow's tail down to her heels (that and a girdle to which the tail is fastened, and a tiny leathern apron in front, constituted her whole wardrobe), and that she beat him well when he told lies or stole his neighbours eggs.' Poor woman; I wish this abominable slave trade had spared her and her boy. What folly it is to stop the Circassian slave trade, if it is stopped, and to leave this. The Circassians take their own children to market, as a way of providing for them handsomely, and both boys and girls like being sold to the rich Turks; but the blacks and Abyssinians fight hard for their own liberty and that of their cubs. Mabrook swears that there were two Europeans in the party which attacked his village and killed he knew not how many, and carried him and others off. He was not stolen by Arabs, or by Barrabias, like Hassan, but taken in war from his home by the seaside, a place called Bookee, and carried in a ship to Jedda, and thence back to Koseir and Keneh, where Palgrave bought him. I must say that once here the slaves are happy and well off, but the waste of life and the misery caused by the trade must be immense. The slaves are coming down the river by hundreds every week, and are very cheap--twelve to twenty pounds for a fine boy, and nine pounds and upwards for a girl. I heard that the last gellab offered a woman and baby for anything anyone would give for them, on account of the trouble of the baby. By-the-bye, Mabrook displays the negro talent for babies. Now that Achmet is gone, who scolded them and drove them out, Mohammed's children, quite babies, are for ever trotting after 'Maboo,' as they pronounce his name, and he talks incessantly to them. It reminds me so of Janet and poor Hassan, but Mabrook is not like Hassan, he is one of the sons of Anak, and already as big and strong as a man, with the most prodigious chest and limbs.

Don't be at all uneasy about me as to care. Omar knows exactly what to do as he showed the other day when I was taken ill. I had shown him the medicines and given him instructions so I had not even to speak, and if I were to be ill enough to want more help, Yussuf would always sit up alternate nights; but it is not necessary. Arabs make no grievance about broken rest; they don't 'go to bed properly,' but lie down half dressed, and have a happy faculty of sleeping at odd times and anyhow, which enables them to wait on one day and night, without distressing themselves as it distresses us.

Thursday.--A telegram has just come announcing that Janet will leave Cairo to-morrow in a steamer, and therefore be here, Inshallah, this day week. I enclose a note from a Copt boy, which will amuse you. He is 'sapping' at English, and I teach him whenever I am able. I am a special favourite with all the young lads; they must not talk much before grown men, so they come and sit on the floor round my feet, and ask questions and advice, and enjoy themselves amazingly. Hobble-de-hoy-hood is very different here from what it is with us; they care earlier for the affairs of the grown-up world, and are more curious and more polished, but lack the fine animal gaiety of our boys. The girls are much more gamin than the boys, and more romping and joyous.

It is very warm now. I fear Janet will sigh terribly over the heat. They have left their voyage too late for such as do not love the Shems el-Kebeer (the big sun), which has just begun. I who worship Ammun Ra, love to feel him in his glory. It is long since I had any letters, I want so to hear how you all are.

March 7, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.

March 7, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have written a long yarn to Mutter and am rather tired, so I only write to say I am much better. The heat has set in, and, of course with it my health has mended, but I am a little shaky and afraid to tire myself. Moreover I want to nurse up and be stronger by next Thursday when Janet and Ross are expected.

What a queer old fish your Dublin antiquary is, who wants to whitewash Miss Rhampsinitus, and to identify her with the beloved of Solomon (or Saleem); my brain spun round as I read it. Must I answer him, or will you? A dragoman gave me an old broken travelling arm-chair, and Yussuf sat in an arm-chair for the first time in his life. 'May the soul of the man who made it find a seat in Paradise,' was his exclamation, which strikes me as singularly appropriate on sitting in a very comfortable armchair. Yussuf was thankful for small mercies in this case.

I am afraid Janet may be bored by all the people's civility; they will insist on making great dinners and fantasias for her I am sure. I hope they will go on to Assouan and take me with them; the change will do me good, and I should like to see as much of her as I can before she leaves Egypt for good.

The state of business here is curious. The last regulations have stopped all money lending, and the prisons are full of Sheykh el-Beled whose villages can't pay the taxes. Most respectable men have offered me to go partners with them now in their wheat, which will be cut in six weeks, if only I would pay their present taxes, I to take half the crop and half the taxes, with interest out of their half--some such trifle as 30 per cent, per month. Our prison is full of men, and we send them their dinner a tour de role. The other day a woman went with a big wooden bowl on her head, full of what she had cooked for them, accompanied by her husband. One Khaleel Effendi, a new vakeel here, was there, and said, 'What dost thou ask here thou harlot?' Her husband answered, 'That is no harlot, oh Effendim, but my wife.' Whereupon he was beaten till he fainted, and then there was a lamentation; they carried him down past my house, with a crowd of women all shrieking like mad creatures, especially his wife, who yelled and beat her head and threw dust over it, more majorum, as you see in the tombs. The humours of tax-gathering in this country are quite impayable you perceive--and ought to be set forth on the escutcheon of the new Knight of the Bath whom the Queen hath delighted to honour. Cawass battant, Fellah rampant, and Fellaha pleurant would be the proper blazon. Distress in England is terrible, but, at least, it is not the result of extortion, as it is here, where everything from nature is so abundant and glorious, and yet mankind so miserable. It is not a little hunger, it is the cruel oppression which maddens the people now. They never complained before, but now whole villages are deserted. The boat goes to-morrow morning so I must say goodbye.

April 12, 1867: Mrs. Austin

To Mrs. Austin.

LUXOR, April 12, 1867.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have just received your letters, including the one for Omar which I read to him, and which he kissed and said he should keep as a hegab (talisman). I have given him an order on Coutts' correspondents for the money, in case I die. Omar proposes to wait till we get to Cairo and then to buy a little house, or a floor in one. I am to keep all the money till the house is found, so he will in no way be tempted to do anything foolish with it. I hope you approve?