Letters from Egypt Part 28

May 23, 1867: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

LUXOR, _May_ 23, 1867.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have only time for a few words by Giafar Pasha, who goes early to-morrow morning. My boat arrived all right and brought your tin box.

The books and toys are very welcome. The latter threw little Darfour into ecstasies, and he got into disgrace for 'playing with the Sitt'

instead of minding some business on hand. I fear I shall spoil him, he is so extremely engaging and such a baby. He is still changing his teeth, so cannot be more than eight; at first I did not like him, and feared he was sullen, but it was the usual _khoss_ (fear), the word that is always in one's ears, and now that is gone, he is always coming hopping in to play with me. He is extremely intelligent and has a pretty baby n.i.g.g.e.r face. The Darfour people are, as you know, an independent and brave people, and by no means 'savages.' I can't help thinking how pleased Rainie would be with the child. He asked me to give him the picture of the English Sultaneh out of the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_, and has pasted it inside the lid of his box.

I am better as usual, since the hot weather has begun, the last six days.

I shall leave this in a week, I think, and Mustapha and Yussuf will go with me to Cairo. Yussuf was quite enchanted with your note to him; his eyes glistened, and he took an envelope to keep it carefully. Omar said such a letter is like a _hegab_ (amulet) and Yussuf said, 'Truly it is, and I could never have one with more _baraka_ (blessing) or more like the virtue which went out of Jesus, if ever I wore one at all; I will never part with it.'

We had a very pretty festival for the Sheykh, whose tomb you have a photograph of, and I spent a very pleasant evening with Sheykh Abd el-Mootooal, who used to scowl at me, but now we are 'like brothers.' I found him very clever, and better informed than any Arab I have met, who is quite apart from all Franks. I was astonished to find that he _abondait dans man sens_ in my dispute with Sheykh Abdurrachman, and said that it was the duty of Muslims to learn what they could from us, and not to stick to the old routine.

On Sunday the Patriarch snubbed me, and would not eat with me, and on Monday a _Walee_ (saint) picked out t.i.t-bits for me with his own fingers, and went with me inside the tomb. The Patriarch has made a blunder with his progress. He has come ostentatiously as the _protege_ and _p.r.o.nem_ of the Pasha, and he has 'eaten' and beaten the fellaheen. The Copts of Luxor have had to pay fifty pounds for the honour of his presence, besides no end of sheep, poultry, b.u.t.ter, etc. If I were of a proselytising mind I could make converts of several whose pockets and backs are smarting, and the American missionaries will do it. Of course the Muslims sympathize with the converts to a religion which has no 'idols,' and no monks, and whose priests marry like other folk, so they are the less afraid. I hear there are now fifty Protestants at Koos, and the Patriarch was furious because he could not beat them. Omar cooked a grand dinner for him last night for our neighbour Mikaeel, and the eating was not over till two in the morning. Our Government should manage to put the screw on him about our Abyssinian prisoners. I dare not say who told me all he said, but he was a truthful man and a Christian. The Patriarch answered me sharply when I asked about the state of religion in Abyssinia that, 'they were lovers of the faith, and his obedient children.' Whenever there is mischief among the Copts, the priests are at the bottom of it. If the Patriarch chose those people would be let go; and so it would be but he hates all Europeans bitterly.

I should like to have the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of all things, but I don't know how it is to come here, or what the postage would cost. They send nothing but letters above Cairo by post, as all goes on men's backs.

'Inshallah! I am the bearer of good news,' cries the postman, as he flings the letter over the wall. I am so glad of the chance of getting news to you quick by Giafar Pasha, who came here like a gentleman, alone, without a retinue; he is on his way from two years in the Soudan, where he was absolute Pasha. He is very much liked and respected, and seems a very sensible and agreeable man, quite unlike any Turkish big-wig I have seen. Great potentate as he is, he made Yussuf Mustapha and Abdallah sit down, and was extremely civil and simple in his manners.

