I HAD not far to go along the filled-in canal before a partly pulled down housefront enabled me to see the court of a once important dwelling1. It was similar in plan to many I have seen; but it was the only instance I have met of a vaulted2 takhtabosh. A wooden screen partly shut it off from the yard, and an opening in one of the panels served as a doorway3. Whether this screen belonged to the original building I cannot say; but it certainly added greatly to its picturesque4 appearance. The recess5 was now converted into a coffee-shop, while the rest of the house was let out in tenements6 to poor people.
It is never safe to leave a good subject to a later period, if it can possibly be helped. Some arrangement of line or colour, often hard to define, may be just what gives the subject its charm. Something may have disturbed this, or some touch of colour may have gone, before a second visit, and it leaves the painter wondering as to what he could have seen in the place to have made him wish to paint it. I started sketching7 in the café at once, hoping that some customers might arrive to suggest a grouping of figures. Should these customers be queer ones, I could trust to Mahmood to keep them from disturbing me at my work.
I had not long to wait before a half-dozen men79 came in. They seemed sufficiently8 interested in something not to take much notice of me. They squatted9 down on their heels, forming a ring, and two of them each pulled a game-cock from under their cloaks and pitched them on to the ground. The Cairene is usually very noisy during his entertainments; but in this case few words were spoken, though the men watched the varying success of their birds with intense interest. I was too occupied in taking notes of the men and the action of the cocks to feel any interest in the sport, and by the time one of the birds was at its last gasp10, and lay bleeding on the ground, I felt a sufficient disgust for the whole thing to decide me not to make it the subject of a picture.
I saw them refer to Mahmood as to who I might be, for Koranic law forbids all betting, and I believe cock-fighting is contrary to police regulations. They seemed satisfied that I was harmless enough, and they departed as quietly as they had come.
The sport must be a very popular one, for these birds, with their combs closely cut and with plucked necks, may be seen in almost any street in the poorer parts of the town. Whether the ancient Egyptians indulged in cock-fighting, I have never been able to ascertain11. I can recall no wall inscriptions12 depicting13 the sport, neither does Wilkinson refer to it in his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. It was probably introduced into Egypt during the Ptolemies or, at the latest, during the Roman occupation. Quail-fighting is common in Upper Egypt, though I have personally never witnessed it.
80 The sun soon made my place untenable, so I decided14 to return in the afternoon, when I might also expect to find more customers to suggest some figure arrangement suitable to my picture. It was a grand place for Mahmood—cups of coffee at two for a penny. I could treat him to as many as he liked, and please the Kahwegee at the same time. I confess to a good many cups myself, for coffee made in Turkish fashion is most seductive. The cups are very small, and there is only a sip15 of liquid before reaching the grounds, which are allowed to settle at the bottom. But it is a delicious sip, and it is also very stimulating16. The habit of afternoon tea acquired in England is hard to break, and to make a journey into the modern quarters to indulge it would have cut seriously into my work, and I found in one of these little cups of coffee an excellent substitute. Paint where one wishes, a coffee-shop is sure to be within easy reach, and the Kahwegee will always for a trifle bring coffee, a chair, and a glass of water, and place them next to one’s easel. Now that the native quarters are supplied with pure water, one can drink the latter with safety. Coffee drinking is often carried to excess in Egypt, with deleterious effects to nerves and digestion18; but its victims are less objectionable neighbours to the sketcher19 than the fuddled European, who may bore him with questions and breathe on him the odour of his complaint.
It is said that drunkenness is on the increase amongst the natives, and it is true that tipsy men are occasionally seen. They are chiefly the loafers who hang about the European quarters, where modest coffee-shops hardly exist, and where nearly every other house retails20 some or other intoxicant. Beer or spirits are hardly obtainable in the purely21 native parts of Cairo.
