CHAPTER XXXVII--STREET-LIFE IN CAIRO.

_Cairo, old and new--A visit to the ancient city--The Nilometer, What is it?--Measuring the rise of the Nile--Moses in the Bulrushes--Tombs of the Caliphs--An Egyptian funeral--Curious customs--“Crowding the Mourners”--Water-carriers and their ways--A noisy tobacco-vender--Glimpses of the Arabian Nights--Among the Bazaars--Street scenes in Cairo--A cavalcade of Donkeys--Hoaxing a Donkey-boy--Amusing spectacle--Putting up a ride at auction--An Arab story--A Nation of Liars and why!--Mosques of Cairo--Stones from the Great Pyramid._

CAIRO consists of two cities, the new and the old, and they are two or three miles apart. Old Cairo is on the bank of the river, near the island of Roda, and is quite picturesque, being, full of narrow, crooked streets, where one must be very cautious to prevent being run over. The windows project so far over the street that they frequently touch, and it would be the easiest matter in the world to go from one to another. The city was formerly much more extensive than now, and many of its houses are in a ruinous condition.

From old Cairo we went to the island of Roda to see the famous Nilometer, where the rise of the river during the inundation is recorded. It is nothing more than a deep pit or well, with a column in the center, marked with a graduated scale. This Nilometer is about a thousand years old. There is a more ancient one at the island of Elephantine, near the first cataract, and history records that there was one in use at the time of the Pharaohs. Near the present Nilometer is the spot said by tradition to be that where the infant Moses was found by Pharaoh’s daughter.

{469}The island is quite pretty and is covered with fruit and other gardens. Outside the city, and close to the border of the desert, are the tombs of the Barghite Sultans, which are generally called, though erroneously, the tombs of the Caliphs. The real burying places of the Caliphs of Cairo are in the city, not far from the bazaars, and in the busiest part of this very busy capital.

The Moslem awaits death with the utmost composure. When a learned or pious Moslem feels that he is about to die, he performs the ordinary ablution, as before prayer, that he may depart from life in a state of bodily purity; and he generally repeats the profession of his faith. It is not uncommon for a Moslem on a military expedition, or during a long journey through the desert, to carry his grave linen with him. It often happens that a traveler in such circumstances has even to make his own grave; completely overcome by fatigue or privation, or sinking under a fatal disease in the desert, when his companions, if he have any, cannot wait for his recovery or death, he performs the ablution, with water, if possible, or, if not with sand or dust which is allowable in such case, and then having made a trench in the sand as his grave, lies down in it wrapped in his grave clothes, and covers himself with the exception of his face with this and taken up in making the trench: thus he waits for death to relieve him, trusting to the wind to complete his burial.

The ceremonies attendant upon death and burial are nearly the same in the cases of men and women. When the rattles in the throat, or other symptoms, show that a man is at the point of death, an attendant turns him round to place his face in the direction of Mecca, and closes his eyes.

Many of the tombs of the Turkish grandees have marble _tarkeebehs_ which are canopied by cupolas supported by four columns of marble. There are numerous tombs of this description in the cemetery at Cairo We were rather disappointed in our visit to the tombs of the Sultans. They were originally very handsome, but are now in a very ruinous condition, and they bid fair to be altogether destroyed before many years. There were two or three with lofty domes and minarets, quite like the mosques of Cairo. They were really intended as mosques, in connection with the {470}tombs, so as to furnish praying places for the faithful whenever they wished to pay respect to the dead.

From the outside and at a little distance they present a fine effect, with their backing of sand-covered hills and the general surroundings of approaching desolation. Inside we found portions of the smaller walls torn away to be used in other buildings, and in one of the mosques, cows and donkeys were stabled. The windows were broken and ragged. The floors were dirty and the attendants were noisy Arabs, who seemed to have no other object in remaining there than the collection of “backsheesh,” in which they were most persistent.

