Chapter I (2)

"Is it not passing brave to be a king,
And march in triumph through Persepolis?"

"So will I ride through Samarcanda streets,
... to Babylon, my lords; to Babylon!"

From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]

When we leave Cairo we cannot take with us the light of these labyrinths; we cannot take their colors; but one traveller, last May, having found in an antiquity-shop an ancient perfume-burner, had the inspiration of bargaining with these Persians, seated cross-legged in their aromatic niches (said traveller on a white donkey outside), for small packages of sandal and aloes wood, of myrrh, of frankincense and ambergris, of benzoin, of dried rose leaves, and of other Oriental twigs and sticks, for the purpose of summing up, later, and in less congenial climes perhaps, the spicy atmosphere, at least, of the Cairo bazaars. What would be the effect of breathing always this fragrant air? Would it give a richer life, would it tinge the cheek with warmer hues? These merchants have complexions like cream-tinted tea-roses; their dark eyes are clear, and all their movements graceful; they are very tranquil, but not in the least sleepy; they look as if they could take part in subtle arguments, and pursue the finest chains of reasoning. Would an atmosphere perfumed by these Eastern woods clarify and rarefy our denser Occidental minds?

THE NILE

As every one who comes to Cairo goes up the Nile, the river is seldom thought of as it appears during its course past the Khedive's city. This simple vision of it is overshadowed by memories of Abydos, of Karnak and Thebes, and Philae--the great temples on its banks which have impressed one so profoundly. Perhaps they have over-impressed; possibly the tension of continuous gazing has been kept up too long. In this case the victim, with his head in his hands, is ready to echo the (extremely true) exclamation of Dudley Warner, "There is nothing on earth so tiresome as a row of stone gods standing to receive the offerings of a Turveydrop of a king!" This was the mental condition of a lady who last winter, on a Nile boat, suddenly began to sew. "I have spent nine long days on this boat, staring from morning till night. One cannot stare at a river forever, even if it _is_ the Nile! Give me my thimble."

One is not obliged to leave Cairo in order to see examples of the smaller silhouettes of the great river--the shadoofs or irrigating machines, the rows of palm-trees, the lateen yards clustered near a port, and always and forever the women coming down the bank to get water from the yellow tide. These processions of women are the most characteristic "Nile scene with figures" of the present day. I am not sure but that one of their jars, or the smaller gray kulleh (which by evaporation keeps the water deliciously cool), would evoke "Egypt" more quickly in the minds of most of us than even the portrait of Cleopatra herself on the back wall at Denderah. If one is staying in Cairo after the tremendous voyage is over, one wanders to the banks every now and then to gaze anew at the broad, monotonous stream. It comes from the last remaining unknown territory of our star, and this very year has seen that space grow smaller. Round about it stand to-day five or six of the civilized nations, who have formed a battue, and are driving in the game. The old river had a secret, one of the three secrets of the world; but though the North and South Poles still remain unmapped, the annual rise of its waters will be strange no longer when Lado is a second Birmingham. How will it seem when we can telephone to Sennaar (perhaps to that ambassador beloved by readers of the Easy Chair), or when there is early closing in Darfur?

From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]

At Cairo, when one rides or drives, one almost always crosses the Nile; but Cairo herself does not cross. Her more closely built quarters do not even come down to the shore. The Nile and Cairo are two distinct personalities; they are not one and indivisible, as the Nile and Thebes are one, the Nile and Philae.

The river at Cairo has a dull appearance. Its only beauty comes from the towering snow-white sails of the dahabeeyahs and trading craft that crowd the stream. It is true that these have a great charm.

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

In the old quarters this is Arabian. The beauty lies largely in the latticed balconies called mouchrabiyehs, which overhang the narrow roadways. These bay-windows sometimes stud the facades thickly, now large, now small, but always a fretwork of delicate wood-carving. Often from the bay projects a second and smaller oriel, also latticed. This is the place for the water jar, the current of air through the lattices keeping the water cool. An Arabian house has no windows on the ground-floor in its outer wall save small air-holes placed very high, but above are these mouchrabiyehs, which are made of bits of cedar elaborately carved in geometrical designs. The small size of the pieces is due to the climate, the heats of the long summer would warp larger surfaces of wood; but the delicacy and intricacy of the carving are a work of supererogation due to Arabian taste. From the mouchrabiyehs the inmates can see the passers-by, but the passers-by cannot see the inmates, an essential condition for the carefully guarded privacy of the family.