Page 80
A CAIRENE CAFé
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81 Towards evening this quaint22 little café would liven up. The wooden bench which served as a mastaba might seat an álim (as any one who can read is often called), who would drone out the news from the daily paper to a group of listeners, and the sound of the chequers slammed on a backgammon-board would make an accompanying click, click, from inside the recess. This game has been borrowed from the Firangi, and is still called by its French name of ‘tric-trac.’ It is immensely popular amongst the effendi class, and is gradually being adopted by those of a humbler station. The more primitive23 mankaleh is still played in Cairo, and is still universal in the villages where tric-trac has not yet found its way. I have been shown how to play it, but space will not allow of a lengthy25 description of its details. It is played on an oblong board with twelve hollows in two rows of six each, each row forming an opposing camp. There are seventy-two cowries, or, failing these, small pebbles26, and it is according to the manner in which these are distributed into the hollows that makes the game. An elaborate account of the various modes of playing it is given in Lane’s Modern Egyptians. It is reported as having obtained in Pharaonic times, but this has never been satisfactorily confirmed.
Turkish draughts27 is also a popular game, and to my thinking much more amusing than the way we play it in England. That this game was known (or a form of it) amongst the ancients is certain, and most visitors82 to Medinet Habú will have been shown the presentment of Rameses III. playing it with his queen.
Games of chance, as well as betting, are forbidden by the Koran. A point is, however, usually stretched in allowing the loser to pay for the cups of coffee. In mankaleh the player backs his skill more than his luck, whereas in backgammon the throw of the dice28 brings in a large element of chance. A strict Mohammedan will therefore abstain29 from the latter game.
As the day declined, more customers would drop in, and by the time the lamps were lit I often regretted that my hotel table d’h?te called me away to the Ismaeliyeh quarter.
The light from the primitive lamps piercing a blue atmosphere of smoke, and falling on the groups of figures intent on their games, left a picture in my mind which I hoped might not be dimmed by the more commonplace aspect of an up-to-date hotel.
Perhaps, after all, it is as well that circumstances oblige me to reside away from that part which I regard as the true Cairo. Putting aside matters of health, it is a loss to be cut off from one’s countrymen, or those of other countries whose mode of life resembles one’s own. Unless a man can take his wife with him, he may pass months without seeing a woman’s face, or exchanging a word with one of his opposite sex. This has been my experience in Upper Egypt and while camping in the desert, where the woman will hide away from a strange man, and where her voice will never be heard except she be screaming at one of her children, or in altercation30 with a neighbour. The servants are83 always males, and the food bought in the villages is always sent by a man or a boy. If I strolled in to see the Omdeh or the village sheykh, I should have to wait till his women-folk were well out of the way. Their conversation might not have been edifying31; but was that of the men always so? Life in a purely Mohammedan country, if separated from wife and family, is a one-sex existence.
I have met cultured men in the Near East, who for long periods had had little intercourse32 with those of their own nationality, and I noticed how ill at ease they seemed when brought in contact with European ladies and gentlemen. Life was strange enough away from the European settlements in Japan, but it was a more complete life. Though I might not understand a word spoken by the Okosan or the mousume, their smiles of welcome were perfectly33 understandable.
The hotel Villa24 Victoria, which I have of late made my headquarters in Cairo, is out of the general rush of tourists, and is frequented by many who are at times engaged in excavating34, or are in some way connected with the Antiquities35 Department. There are also permanent guests in various Government Offices, as well as others whose business brings them in contact with things Egyptian. I was here long enough for acquaintance with my fellow-lodgers to ripen36 into friendship, and besides the pleasure of their company, I was enabled to pick up a good deal of information. I could also stay here at any time of the year, whereas most of the huge caravansaries put up their shutters37 when the tourist season is over.
84 There were also ladies here who had the entrée into the hareems of the principal houses, and though they were careful not to give away what is not intended for general discussion, I was yet able to get some idea of the life which is led in the ‘prohibited places.’ The interior of a princely home in Cairo at present must resemble that of a large Parisian or London house, much more than that of the Sheykh Saheime which I attempted to describe in a former chapter. The picture which a reception-room in the hareem conjures38 up in the western mind—of love-sick Zuleikas sprawling39 on cushioned floors, sighing for their Selims and sucking sweets—may be safely dismissed. Diaphanous40 divided skirts no more conceal41 their lower limbs, nor do gold-braided corsets set off the symmetry of their figures. The Parisian modiste ‘a changé tout42 cela.’ To us poor males, who only catch a sight of them as they drive by in their broughams, they look still as oriental as ever. The black silk habarah entirely43 covers the ‘creation’ from Paris, and the coiffeur’s art is hid beneath its folds. The white muslin burko veils the face except the eyes, and whether these veils be thinner than formerly44 I cannot say. But they are not sufficiently thick to hide completely an often very pretty outline of cheek and chin.
