There
Are Many Good Houses In Shebeyka, Which Is One Of The Cleanest And
Airiest Quarters In The Town.
Many of the people of Djidda reside in it;
and here also the Sherif Ghaleb has a good house, where his family,
consisting of several young children
[P.110] and a grown-up daughter, continued to dwell after his
deposition. The main street is lined with coffee-shops, from which the
post sets out every evening, on asses, with the letters for Djidda. This
is the only post for letters that I have seen in the East, besides that
esta-blished among the Europeans at Cairo, between that city and
Alex-andria; but the delivery of letters is there much less regular than
it is at Mekka, where it is duly performed, and at the trifling expense
of two paras upon each letter, and as much more for the person who
distributes the letters received from Djidda.
In the coffee-shops just mentioned, live also the caravan-brokers,
through whose agency the Bedouins let out their camels for the journey
to Djidda and Medina.
On the western side of the Shebeyka, towards the mountain, is a large
burying-ground, in which are dispersed huts and tents of Bedouins, and
some miserable dwellings of the lowest class of public women: this is
called El Khandaryse. Although tradition says that great numbers of the
friends and adherents of Mohammed lie buried here, yet it has become
unfashionable to deposit the dead in it; and all of the first and second
classes of Mekkawys use the extensive cemeteries lying on the north of
the town.
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