The Houses Are About
500 In Number, But Many Of The Natives Prefer Occupying The Upper
Stories Of The Wakalahs,
The rooms on the ground floor serving for
stores to certain merchandise, wood, dates, cotton, &c. The Suezians
live well,
And their bazar is abundantly stocked with meat and
clarified butter brought from Sinai, and fowls, corn, and vegetables
from the Sharkiyah province; fruit is supplied by Cairo as well as by
the Sharkiyah, and wheat conveyed down the Nile in flood to the capital
is carried on camel-back across the Desert. At sunrise they eat the
Fatur, or breakfast, which in summer consists of a ‘fatirah,' a kind of
muffin, or of bread and treacle. In winter it is more substantial,
being generally a mixture of lentils and rice,[FN#35] with clarified
butter poured over it, and a ‘kitchen' of pickled lime or stewed
onions. At this season they greatly enjoy the ‘ful mudammas' (boiled
horse-beans),[FN#36] eaten with an abundance of linseed oil, into which
they steep bits of bread. The beans form, with carbon-generating
matter, a highly nutritive diet, which, if the stomach can digest
it,-the pulse is never shelled,-gives great strength. About the middle
of the day comes ‘Al-Ghada,' a light dinner of wheaten bread, with
dates, onions or cheese: in the hot season melons and cooling
[p.183] fruits are preferred, especially by those who have to face the
sun. ‘Al-Asha,' or supper, is served about half an hour after sunset;
at this meal all but the poorest classes eat meat.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 236 of 571
Words from 65468 to 65735
of 157964
