Chapter 16

_Friday_.--We have had better weather again, easterly wind and pretty cool, and I am losing the cough and languor which the damp of the Simoom brought me. Sheykh Yussuf has just come back from Keneh, whither he and the Kadee went on their donkeys for some law business. He took our saddle bags at Omar's request, and brought us back a few pounds of sugar and some rice and tobacco (isn't it like Fielding's novels?). It is two days' journey, so they slept in the mosque at Koos half way. I told Yussuf how Suleyman's child has the smallpox and how Mohammed only said it was _Min Allah_ (from God) when I suggested that his baby should be vaccinated at once. Yussuf called him in and said: 'Oh man, when thou wouldst build a house dost thou throw the bricks in a heap on the ground and say the building thereof is from God, or dost thou use the brains and hands which God has given thee, and then pray to Him to bless thy work? In all things do the best of thy understanding and means, and then say _Min Allah_, for the end is with Him!' There is not a pin to choose in fatalism here between Muslim and Christian, the lazy, like Mohammed and Suleyman (one Arab the other Copt), say _Min Allah_ or any form of dawdle you please; but the true Muslim doctrine is just what Yussuf laid down--'do all you can and be resigned to whatever be the result.' _Fais ce que dois advienne qui pourra_ is good doctrine. In fact, I am very much puzzled to discover the slightest difference between Christian and Muslim morality or belief--if you exclude certain dogmas--and in fact, very little is felt here. No one attempts to apply different standards of morals or of piety to a Muslim and a Copt. East and West is the difference, not Muslim and Christian. As to that difference I could tell volumes. Are they worse? Are they better? Both and neither. I am, perhaps, not quite impartial, because I am _sympathique_ to the Arabs and they to me, and I am inclined to be 'kind' to their virtues if not 'blind' to their faults, which are visible to the most inexperienced traveller. You see all our own familiar 'bunkum' (excuse the vulgarity) falls so flat on their ears, bravado about 'honour,' 'veracity,' etc., etc., they look blank and bored at. The schoolboy morality as set forth by Maurice is current here among grown men. Of course we tell lies to Pashas and Beys, why shouldn't we? But shall I call in that ragged sailor and give him an order to bring me up 500 pounds in cash from Cairo when he happens to come? It would not be an unusual proceeding. I sleep every night in a _makaab_ (sort of verandah) open to all Luxor, and haven't a door that has a lock. They bother me for backsheesh; but oh how poor they are, and how rich must be a woman whose very servants drink sugar to their coffee! and who lives in the _Kasr_ (palace) and is respectfully visited by Ali Bey--and, come to that, Ali Bey would like a present even better than the poorest fellah, who also loves to give one. When I know, as I now do thoroughly, all Omar's complete integrity--without any sort of mention of it--his self-denial in going ragged and shabby to save his money for his wife and child (a very great trial to a good-looking young Arab), and the equally unostentatious love he has shown to me, and the delicacy and real nobleness of feeling which come out so oddly in the midst of sayings which, to our ideas, seem very shabby and time-serving, very often I wonder if there be anything as good in the civilized West. And as Sally most justly says, 'All their goodness is quite their own. God knows there is no one to teach anything but harm!'

_Tuesday_.--Two poor fellows have just come home from the Suez Canal work with gastric fever, I think. I hope it won't spread. The wife of one said to me yesterday, 'Are there more _Sittat_ (ladies) like you in your village?' 'Wallah,' said I, 'there are many better, and good doctors, Alhamdullillah!' 'Alhamdullillah,' said she, 'then the poor people don't want you so much, and by God you must stay here for _we_ can't do without you, so write to your family to say so, and don't go away and leave us.'