There is in Cairo a personage unconnected with the government who, among the native population, is almost as important as the Khedive himself; this is the Sheykh Ahmed Mohammed es Sadat, the only descendant in the direct line of the Prophet Mohammed now living. He has the right to many native titles, though he does not put them on his quiet little visiting-card, which bears only his name and a mysterious monogram in Arabic. By Europeans he is called simply the Sheykh (the word means chief) es Sadat. The ancestral dwelling of the sheykh shares in its master's distinction. It is pointed out, and, when permission can be obtained, visited. It is a typical specimen of Saracenic domestic architecture, and has always remained in the possession of the family, for whom it was first erected eight hundred years ago. There are in Cairo other Arabian houses as beautiful and as ancient as this. By diplomatic (and mercenary) arts I gained admittance to three, one of which has walls studded with jasper and mother-of-pearl. But these exquisite chambers, being half ruined, fill the mind with wicked temptations. One longs to lay hands upon the tiles, to bargain for an inscription or for a small oriel with the furtive occupants, who have no right to sell, the real owners being Arabs of ancient race, who would refuse to strip their walls, however crumbling, for unbelievers from contemptible, paltry lands beyond the sea. The house of the Sheykh es Sadat may not leave one tranquil, for it is tantalizingly picturesque, but at least it does not inspire larceny; the presence of many servitors prevents that. To reach this residence one leaves (gladly) the Boulevard Mohammed Ali, and takes a narrower thoroughfare, the Street of the Sycamores, which bends towards the south. This lane winds as it goes, following the course of the old canal, the Khaleeg, and one passes many of the public fountains, or sebeels, which are almost as numerous in Cairo as the mosques. A fountain in Arab signification does not mean a jet of water, but simply a place where water can be obtained. The sebeels are beautiful structures, often having marble walls, a dome, and the richest kind of ornament. The water is either dipped with a cup from the basin within, or drawn from the brass mouth-pieces placed outside. Nothing could represent better, I think, the difference between the East and the West than one of these elaborate fountains, covering, in a crowded quarter, the space which might have been occupied by two or three small houses, adorned with carved stone-work, slabs of porphyry, and long inscriptions in gilt, and an iron town pump, its erect slenderness taking up no space at all, and its excellent if unbeautiful handle standing straight out against the sky.

A narrow lane, leaving the Street of the Sycamores, burrows still more deeply into the heart of the quarter, and at last brings us to a porch which juts into the roadway, masking, as is usual in Cairo, the real doorway, which is within. Upon entering, one finds himself in a quadrilateral court, which is open to the sky. An old sycamore shades several latticed windows, among them one which contains three of the smaller oriels; this portion of the second story rests upon an antique marble column. On one side of the column is the low, rough archway leading to the porch; on the other, the high decorated marble entrance of the reception-hall. For in Arabian houses all the magnificence is kept for the interior. In the streets one sees only plain stone walls, which are often hidden under a stucco of mud, more or less peeled off, so that they look half ruined. In the old quarters of Cairo, among the private houses, one obtains, indeed (unless one has an invitation to enter), a general impression of ruin. At the back of the sheykh's court is the stairway to the hareem, the entrance masked by a gayly colored curtain. Across another side extends the private mosque, only half hidden by an ornamented grating. One can see the interior and the high pulpit decked with the green flag of the Prophet. The walls which encircle the court, and which are embellished here and there with Arabic inscriptions, are of differing heights, as they form parts of separate structures which have been erected at various periods through the eight centuries. The place is, in fact, an agglomeration of houses, and some of the older chambers are crumbling and roofless. The central court (which shows its age only in a picturesque trace or two) is adorned with at least twenty beautiful mouchrabiyehs, some large, some small, and no two on the same level. A charm of Saracenic architecture is that you can always make discoveries, nothing is stereotyped; of a dozen delicate rosettes standing side by side under a balcony, no two are carved in the same design.