My informant went there to read, or hear read, the French classics, and though some of the ladies may have felt bored with extracts from Corneille, I was told that many were intelligently interested. For fear lest my readers might take Zohra as a fair specimen45 of an Egyptian princess, I hasten to assure them that she was85 as great an exception among the women as was her illustrious father amongst the men of his time.
There was much in common between father and daughter. The great Pasha let nothing stand between himself and his ambitions; any means were good enough to remove those who obstructed46 his plans. He was a brave man and a great soldier, and yet he could stoop to treacherously47 murdering the mameluke Beys and their followers48, when he considered his rule in Egypt was safer without them. His young daughter was prepared to sacrifice any one who might thwart49 her in her misplaced love; and the form of madness which followed on her unsatisfied desires had its parallel in the loss of reason by her father, when his ambitions to found a great empire were not realised. He is reported to have had eighty-five children, and strange it is that, with a family of such dimensions, the succession of the present Khedive should have come through an adopted son. Therefore, as far as we know, there is no blood relationship between the actual members of the ruling house and Mohammed Ali and his descendants.
It is pleasant to turn from Zohra to the mistress of a princely hareem, who is now a great lady in Cairo. Though having children of her own, she still finds room in her affections, as well as in her palace, to mother many little girls who have either lost or have been abandoned by their parents. She not only gives them a good education, but, as children by adoption50, she keeps them until suitable husbands are provided for them. A kinder form of charity is hard to conceive.
Entertainments and visits from lady friends are of86 constant occurrence in the wealthier hareems in Cairo, though the life of Egyptian ladies in a general way must, from a European standpoint, be exceedingly dull. Girl schools are on the increase as well as home instruction; but taking the whole female population of Egypt, it is barely one per cent. as yet who can either read or write. The percentage among men is low enough—about five in a hundred; but as the enormous majority of Egyptians are peasants, five per cent. may cover those who are above the status of labouring men.
I have heard the complaint from educated Moslems that their wives were poor companions, and that they therefore spent but little of their time in their company. I don’t know what else they could expect. The fellaha woman may at times be overworked, but her existence seems a happier one than that of many of her wealthier sisters in their enforced idleness.
A fashionable French modiste was for a while a guest at the Villa Victoria. She spent her time running from one hareem to another, getting orders for the latest things in hats. As some of these hats, at the time of which I am writing, were about half the size of a billiard table, we would see her driving to her clients nearly lost amongst colossal51 bandboxes. For convenience she wore her chef-d’?uvre, that is the biggest, on her own head, and she would sometimes return crowned with a smaller one, having, as she told us, disposed of the masterpiece in one of the hareems. We were curious to know when and where her clients could wear them, for they never appeared in Cairo with a European hat on their heads. ‘Oh! mais c’est pour87 Paris ou Vienne,’ she said, and assured us that they looked ‘bien chics.’
Just think of it!—Zuleika in a Paris taxi balancing one of these shapeless masses of millinery on the top of her head!
To see things as others see them may often be the wish of most of us. I have never felt this wish stronger than when I have seen some old village sheykh asking his way about modernised Cairo. Some evil ginn must have raised these huge blocks of buildings which house the unbelievers. Strange things to help them on their road to perdition are exposed in the stores, and sheets of some invisible material which his eye can penetrate52, but which resists the touch of his finger, hang before the accursed articles. Cars run along the streets with neither an ass17 nor a camel to draw them. Sparks which fly from beneath the wheels and overhead, accompanied by a crackling sound, must be sure evidence of the afrit who drives them. Naserene women talk in a strange language to men, and shamelessly expose their faces to all. He passes a large modern café, and sees coreligionists unturbaned and dressed as the Frank, partaking of forbidden drinks and disregarding the call of the mueddin, which alone brings a ray of hope to the poor sheykh. He hastens to the mosques53—it is some way off, for mosques are few and far between in this godless part—he makes his prostrations, and he prays to Allah that the Muslemeen may come by their own again.