_Thursday_, _June_ 2,--A steamer has just arrived which will take this letter, so I can only say good-bye, my dearest Mutter, and God bless you. I continue very fairly well. The epidemic here is all but over; but my medical fame has spread so, that the poor souls come twenty miles (from Koos) for physic. The constant phrase of 'Oh our sister, God hath sent thee to look to us!' is so sad. _Such_ a little help is a wonder to my poor fellaheen. It is not so hot as it was I think, except at night, and I now sleep half the night outside the house. The cattle are all dead; perhaps five are left in all Luxor. _Allah kereem_! (God is merciful) said fellah Omar, 'I have one left from fifty-four.' The grain is unthreshed, and butter three shillings a pound! We get nothing here but by post; no papers, no nothing. I suppose the high Nile will bring up boats. Now the river is down at its lowest, and now I really know how Egyptians live.

June 12, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR, _Sunday_, _June_ 12, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

Three letters have I received from you within a few days, for the post of the Saeed is not that of the Medes and Persians. I have had an abominable toothache, which quite floored me, and was aggravated by the Oriental custom, namely, that all the _beau monde_ of Thebes _would_ come and sit with me, and suggest remedies, and look into my mouth, and make quite a business of my tooth. Sheykh Yussuf laid two fingers on my cheek and recited verses from the Koran, I regret to say with no effect, except that while his fingers touched me the pain ceased. I find he _is_ celebrated for soothing headaches and other nervous pains, and I daresay is an unconscious mesmeriser. The other day our poor Maohn was terrified by a communication from Ali Bey (Moudir of Keneh) to the effect that he had heard from Alexandria that someone had reported that the dead cattle had lain about the streets of Luxor and that the place was pestilential. The British mind at once suggested a counter-statement, to be signed by the most respectable inhabitants. So the Cadi drew it up, and came and read it to me, and took my deposition and witnessed my signature, and the Maohn went his way rejoicing, in that 'the words of the Englishwoman' would utterly defeat Ali Bey. The truth was that the worthy Maohn worked really hard, and superintended the horrible dead cattle business in person, which is some risk and very unpleasant. To dispose of three or four hundred dead oxen every day with a limited number of labourers is no trifle, and if a travelling Englishman smells one a mile off he calls us 'lazy Arabs.' The beasts could not be buried deep enough, but all were carried a mile off from the village. I wish some of the dilettanti who stop their noses at us in our trouble had to see or to do what I have seen and done.

_June_ 17.--We have had four or five days of such fearful heat with a Simoom that I have been quite knocked up, and literally could not write. Besides, I sit in the dark all day, and am now writing so--and at night go out and sit in the verandah, and can't have candles because of the insects. I sleep outside till about six a.m., and then go indoors till dark again. This fortnight is the hottest time. To-day the drop falls into the Nile at its source, and it will now rise fast and cool the country. It has risen one cubit, and the water is green; next month it will be blood colour. My cough has been a little troublesome again, I suppose from the Simoom. The tooth does not ache now. _Alhamdulillah_! for I rather dreaded the _muzeyinn_ (barber) with his _tongs_, who is the sole dentist here. I was amused the other day by the entrance of my friend the Maohn, attended by Osman Effendi and his cawass and pipe-bearer, and bearing a saucer in his hand, wearing the look, half sheepish, half cocky, with which elderly gentlemen in all countries announce what he did, _i.e._, that his black slave-girl was three months with child and longed for olives, so the respectable magistrate had trotted all over the bazaar and to the Greek corn-dealers to buy some, but for no money were they to be had, so he hoped I might have some and forgive the request, as I, of course, knew that a man must beg or even steal for a woman under these circumstances. I called Omar and said, 'I trust there are olives for the honourable Hareem of Seleem Effendi--they are needed there.' Omar instantly understood the case, and 'Praise be to God a few are left; I was about to stuff the pigeons for dinner with them; how lucky I had not done it.' And then we belaboured Seleem with compliments. 'Please God the child will be fortunate to thee,' say I. Omar says, 'Sweeten my mouth, oh Effendim, for did I not tell thee God would give thee good out of this affair when thou boughtest her?' While we were thus rejoicing over the possible little mulatto, I thought how shocked a white Christian gentleman of our Colonies would be at our conduct to make all this fuss about a black girl--'_he_ give her sixpence' (under the same circumstances I mean) 'he'd see her d---d first,' and my heart warmed to the kind old Muslim sinner (?) as he took his saucer of olives and walked with them openly in his hand along the street. Now the black girl is free, and can only leave Seleem's house by her own good will and probably after a time she will marry and he will pay the expenses. A man can't sell his slave after he has made known that she is with child by him, and it would be considered unmanly to detain her if she should wish to go. The child will be added to the other eight who fill the Maohn's quiver in Cairo and will be exactly as well looked on and have equal rights if he is as black as a coal.