From a photograph by Abdullah Freres, Cairo]

In a room which stretches back to the garden--and which at the time of our visit was empty, save for a row of antique silver-gilt coffee-pots standing on the marble floor--there is a long, low window, like a band in the wall, formed of small carved lattices. The hand of Abbey only, I think, could reproduce the beauty of this casement; but instead of the charming seventeenth-century English girls whom he would wish to place there, realism would demand the hideous eunuchs, with their gold chains and scarf-pins; or else (and this would be better) the dignified old Arab in a white turban who sat cross-legged in the court with his long pipe, his half-closed eyes expressing his disdain for the American visitors. The courtesy of the master of the house, however, made up for his servitor's scorn. The sheykh is a tall man, somewhat too portly, with amiable dark eyes, and a gleam of humor in his face. One scans his features with interest, as if to catch some reflection of the Prophet; but the rays from an ancestor who walked the earth twelve hundred years ago are presumably faint. There is nothing modern in the sheykh's attire; his handsome flowing gown is of silk; he wears a turban, slippers, and an India shawl wound round his waist like a sash. When the air is cool, he shrouds himself in a large outer cloak of fine dark blue cloth, which is lined with white fur. Sometimes Signor Ahmed carries in his hand the Mohammedan rosary. This string of beads appears to be used as Madame de Stael used her "little stick," as the English called it (in Italy, more poetically, they named it "a twig of laurel"). Corrinne must always have this beside her plate at dinner to play with before she conversed, or rather declaimed. Her maid, in confidence, explained that it was necessary to madame "to stimulate her ideas." One often sees the rosary on duty when two Turks are conversing. After a while, their subjects failing them, they fall into silence. Then each draws out his string from a pocket, and they play with their beads for a moment or two, until, inspiration reviving, they begin talking again. One hopes that poor Ahmed Mohammed has not been driven to his string too often as mental support during dumb visits from Anglo-Saxon tourists, who can do nothing but stare at him. The sheykh's reception-hall is forty feet wide and sixty feet long. The ceiling, which has the Saracenic pendentives in the corners and under the beams, is of wood, gilded and painted and carved in the characteristic style which one vainly tries to describe. Travellers have likened it to an India shawl; to me it seemed to approach more nearly the wrong side of a Persian scarf, which shows the many-hued silken ravellings. The effect, as a whole, though extraordinarily rich, is yet subdued. The walls are encrusted with old blue tiles which mount to the top. At one end of the room there is a beautiful wall-fountain. And now comes the other side of the story. To enjoy all this beauty, you must not look down; for, alas! the marble floor is tightly covered with a modern French carpet; chairs and tables of the most ordinary modern designs have taken the place of the old divans; and these tables, furthermore, are ornamented with hideous bouquets of artificial flowers under glass. Finally, the tiles which have fallen from the lower part of the walls have not been replaced by others; a coarse fresco has been substituted. What would not one give to see the sheykh, who is himself a purely Oriental figure, seated in this splendid hall of his fathers as it once was, on one of the now superseded divans, the marbles of his floor uncovered save for his discarded Turkish rugs, the fountain sending forth its rose-water spray, perfume burning in the silver receivers, and no encumbering furniture save piles of brocaded cushions and a jar or two on the gilded shelf.

But we shall never see this. In 1889, 180,594 travellers crossed Egypt by way of the Suez Canal. In this item of statistics we have the reason.

THE PYRAMIDS

For those who have fair eyesight the pyramids of Gizeh are a part of Cairo; their gray triangles against the sky are visible from so many points that they soon become as familiar as a neighboring hill. In addition, they have been pictured to us so constantly in paintings, drawings, engravings, and photographs that one views them at first more with recognition than surprise. "There they are! How natural!" And this long familiarity makes one shrink from arranging phrases about them.

One thing, however, can be said: when we are in actual fact under them, when we can touch them, our easy acquaintance vanishes, and we suddenly perceive that we have never comprehended them in the least. The strange geometrical walls effect a spiritual change in us; they free us from ourselves for a moment, and unconsciously we look back across the past to which they belong, and into the future, of which they are a part much more than we are, as unmindful of our own little cares and occupations, and even our own small lives, as though we had never been chained to them. It is but a fleeting second, perhaps, that this mental emancipation lasts, but it is a second worth having!