At the cemetery near these tombs we saw a funeral procession and followed it, out of curiosity. Half a dozen men, some of them blind, and each resting a hand on the shoulder of another, led the way and chanted a melancholy air. Then came a man with a small coffin borne on his head, and behind him were half a dozen women and as many boys, the women closely veiled according to the custom of the country.

The procession did not move in couples, according to the Occidental custom; there was no observance of regularity, except that the men were in front of the coffin and the women and boys behind it. They moved through the country to a spot where a grave had been opened; near it the women stopped and sat down, and the bearers placed the coffin on the ground, a priest uttered a prayer, and then the man who had brought the coffin--a sort of oblong box, with a shawl over it--removed the shawl, and took from beneath it the corpse.

It was that of a child about two years old, and was completely wrapped in cloth and bound around with cords, somewhat as one might wrap a bale of goods to keep it from falling apart. The man advanced to the edge of the grave, and placed the corpse inside, with very little ceremony, or rather, with no ceremony at all. The women set up a mournful cry, and one of the men of the party approached us and told our guide that they wished us to retire. As soon as the request was translated, we walked away, feeling that we had been guilty of an intrusion.

I saw several funeral processions in Cairo, and had previously seen them in Damascus, Smyrna, and other Oriental cities. At {471}all of them the custom was the same, the singers preceding the corpse and the mourners following it. The one here described was the burial of the child of a poor woman, and there was little display and little ceremony. Some of the processions that came under my notice were of considerable extent, the singers or chanters numbering from fifty to a hundred, and being accompanied by mollahs or priests.

The corpse, in such cases, was covered with rich shawls, and at the head of the coffin there was a small post to sustain the cap worn by the deceased. In the tombs of the wealthy these caps remain at the head of the coffin, and the visitor to the tombs of the various Sultans of Turkey will not fail to notice how invariably the fez is placed at the head of him who once wore it.

The coffin is supported on the shoulders of four bearers, and there is frequently a relay to take their places from time to time; and there is a large following of friends of the deceased, some on foot, and some mounted on donkeys, and from time to time a sound of wailing rises from the mourning party.

Some of the mourners are professionals hired for the occasion, while others belong to the family of the defunct. The crowd in the street does not suspend its avocations, or pay the slightest sign of respect for the procession, beyond making room for it to pass. And frequently persons in a hurry, and wishing to cross the line of procession, do so without ceremony.

A stranger in Cairo sees a great deal to amuse him, and if he keeps his eyes open he can learn much that is new.

The water of the wells in Cairo is slightly brackish, and many people obtain their livelihood by supplying the inhabitants with water from the Nile. The water seller, or carrier, has across his shoulders what appears to be a sack when carelessly observed, but proves on examination to be the skin of a pig or a goat. The skin has been taken off as near whole as possible and is then sewn up so that when filled with water it has the shape of the animal that once wore it. It is filled through the neck, which is not tied, but held in the hands of the bearer, who carries his burden across his back and sustains it in place by means of a strong strap.

Some of these water skins have a long neck and a nozzle that points into the air like the muzzle of a rifle. The skin hangs on the {472}bearer’s back, and the spout is behind his shoulder; in his hands he has a couple of brass cups, which he rattles to secure attention.

When he finds a customer, he fills one of the cups through the nozzle, and the accuracy and skill he displays in the operation evince long practice.

As he walks along he calls out sometimes, “Moie, moie!” but more frequently some Arabic words that mean, “O, ye thirsty! O, ye thirsty!” and occasionally he adds something about the delights of a cup of cool, delicious water, and sounds the praises of the special lot that he carries.

