But The Dear Creatures Are
Even More Closely Disguised Than At Constantinople:
Their bodies
are enveloped with a large black silk hood, like a cab-head; the
fashion seemed to be
To spread their arms out, and give this
covering all the amplitude of which it was capable, as they leered
and ogled you from under their black masks with their big rolling
eyes.
Everybody has big rolling eyes here (unless, to be sure, they lose
one of ophthalmia). The Arab women are some of the noblest figures
I have ever seen. The habit of carrying jars on the head always
gives the figure grace and motion; and the dress the women wear
certainly displays it to full advantage. I have brought a complete
one home with me, at the service of any lady for a masqued ball.
It consists of a coarse blue dress of calico, open in front, and
fastened with a horn button. Three yards of blue stuff for a veil;
on the top of the veil a jar to be balanced on the head; and a
little black strip of silk to fall over the nose, and leave the
beautiful eyes full liberty to roll and roam. But such a costume,
not aided by any stays or any other article of dress whatever, can
be worn only by a very good figure. I suspect it won't be borrowed
for many balls next season.
The men, a tall, handsome, noble race, are treated like dogs. I
shall never forget riding through the crowded bazaars, my
interpreter, or laquais-de-place, ahead of me to clear the way -
when he took his whip, and struck it over the shoulders of a man
who could not or would not make way!
The man turned round - an old, venerable, handsome face, with
awfully sad eyes, and a beard long and quite grey. He did not make
the least complaint, but slunk out of the way, piteously shaking
his shoulder. The sight of that indignity gave me a sickening
feeling of disgust. I shouted out to the cursed lackey to hold his
hand, and forbade him ever in my presence to strike old or young
more; but everybody is doing it. The whip is in everybody's hands:
the Pasha's running footman, as he goes bustling through the
bazaar; the doctor's attendant, as he soberly threads the crowd on
his mare; the negro slave, who is riding by himself, the most
insolent of all, strikes and slashes about without mercy, and you
never hear a single complaint.
How to describe the beauty of the streets to you! - the fantastic
splendour; the variety of the houses, and archways, and hanging
roofs, and balconies, and porches; the delightful accidents of
light and shade which chequer them: the noise, the bustle, the
brilliancy of the crowd; the interminable vast bazaars with their
barbaric splendour. There is a fortune to be made for painters in
Cairo, and materials for a whole Academy of them. I never saw such
a variety of architecture, of life, of picturesqueness, of
brilliant colour, and light and shade.
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