A most quaint little half-black boy a year and a half old has taken a fancy to me and comes and sits for hours gazing at me and then dances to amuse me. He is Mahommed our guard's son by a jet-black slave of his and is brown-black and very pretty. He wears a bit of iron wire in one ear and iron rings round his ankles, and that is all--and when he comes up little Achmet, who is his uncle, 'makes him fit to be seen' by emptying a pitcher of water over his head to rinse off the dust in which of course he has been rolling--that is equivalent to a clean pinafore. You would want to buy little Said I know, he is so pretty and so jolly. He dances and sings and jabbers baby Arabic and then sits like a quaint little idol cross-legged quite still for hours.

I am now writing in the kitchen, which is the coolest place where there is any light at all. Omar is diligently spelling words of six letters, with the wooden spoon in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth, and Sally is lying on her back on the floor. I won't describe our costume. It is now two months since I have worn stockings, and I think you would wonder at the fellaha who 'owns you,' so deep a brown are my face, hands and feet. One of the sailors in Arthur's boat said: 'See how the sun of the Arabs loves her; he has kissed her so hotly that she can't go home among English people.'

_June_ 18.--I went last night to look at Karnac by moonlight. The giant columns were overpowering. I never saw anything so solemn. On our way back we met the Sheykh-el-Beled, who ordered me an escort of ten men home. Fancy me on my humble donkey, guarded most superfluously by ten tall fellows, with oh! such spears and venerable matchlocks. At Mustapha's house we found a party seated before the door, and joined it. There was a tremendous Sheykh-el-Islam from Tunis, a Maghribee, seated on a carpet in state receiving homage. I don't think he liked the heretical woman at all. Even the Maohn did not dare to be as 'politeful' as usual to me, but took the seat above me, which I had respectfully left vacant next to the holy man. Mustapha was in a stew, afraid not to do the respectful to me, and fussing after the Sheykh. Then Yussuf came fresh from the river, where he had bathed and prayed, and then you saw the real gentleman. He salaamed the great Sheykh, who motioned to him to sit before him, but Yussuf quietly came round and sat _below_ me on the mat, leaned his elbow on my cushion, and made more demonstration of regard for me than ever, and when I went came and helped me on my donkey. The holy Sheykh went away to pray, and Mustapha hinted to Yussuf to go with him, but he only smiled, and did not stir; he had prayed an hour before down at the Nile. It was as if a poor curate had devoted himself to a rank papist under the eye of a scowling Shaftesbury Bishop. Then came Osman Effendi, a young Turk, with a poor devil accused in a distant village of stealing a letter with money in it addressed to a Greek money-lender. The discussion was quite general, the man, of course, denying all. But the Nazir had sent word to beat him. Then Omar burst out, 'What a shame to beat a poor man on the mere word of a Greek money-lender who eats the people; the Nazir shouldn't help him.' There was a Greek present who scowled at Omar, and the Turk gaped at him in horror. Yussuf said, with his quiet smile, 'My brother, thou art talking English,' with a glance at me; and we all laughed, and I said, 'Many thanks for the compliment.' All the village is in good spirits; the Nile is rising fast, and a star of most fortunate character has made its appearance, so Yussuf tells me, and portends a good year and an end to our afflictions. I am much better to-day, and I think I too feel the rising Nile; it puts new life into all things. The last fortnight or three weeks have been very trying with the Simoom and intense heat. I suppose I look better for the people here are for ever praising God about my amended looks. I am too hot, and it is too dark to write more.

June 26, 1864: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR, _June_ 26, 1864.