I was told by persons who understand the language, that there is much poetry in its every-day use, and the water carrier, as I have just explained, is poetical in his appeals, and so are the street peddlers of all grades. The venders of vegetables, of candy, of bread, and other edibles do not, as a general thing, name the articles they have for sale, but they address appeals to the hungry, allude to the tortures of hunger, and the pleasure of satisfying it. The seller of shoes appeals to the unshod, and beseeches them to go barefoot no longer. The seller of tobacco calls to those who smoke and love the fragrant Latakiah, or the invigorating Koranny. “O, ye man,” “O, ye woman,” “O, ye old man,” is shouted by your donkey driver as he guides you through the crowded streets, and he changes it to “O, ye people,” when the number is so great that he cannot afford to address them in detail.

{473} “Backsheesh, O, Howadji,” (a present, O, gentlemen), is the appeal of the beggar to the passing stranger. The dealer in fresh clover for donkeys’ food chants, “From green fields I bring the odors of fresh verdure,” and the squinting merchants in the Perfume Bazaar vaunt the praises of their wares in words that fill the Moslem mind with thoughts of Paradise, and bear it away from prosaic thoughts and duties of every-day life.

Somebody has said that to find a Princess Scheherazade, you have only to scratch the back of your Cairene donkey boy, and with a slight encouragement he will begin to talk in the strain of the Arabian Nights. I found it so to some extent in my acquaintance with the Egyptian capital. Most of the donkey drivers that frequent the fronts of the hotels can speak English, and some of them quite well. They are as a class bright and {474}intelligent, and can be relied upon for information as to the customs of the people. Their knowledge of localities is sufficient for all the purposes for which a guide is usually employed, and as soon as our party, in its collective capacity, were through with sight-seeing, we fell back upon the donkey boys, and dismissed our professional guide.

Whether the Cairenes indulge to-day in stories like that of the Enchanted Horse, and Sinbad the Sailor, I am unable to say, but in the matter of scandal they are quite up to the Occidental mark. One of the donkey boys at the hotel told me a variety of incidents connected with the harems, and some of them are of a very apochryphal character.

There is one peculiarity of the Arab that a stranger will not be long in detecting, and that is his readiness to answer each and every question you may put to him. Ask him something, and if he knows the answer he will generally give it; if he does not know, he will reply with anything that his imagination suggests, and he does it as gravely as though he were expounding a text of the Koran.

One day, I asked a donkey boy how much he would ask to take me to the Astor House.

“Two shillin’,” was the prompt reply.

He hadn’t the remotest idea where it was, but did not hesitate a moment to undertake to find it. So I asked him where it was.

“I savez, I savez; on the Esebekiah,” he replied, and pushed his donkey around for me to enter the saddle Other boys came up, and I said I wished to go the Astor House and Tammany Hall.

In half a minute the whole crowd was vociferating, and the price fell from two shillings to two francs, and then to one shilling. I was obliged to end the matter by hiring a donkey and going to the citadel. Every driver was ready to take me to the places I mentioned, and was confident he could find them.

The Arabs have a story which they tell, to account for their tendency to falsehood.

They say that His Satanic Majesty once came on earth with nine bags full of lies. He scattered the contents of one bag in Europe, and then started for Asia, Africa, and the Oriental Isles.

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{492}He arrived at Alexandria in the evening, and was to continue his work next day, but during the night some wicked Arabs stole the other eight bags, and distributed the contents among their people.

Cairo is not so rich in mosques as Constantinople, but there are several, of no small importance.

The finest of these is that commonly known as Sultan Hassan; it stands just below the citadel, and is a prominent feature in the view of the city. The Cairenes are justly proud of it, and have a story that the King cut off the hand of the architect, to make sure that he would not repeat his work.

But as this little incident has had its run in all countries and ages, we may conclude that the King did nothing of the sort. It is much more likely that he compelled the architect to wait for his pay, and finally accept fifty cents on the dollar.

The stones used for constructing this mosque, came from the great Pyramid; some of them were recut, but the greater part are in their original shape. The interior consists of a dome, resting on four grand arches, the eastern one having a span of sixty-five and a half feet. The dome is of wood, and, like many other domes in Cairo, is not kept in good repair.

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