June 30, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

BENISOUEF, _June_ 30, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

I write on the chance that this may go safe by post so that you may not think me lost. I left Luxor on May 31, got to Siout (half-way) in a week, and have ever since been battling with an unceasing furious north and north-east wind. I feel like the much travelled Odysseus, and have seen 'villages and men,' unlike him, however 'my companions' have neither grumbled nor deserted, though it is a bad business for them, having received their money at the rate of about twenty days' pay, for which they must take me to Cairo. They have eaten all, and are now obliged to stop and make bread here, but they are as good-humoured as if all were well. My fleet consisted of my dahabieh, flag s.h.i.+p; tender, a _kya.s.seh_ (cargo boat) for my horse and sais, wherein were packed two extremely poor shrivelled old widows, going to Cairo to see their sons, now in garrison there; lots of hard bread, wheat, flour, jars of b.u.t.ter, onions and lentils for all the lads of 'my family' studying at Gama'l Azhar, besides in my box queer little stores of long h.o.a.rded money for those _megowareen_ (students of Gama'l Azhar). Don't you wish you could provide for Maurice with a sack of bread, a basket of onions and one pound sixteen s.h.i.+llings?

The handsome brown Sheykh el-Arab, Ha.s.san, wanted me to take him, but I knew him to be a 'fast' man, and asked Yussuf how I could avoid it without breaking the laws of hospitality, so my 'father,' the old Shereef, told Ha.s.san that he did not choose his daughter to travel with a wine-bibber and a frequenter of loose company. Under my convoy sailed two or three little boats with family parties. One of these was very pretty, whose steersman was a charming little fat girl of five years old.

All these hoped to escape being caught and worried by the way, by belonging to me, and they dropped off at their several villages. I am tolerably well, better than when I started, in spite of the wind.

Poor Reis Mohammed had a very bad attack of ophthalmia, and sat all of a heap, groaning all day and night, and protesting 'I am a Muslim,'

equivalent to 'G.o.d's will be done.' At one place I was known, and had a lot of sick to see, and a civil man killed a sheep and regaled us all with meat and _fateereh_. The part of the river in which we were kept by the high wind is made cheerful by the custom of the Hareem being just as free to mix with men as Europeans, and I quite enjoyed the pretty girls'

faces, and the gossip with the women who came to fill their water-jars and peep in at the cabin windows, which, by the way, they always ask leave to do. The Sheykh el-Hawara gave me two sheep which are in the cargo-boat with four others-all presents-which Omar intends you to eat at Cairo. The Sheykh is very anxious to give you an entertainment at his palace, if you come up the river, with horse-riding, feasting and dancing girls. In fact I am charged with many messages to _el-Kebir_ (the great master).

July 8, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

CAIRO, _July_ 8, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

I arrived to-day, after thirty-eight days' voyage, one month of ceaseless furious wind. My poor men had a hard pull down against it. However I am feeling better than when I left Luxor.

Omar has just brought a whole cargo of your letters, the last of the 26 June. Let me know your plans. If you can go up the river I might send the boat beforehand to Minieh, so far there is a railway now, which would break the neck of the tedious part of the voyage for you if you are pressed for time. I must send this off at once to catch early post to-morrow. Excuse haste, I write in all the bustle of arrival.

July 28, 1867: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

BOULAK, _July_ 28, 1867.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I know I can write nothing more sure to please you than that I am a good deal better. It has been intensely hot, and the wind very worrying, but my cough has greatly abated and I do not feel so weak as I did. I am anch.o.r.ed here in the river at my old quarters, and have not yet been ash.o.r.e owing to the hot wind and the dust, which of course are far less troublesome here on the river. I have seen but very few people and have but one neighbour, in a boat anch.o.r.ed near mine, a very bewitching Circa.s.sian, the former slave of a rich Pasha, now married to a respectable dragoman, and staying in his boat for a week or two. She is young and pretty, and very amiable, and we visit each other often and get on very well indeed. She is a very religious little lady, and was much relieved when I a.s.sured her it was not part of my daily devotions to curse the Prophet, and revile the n.o.ble Koran.

