These Men Are The Fellahs, The Peasants Of The Valley Of The Nile -
Pure Egyptians, Whose Type Has Not Changed
In the course of centuries.
In the oldest of the bas-reliefs of Thebes or Memphis you may see many
Such, with the same noble profile and thickish lips, the same
elongated eyes shadowed by heavy eyelids, the same slender figure,
surmounted by broad shoulders.
The women who from time to time descend to the river, to draw water
also, but in their case in the vases of potters' clay which they
carry - this fetching and carrying of the life-giving water is the one
primordial occupation in this Egypt, which has no rain, nor any living
spring, and subsists only by its river - these women walk and posture
with an inimitable grace, draped in black veils, which even the
poorest allow to trail behind them, like the train of a court dress.
In this bright land, with its rose-coloured distances, it is strange
to see them, all so sombrely clothed, spots of mourning, as it were,
in the gay fields and the flaring desert. Machine-like creatures, all
untaught, they yet possess by instinct, as did once the daughters of
Hellas, a sense of nobility in attitude and carriage. None of the
women of Europe could wear these coarse black stuffs with such a
majestic harmony, and none surely could so raise their bare arms to
place on their heads the heavy jars filled with Nile water, and then,
departing, carry themselves so proudly, so upright and resilient under
their burden.
The muslin tunics which they wear are invariably black like the veils,
set off perhaps with some red embroidery or silver spangles. They are
unfastened across the chest, and, by a narrow opening which descends
to the girdle, disclose the amber-coloured flesh, the median swell of
bosoms of pale bronze, which, during their ephemeral youth at least,
are of a perfect contour. The faces, it is true, when they are not
hidden from you by a fold of the veil, are generally disappointing.
The rude labours, the early maternity and lactations, soon age and
wither them. But if by chance you see a young woman she is usually an
apparition of beauty, at once vigorous and slender.
As for the fellah babies, who abound in great numbers and follow, half
naked their mammas or their big sisters, they would for the most part
be adorable little creatures, were it not for the dirtiness which in
this country is a thing almost prescribed by tradition. Round their
eyelids and their moist lips are glued little clusters of Egyptian
flies, which are considered here to be beneficial to the children, and
the latter have no thought of driving them away, so resigned are they
become, by force of heredity, to whatever annoyance they thereby
suffer. Another example indeed of the passivity which their fathers
show when brought face to face with the invading foreigners!
Passivity and meek endurance seem to be the characteristics of this
inoffensive people, so graceful in their rags, so mysterious in their
age-old immobility, and so ready to accept with an equal indifference
whatever yoke may come. Poor, beautiful people, with muscles that
never grow tired! Whose men in olden times moved the great stones of
the temples, and knew no burden that was too heavy; whose women, with
their slender, pale-tawny arms and delicate small hands, surpass by
far in strength the burliest of our peasants! Poor beautiful race of
bronze! No doubt it was too precocious and put forth too soon its
astonishing flower - in times when the other peoples of the earth were
till vegetating in obscurity; no doubt its present resignation comes
from lassitude, after so many centuries of effort and expansive power.
Once it monopolised the glory of the world, and here it is now - for
some two thousand years - fallen into a kind of tired sleep, which has
left it an easy prey alike to the conquerors of yesterday and to the
exploiters of to-day.
Another trait which, side by side with their patience, prevails
amongst these true-blooded Egyptians of the countryside is their
attachment to the soil, to the soil which nourishes them, and in which
later on they will sleep. To possess land, to forestall at any price
the smallest portion of it, to reclaim patches of it from the shifting
desert, that is the sole aim, or almost so, which the fellahs pursue
in this world: to possess a field, however small it may be - a field,
moreover, which they till with the oldest plough invented by man, the
exact design of which may be seen carved on the walls of the tombs at
Memphis.
And this same people, which was the first of any to conceive
magnificence, whose gods and kings were formerly surrounded with an
over-powering splendour, contrives, to live to-day, pell-mell with its
sheep and goats, in humble, low-roofed cabins made out of sunbaked
mud! The Egyptian villages are all of the neutral colour of the soil;
a little white chalk brightens, perhaps, the minaret or cupola of the
mosque; but except for that little refuge, whither folk come to pray
each evening - for no one here would retire for the night without
having first prostrated himself before the majesty of Allah -
everything is of a mournful grey. Even the costumes of the people are
dull-coloured and wretched-looking. It is an East grown poor and old,
although the sky remains as wonderful as ever.
But all this past grandeur has left its imprint on the fellahs. They
have a refinement of appearance and manner, all unknown amongst the
majority of the good people of our villages. And those amongst them
who by good fortune become prosperous have forthwith a kind of
distinction, and seem to know, as if by birth, how to dispense the
gracious hospitality of an aristocrat. The hospitality of even the
humblest preserves something of courtesy and ease, which tells of
breed.
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