One drives to the pyramids in an hour, over a macadamized road. The perennial stories about trouble with the Bedouins belong to the past. Soldiers and policemen guard the sands as they guard the Cairo streets, and the proffer of false antiquities is not more pressing, perhaps, than the demands of the beggars in town. These three pyramids of Gizeh are those we think of before we have visited Egypt. But there are others; including the small ones and those which are ruined, seventy have been counted in twenty-five miles from Cairo to Meydoom, and pyramids are to be seen in other parts of Egypt. The stories concerning Gizeh and the travellers who, from Herodotus down, have visited the colossal tombs, are innumerable. I do not know why the one about Lepsius should seem to me amusing. This learned man and his party, who were sent to Egypt by King Frederick William of Prussia in 1842, celebrated that king's birthday by singing in chorus the Prussian national anthem in the centre of Cheops. The Bedouins in attendance reported outside that they had "prayed all together a loud general prayer."

In connection with the pyramids, the English may be said to have devoted themselves principally to measurements. The genius of the French, which is ever that of expression, has invented the one great sentence about them. So far, the Americans have done nothing by which to distinguish themselves; but their time will come, perhaps. One fancies that Edison will have something to do with it. In the meanwhile modernity is already there. There is a hotel at the foot of Cheops, and one hardly knows whether to laugh or to cry when one sees lawn-tennis going on there daily.

But no matter what lies before us--even if they should pave the desert, and establish an English tramway (or a line of American horse-cars) to the Sphinx--these mighty masses cannot be belittled. There is something in the pyramids which overawes our boasted civilization. In their presence this seems trivial; it seems an impertinence.

THE COPTS

The most interesting of the Coptic churches are at Old Cairo, a mother suburb, where the first city was founded by the conquering Arabian army. Here, ensconced amid hill-like mounds of rubbish, concealed behind mud walls, hidden at the end of blind alleys, one finds the temples of these native Christians, who are the descendants of the converts of St. Mark. The exterior walls have no importance. In truth, one seldom sees them, for the churches are within other structures. Some of them form part of old fortified convents; one is reached by passing through the dwelling-rooms of an inhabited house; another is up-stairs in a Roman tower. You arrive somehow at a door. When this is opened, you find yourself in a church whose general aspect is rough, and whose aisles are adorned with dust and sometimes with dirt. But these temples have their treasures. Chief among them are the high choir screens of dark wood, elaborately carved in panels, and decorated with morsels of ivory which have grown yellow from age. The sculpture is not open-work; it does not go through the panel; it is done in relief. The designs are Saracenic, but these geometrical patterns are interrupted every now and then by Christian emblems and by the Coptic cross. The style of this wood-carving is unique; no other sculpture resembles it. If it does not quite attain beauty, it is at least very odd and rich. There are also carved doors representing Scriptural subjects, marble pulpits, singular bronze candlesticks, brass censers adorned with little bells, silver-gilt gospel-cases, embroidered vestments, silver marriage-diadems, ostrich eggs in metal cases, and old Byzantine paintings, often representing St. George, for St. George is the patron saint of the Copts.

These people esteem themselves to be the true descendants of the ancient Egyptians, as distinguished from the conquering race of Arabians who have now overrun their land. It is a comical idea, but they call upon us to note their close resemblance to the mummies. Early converts to Christianity, they have remained faithful to their belief amid the Mohammedan population all about them. It must be mentioned, however, that they had been pronounced heretics by the Council of Chalcedon before the Arabian conquest; for they had refused to worship the human nature of Christ, revering His divine nature alone. They are the guardians of the Christian legends of Egypt. In a crypt under one of their churches they show two niches. One, they say, was the sleeping-place of Joseph, and the other of the Virgin and Child, during the flight into Egypt. Near Heliopolis is an ancient tree, under whose branches the Holy Family are supposed to have rested when the sunshine was too hot for further travelling.