I am extremely glad that the English have given a hearty welcome to the Ameer el-Moornemeen (Commander of the Faithful); it will have an excellent effect in all Mussulman countries. A queer little Indian from Delhi who had been converted to Islam, and spent four years at Mecca acting as dragoman to his own countrymen, is now settled at Karnac. I sent for him, and he carne shaking in his shoes. I asked why he was afraid? 'Oh, perhaps I was angry about something, and he was my _rayah_, and I might have him beaten.' I cried out at him, 'Ask pardon of G.o.d, O man. How could I beat thee any more than thou couldst beat me? Have we not laws? and art thou not my brother, and the _rayah_ of our Queen, as I am and no more?' 'Mashallah!' exclaimed the six or eight fellaheen who were waiting for physic, in prodigious admiration and wonder; 'and did we not tell thee that the face of the Sitt brings good fortune and not calamity and stick?' I found the little Indian had been a hospital servant in Calcutta, and was practising a little physic on his own account. So I gave him a few drugs especially for bad eyes, which he knew a good deal about, and we became very good friends; he was miserable when I left and would have liked me to have taken him as a volunteer servant.

I have come to a curious honour. _Ich bin beim lebendigem Leibe besungen_. Several parties of real Arabs came with their sick on camels from the desert above Edfou. I asked at last what brought them, and they told me that a _Shaer_ (bard or poet) had gone about singing my praises, as how the daughter of the English was a flower on the heads of the Arabs, and those who were sick should go and smell the perfume of the flower and rejoice in the brightness of the light (_nooreen_)-my name.

Rather a highflown way of mentioning the 'exhibition' of a black dose.

But we don't feel that a man makes a fool of himself here when he is romantic in his talk even about an old woman.

It is no use to talk of the state of things here; all cla.s.ses are suffering terribly under the fearful taxation, the total ruin of the fellaheen, and the destruction of trade brought about by this much extolled Pasha. My grocer is half ruined by the 'improvements' made a _l'instar de Paris_-long military straight roads cut through the heart of Cairo. The owners are expropriated, and there is an end of it. Only those who have half a house left are to be pitied, because they are forced to build a new front to the street on a Frankish model which renders it uninhabitable to them and unsaleable.

The river men are excited about the crews gone to Paris, for fear they should be forcibly detained by the _Sultaneh Franzaweeh_, I a.s.sured them that they will all come home safe and happy, with a good backsheesh.

Many of them think it a sort of degradation to be taken for the Parisians to stare at like an anteeka, a word which here means what our people call a 'curiosity.'

I go on very well with my two boys. Mabrook washes very well and acts as _marmiton_. Darfour is housemaid and waiter in his very tiny way. He is only troublesome as being given to dirty his clothes in an incredibly short time. His account of the school system of Darfour is curious. How when the little boy has achieved excellence he is carried home in triumph to his father's house, who makes a festival for the master and boys. I suppose you will be surprised to hear that the Darfour 'n.i.g.g.e.rs' can nearly all read and write. Poor little Darfour apologised to me for his ignorance, he was stolen he said, when he had only just begun to go to school. I wish an English or French servant could hear the instructions given by an Alim here to serving men. How he would resent them! 'When thou hast tired out thy back do not put thy hand behind it (do not s.h.i.+rk the burden). Remember that thou art not only to obey, but to please thy master, whose bread thou eatest;' and much more of the like. In short, a standard of religious obedience and fidelity fit for the highest Catholic idea of the 'religious life.' Upon the few who seek instruction it does have an effect (I am sure that Omar looks on his service as a religious duty), but of course they are few; and those who don't seek it themselves get none. It is curious how all children here are left utterly without any religious instruction. I don't know whether it is in consequence of this that they grow up so very devout.

July 29, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

BOULAK, _July_ 29, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

Your letter has arrived to my great relief-only I fear you are not at all well. About Maurice. If he wishes to see the Nile let him come, but if he is only to be sent because of me, let it alone. I know I am oppressive company now, and am apt, like Mr. Wodehouse in 'Emma,' to say, 'Let us all have some gruel.'