DEAREST ALICK,

I have just paid a singular visit to a political _detenu_ or exile rather. Last night Mustapha came in with a man in great grief who said his boy was very ill on board a cangia just come from Cairo and going to Assouan. The watchman on the river-bank had told him that there was an English Sitt 'who would not turn her face from anyone in trouble' and advised him to come to me for medicine, so he went to Mustapha and begged him to bring him to me, and to beg the cawass (policeman) in charge of El-Bedrawee (who was being sent to Fazoghlou in banishment) to wait a few hours. The cawass (may he not suffer for his humanity) consented. He described his boy's symptoms and I gave him a dose of castor oil and said I would go to the boat in the morning. The poor fellow was a Cairo merchant but living at Khartoum, he poured out his sorrow in true Eastern style. 'Oh my boy, and I have none but he, and how shall I come before his mother, a Habbesheeyeh, oh Lady, and tell her "thy son is dead"?' So I said, '_Allah kereem ya Seedee_, and _Inshallah tayib_,' etc., etc., and went this morning early to the boat. It was a regular old Arab cangia lumbered up with corn, sacks of matting, a live sheep, etc., and there I found a sweet graceful boy of fifteen or so in a high fever. His father said he had visited a certain Pasha on the way and evidently meant that he had been poisoned or had the evil eye. I assured him it was only the epidemic and asked why he had not sent for the doctor at Keneh. The old story! He was afraid, 'God knows what a government doctor might do to the boy.' Then Omar came in and stood before El-Bedrawee and said, 'Oh my master, why do we see thee thus? Mashallah, I once ate of thy bread when I was of the soldiers of Said Pasha, and I saw thy riches and thy greatness, and what has God decreed against thee?' So El-Bedrawee who is (or was) one of the wealthiest men of Lower Egypt and lived at Tantah, related how Effendina (Ismail Pasha) sent for him to go to Cairo to the Citadel to transact some business, and how he rode his horse up to the Citadel and went in, and there the Pasha at once ordered a cawass to take him down to the Nile and on board a common cargo boat and to go with him and take him to Fazoghlou. Letters were given to the cawass to deliver to every Moudir on the way, and another despatched by hand to the Governor of Fazoghlou with orders concerning El-Bedrawee. He begged leave to see his son once more before starting, or any of his family. 'No, he must go at once and see no one.' But luckily a fellah, one of his relations had come after him to Cairo and had 700 pounds in his girdle; he followed El-Bedrawee to the Citadel and saw him being walked off by the cawass and followed him to the river and on board the boat and gave him the 700 pounds which he had in his girdle. The various Moudirs had been civil to him, and friends in various places had given him clothes and food. He had not got a chain round his neck or fetters, and was allowed to go ashore with the cawass, for he had just been to the tomb of Abou-l-Hajjaj and had told that dead Sheykh all his affliction and promised, if he came back safe, to come every year to his _moolid_ (festival) and pay the whole expenses (_i.e._ feed all comers). Mustapha wanted him to dine with him and me, but the cawass could not allow it, so Mustapha sent him a fine sheep and some bread, fruit, etc. I made him a present of some quinine, rhubarb pills, and sulphate of zinc for eye lotion. Here you know we all go upon a more than English presumption and believe every prisoner to be innocent and a victim--as he gets no trial he _never_ can be proved guilty--besides poor old El-Bedrawee declared he had not the faintest idea what he was accused of or how he had offended Effendina.

I listened to all this in extreme amazement, and he said, 'Ah! I know you English manage things very differently; I have heard all about your excellent justice.'

He was a stout, dignified-looking fair man, like a Turk, but talking broad Lower Egypt fellah talk, so that I could not understand him, and had to get Mustapha and Omar to repeat his words. His father was an Arab, and his mother a Circassian slave, which gave the fair skin and reddish beard. He must be over fifty, fat and not healthy; of course he is _meant_ to die up in Fazoghlou, especially going at this season. He owns (or owned, for God knows who has it now) 12,000 feddans of fine land between Tantah and Samanhoud, and was enormously rich. He consulted me a great deal about his health, and I gave him certainly very good advice. I cannot write in a letter which I know you will show what drugs a Turkish doctor had furnished him with to 'strengthen' him in the trying climate of Fazoghlou. I wonder was it intended to kill him or only given in ignorance of the laws of health equal to his own?