After he has rested in the native quarters, and he meditates54 on his well-watered fields, he may wish that some of his prayers be not too literally55 answered. He88 may still remember the time when excessive taxation56 robbed his people of the fruits of their labour, and scars may yet remain on his back of the Kurbág which drove him to the forced labour.
I have much in sympathy with the old sheykh, though we may see things from opposite points of view. Were the old town not being slowly robbed of its beauty and oriental character, I might feel indifferent as to what was being done in the new, for my object in spending so many seasons in Egypt has never been to paint the modern city, which at its best could never equal that which I could find nearer home. The inconsistency of the old man’s prayer, and the contemplations of his better watered fields, finds a parallel in my regrets that the old order gives place to the new; while I am certainly not indifferent to the creature comforts which a Europeanised hotel allows me to enjoy. The discomforts57 I have endured in native inns in the unfrequented places may not have left permanent scars; but they would recall some very unpleasant experiences had not the interest of what I was in search of given them a back seat in my memory. Apart from this selfish point of view, it is a joy to know that the thousands who dwell in the old city can now drink an unpolluted water, that their sick can have an enlightened medical treatment, and that the education of their young is at present adapted to a useful citizenship58.
89 Our countrymen who are guiding the destinies of Egypt, and who are honestly working for the betterment of its people, are not primarily responsible for the unsuitable planning of the modern Cairo. Ismael Pasha’s boast, ‘L’Egypte fait partie de l’Europe,’ came after the remodelling59 of Alexandria, and since the time when Clot60 Bey drew the plans of a northern city to be built in a semi-tropical country.
From what I hear, this unfortunate example is being followed in Khartúm, which is well inside the tropics. The wide sun-baked streets may be pleasant to those who only visit it during the short winter; but they who have to remain there during the long summer months may long for the shady lanes which wind amongst the habitations of the ancient parts of Cairo. The well-to-do in the medi?val city were not obliged to migrate to Europe during the hottest season, as the clients of our modiste feel now constrained61 to do.
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1
dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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vaulted
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| adj.拱状的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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tenements
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| n.房屋，住户，租房子( tenement的名词复数 ) | |
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sketching
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| n.草图 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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inscriptions
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| （作者）题词( inscription的名词复数 )； 献词； 碑文； 证劵持有人的登记 | |
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depicting
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| 描绘，描画( depict的现在分词 )； 描述 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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sip
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| v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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digestion
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| n.消化，吸收 | |
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sketcher
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| n.画略图者，作素描者，舞台布景设计者 | |
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retails
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| n.零售( retail的名词复数 ) | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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dice
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| n.骰子；vt.把（食物）切成小方块，冒险 | |
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abstain
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| v.自制，戒绝，弃权，避免 | |
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altercation
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| n.争吵，争论 | |
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edifying
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| adj.有教训意味的，教训性的，有益的v.开导，启发( edify的现在分词 ) | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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excavating
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| v.挖掘( excavate的现在分词 )；开凿；挖出；发掘 | |
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antiquities
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| n.古老( antiquity的名词复数 )；古迹；古人们；古代的风俗习惯 | |
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ripen
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| vt.使成熟；vi.成熟 | |
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shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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conjures
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| 用魔术变出( conjure的第三人称单数 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
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sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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diaphanous
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| adj.(布)精致的，半透明的 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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tout
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| v.推销，招徕；兜售；吹捧，劝诱 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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obstructed
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| 阻塞( obstruct的过去式和过去分词 )； 堵塞； 阻碍； 阻止 | |
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treacherously
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| 背信弃义地； 背叛地； 靠不住地； 危险地 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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thwart
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| v.阻挠，妨碍，反对；adj.横(断的) | |
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50
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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51
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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52
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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53
mosques
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| 清真寺； 伊斯兰教寺院，清真寺； 清真寺，伊斯兰教寺院( mosque的名词复数 ) | |
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meditates
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的第三人称单数 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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55
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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56
taxation
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| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
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57
discomforts
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| n.不舒适( discomfort的名词复数 )；不愉快，苦恼 | |
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58
citizenship
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| n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份) | |
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remodelling
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| v.改变…的结构[形状]( remodel的现在分词 ) | |
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clot
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| n.凝块；v.使凝成块 | |
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constrained
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| adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
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