There are between four and five hundred thousand Copts in Egypt. It may be mentioned here that the Christians of the country, including all branches of the faith, number to-day about six hundred thousand, or one-tenth of the population. The Copts are the book-keepers and scribes; they are also the jewellers and embroiderers. Their ancient tongue has fallen into disuse, and is practically a dead language. They now use Arabic, like all the rest of the nation; but the speech survives in their church service, a part of which is still given in the old tongue, though it is said that even the priests themselves do not always understand what they are saying, having merely learned the sentences by heart, so that they can repeat them as a matter of form. Copts have been converted to Protestantism during these latter days by the American missionaries.

They are not, in appearance, an attractive people. Their convents and churches, at least in Cairo and its neighborhood, are so hidden away, inaccessible, and dirty that they are but slightly appreciated by the majority of travellers, who spend far more of their time among the mosques of Mohammed. But both the people and their ancient language are full of interest from an historical point of view. They form a field for research which will give some day rich results. A little has been done, and well done; but much still remains hidden. It has yet to be dug out by the learned. Then it must be translated by the middle-men into those agreeable little histories which, with agreeable little tunes, agreeable little stories, and agreeable little pictures, are the delight of the many.

KIEF

The large modern cafes of Cairo are imitations of the cafes of Paris. They are uninteresting, save that one sees under their awnings, or at the little tables within, the stambouline in all its glory and ugliness--that is, the heavy black frock-coat with stiff collar, which, with the fez or tarboosh, is the appointed costume for all persons who are employed by the government. The stranger, observing the large number of men of all ages in this attire, is led to the conclusion that the government must employ many thousands of persons in Cairo alone; but probably there is a permitted usage in connection with it, like that mysterious legend--"By especial appointment to the Queen"--which one sees so often in England inscribed over the doors of little shops in provincial High Streets, where the inns have names which to Americans are as fantastic as anything in "Tartarin;" the "White Horse;" the "Crab and Lobster;" the "Three Choughs;" and the "Five Alls."

The native cafes have much more local color than the homes of the stambouline. Outside are rows of high wooden settees, upon which the patrons of the establishment sit cross-legged, their slippers left on the ground below. One often sees a row of Arabs squatting here, holding no communication with each other, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, enjoying for the moment an absolute rest. This period of daily repose, called kief, is a necessity for Egyptians. It has its overweight, its excess, in the smoking of hasheesh, which is one of the curses of the land; but thousands of the people who never touch hasheesh would understand as little how to get through their day without this interregnum as without eating; in fact, eating is less important to them.

The Egyptian often takes his rest at the cafe. When the American sees Achmet and Ibrahim, who have attended to some of his errands for infinitesimal wages--men whose sole possessions are the old cotton gowns on their backs--when he sees them squatted in broad daylight at the cafe, smoking the long pipes and slowly drinking the Mocha coffee, it appears to him an inexplicable idleness, an incurable self-indulgence. It is idleness, no doubt, but associations should not be mixed with the subject. To the American the little cup of after-dinner coffee seems a luxury. He does not always stop to remember that Achmet's coffee is, very possibly, all the dinner he is to have; that it has been preceded by nothing since daylight but a small piece of Egyptian bread, and that it will be followed by nothing before bedtime but a mouthful of beans or a lettuce-stalk. The daily rest is by no means taken always at the cafe. Egyptians also take it at the baths, where, after the final douche, they spend half an hour in motionless ease. For those who have not the paras for the cafe or the bath, the mosques offer their shaded courts. When there is no time to seek another place, the men take their rest wherever they are. One often sees them lying asleep, or apparently asleep, in their booths at the bazaars. The very beggars draw their rags round them, cover their faces, and lie down close to a wall in the crowded lanes.

From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]

At the cafes, during another stage of the rest, games are played, the favorites being dominos, backgammon, and chess. Sometimes a story-teller entertains the circle. He narrates the deeds of Antar and legends of adventure; he also tells stories from the Bible, such as the tale of the flood, or of Daniel in the den of lions. Sometimes he recites, in Arabic, the poems of Omar Khayyam.

"I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell;
And by-and-by my soul returned to me,
And answered, 'I myself am heaven and hell!'"

This verse of the Persian poet might be taken as the motto of kief; for if the heaven or hell of each person is simply the condition of his own mind, then if he is able every day to reduce his mind, even for a half-hour only, to a happy tranquillity which has forgotten all its troubles, has he not gained that amount of paradise?