After a while the pretty boy became better and recovered consciousness, and his poor father, who had been helping me with trembling hands and swimming eyes, cried for joy, and said, 'By God the most high, if ever I find any of the English, poor or sick or afflicted up in Fazoghlou, I will make them know that I Abu Mahommed never saw a face like the pale face of the English lady bent over my sick boy.' And then El-Bedrawee and his fellah kinsman, and all the crew blessed me and the Captain, and the cawass said it was time to sail. So I gave directions and medicine to Abu Mahommed, and kissed the pretty boy and went out. El-Bedrawee followed me up the bank, and said he had a request to make--would I pray for him in his distress. I said, 'I am not of the Muslimeen,' but both he and Mustapha said, _Maleysh_ (never mind), for that it was quite certain I was not of the _Mushkireen_, as they hate the Muslimeen and their deeds are evil--but blessed be God, many of the English begin to repent of their evil, and to love the Muslims and abound in kind actions. So we parted in much kindness. It was a strange feeling to me to stand on the bank and see the queer savage-looking boat glide away up the stream, bound to such far more savage lands, and to be exchanging kind farewells quite in a homely manner with such utter 'aliens in blood and faith.' 'God keep thee Lady, God keep thee Mustapha.' Mustapha and I walked home very sad about poor El-Bedrawee.

_Friday_, _July_ 7.--It has been so 'awfully' hot that I have not had pluck to go on with my letter, or indeed to do anything but lie on a mat in the passage with a minimum of clothes quite indescribable in English. _Alhamdulilah_! laughs Omar, 'that I see the clever English people do just like the lazy Arabs.' The worst is not the positive heat, which has not been above 104 and as low as 96 degrees at night, but the horrible storms of hot wind and dust which are apt to come on at night and prevent one's even lying down till twelve or one o'clock. Thebes is bad in the height of summer on account of its expanse of desert, and sand and dust. The Nile is pouring down now gloriously, and _really_ red as blood--more crimson than a Herefordshire lane--and in the distance the reflection of the pure blue sky makes it deep violet. It had risen five cubits a week ago; we shall soon have it all over the land here. It is a beautiful and inspiriting sight to see the noble old stream as young and vigorous as ever. No wonder the Egyptians worshipped the Nile: there is nothing like it. We have had all the plagues of Egypt this year, only the lice are commuted for bugs, and the frogs for mice; the former have eaten me and the latter have eaten my clothes. We are so ragged! Omar has one shirt left, and has to sleep without and wash it every night. The dust, the drenching perspiration, and the hard-fisted washing of Mahommed's slave-women destroys everything.

Mustapha intends to give you a grand _fantasia_ if you come, and to have the best dancing girls down from Esneh for you; but I am consternated to hear that you can't come till December. I hoped you would have arrived in Cairo early in November, and spent a month there with me, and come up the river in the middle of December when Cairo gets very cold.

I remain very well in general health, but my cough has been troublesome again. I do not feel at all like breathing cold damp air again. This depresses me very much as you may suppose. You will have to divorce me, and I must marry some respectable Kadee. I have been too 'lazy Arab,' as Omar calls it, to go on with my Arabic lessons, and Yussuf has been very busy with law business connected with the land and the crops. Every harvest brings a fresh settling of the land. Wheat is selling at 1 pound the ardeb {188} here _on the threshing-floor_, and barley at one hundred and sixteen piastres; I saw some Nubians pay Mustapha that. He is in comic perplexity about saying _Alhamdulillah_ about such enormous gains--you see it is rather awkward for a Muslim to thank God for dear bread--so he compounds by very lavish almsgiving. He gave all his fellaheen clothes the other day--forty calico shirts and drawers. Do you remember my describing an Arab _emancipirtes Fraulein_ at Siout? Well, the other day I saw as I thought a nice-looking lad of sixteen selling corn to my opposite neighbour, a Copt. It was a girl. Her father had no son and is infirm, so she works in the field for him, and dresses and does like a man. She looked very modest and was quieter in her manner than the veiled women often are.