There A Tall, Gaunt Maghrabi Displays Upon A Square Yard Of

[P.81]dirty paper certain lines and blots, supposed to represent the venerable Ka'abah, and collects coppers to defray the expenses of his pilgrimage.

A steady stream of loungers sets through the principal thoroughfares towards the Azbakiyah Gardens, which skirt the Frank quarter; there they sit in the moonlight, listening to Greek and Turkish bands, or making merry with cakes, toasted grains, coffee, sugared-drinks, and the broad pleasantries of Kara Gyuz[FN#14] (the local Punch and Judy). Here the scene is less thoroughly Oriental than within the city; but the appearance of Frank dress amongst the varieties of Eastern costume, the moon-lit sky, and the light mist hanging over the deep shade of the Acacia trees-whose rich scented yellow-white blossoms are popularly compared to the old Pasha's beard[FN#15]-make it passing picturesque. And the traveller from the far East remarks with wonder the presence of certain ladies, whose only mark of modesty is the Burka, or face-veil: upon this laxity the police looks with lenient eyes, inasmuch as, until very lately, it paid a respectable tax to the state.[FN#16]

Returning to the Moslem quarter, you are bewildered

[p.82]by its variety of sounds. Everyone talks, and talking here is always in extremes, either in a whisper, or in a scream; gesticulation excites the lungs, and strangers cannot persuade themselves that men so converse without being or becoming furious. All the street cries, too, are in the soprano key. "In thy protection! in thy protection!" shouts a Fellah peasant to a sentinel, who is flogging him towards the station-house, followed by a tail of women, screaming, "Ya Gharati-ya Dahwati-ya Hasrati-ya Nidamati-O my calamity! O my shame!" The boys have elected a Pasha, whom they are conducting in procession, with wisps of straw for Mash'als, or cressets, and outrunners, all huzzaing with ten-schoolboy power. "O thy right! O thy left! O thy face! O thy heel! O thy back, thy back!" cries the panting footman, who, huge torch on shoulder, runs before the grandee's carriage; "Bless the Prophet and get out of the way!" "O Allah bless him!" respond the good Moslems, some shrinking up to the walls to avoid the stick, others rushing across the road, so as to give themselves every chance of being knocked down. The donkey boy beats his ass with a heavy palm-cudgel,-he fears no treadmill here,-cursing him at the top of his voice for a "pander," a "Jew," a "Christian," and a "son of the One-eyed, whose portion is Eternal Punishment." "O chick pease! O pips!" sings the vendor of parched grains, rattling the unsavoury load in his basket. "Out of the way, and say, ‘There is one God,'" pants the industrious water-carrier, laden with a skin, fit burden for a buffalo. "Sweet-water, and gladden thy soul, O lemonade!" pipes the seller of that luxury, clanging his brass cups together. Then come the beggars, intensely Oriental. "My supper is in Allah's hands, my supper is in Allah's hands! whatever thou givest, that will go with thee!" chaunts the old vagrant, whose wallet perhaps contains more provision than the basket of many a respectable shopkeeper. [p.83]"Na'al abuk[FN#17]-rucse thy father-O brother of a naughty sister!" is the response of some petulant Greek to the touch of the old man's staff. "The grave is darkness, and good deeds are its lamp!" sing the blind women, rapping two sticks together: "upon Allah! upon Allah! O daughter!" cry the bystanders, when the obstinate "bint"[FN#18] (daughter) of sixty years seizes their hands, and will not let go without extorting a farthing. "Bring the sweet" (i.e. fire), "and take the full,"[FN#19] (i.e., empty cup), euphuistically cry the long-moustached, fierce-browed Arnauts to the coffee-house keeper, who stands by them charmed by the rhyming repartee that flows so readily from their lips.

"Hanien," may it be pleasant to thee![FN#20] is the signal for encounter.

[p.84]"Thou drinkest for ten," replies the other, instead of returning the usual religious salutation.

"I am the cock and thou art the hen!" is the rejoinder,-a tart one. "Nay, I am the thick one and thou art the thin!" resumes the first speaker, and so on till they come to equivoques which will not bear a literal English translation.

And sometimes, high above the hubbub, rises the melodious voice of the blind mu'ezzin, who, from his balcony in the beetling tower rings forth, "Hie ye to devotion! Hie ye to salvation." And (at morning-prayer time) he adds: "Devotion is better than sleep! Devotion is better than sleep!" Then good Moslems piously stand up, and mutter, previous to prayer, "Here am I at Thy call, O Allah! here am I at Thy call!"

Sometimes I walked with my friend to the citadel, and sat upon a high wall, one of the outworks of Mohammed Ali's Mosque, enjoying a view which, seen by night, when the summer moon is near the full, has a charm no power of language can embody. Or escaping from "stifled Cairo's filth,[FN#21]" we passed, through the Gate of Victory, into the wilderness beyond the City of the Dead.[FN#22] Seated upon some mound of ruins, we inhaled

[p.85]the fine air of the Desert, inspiriting as a cordial, when star-light and dew-mists diversified a scene, which, by day, is one broad sea of yellow loam with billows of chalk rock, thinly covered by a film-like spray of sand surging and floating in the fiery wind. There, within a mile of crowded life, all is desolate; the town walls seem crumbling to decay, the hovels are tenantless, and the paths untrodden; behind you lies the Wild, before you, the thousand tomb-stones, ghastly in their whiteness; while beyond them the tall dark forms of the Mamluk Soldans' towers rise from the low and hollow ground like the spirits of kings guarding ghostly subjects in the Shadowy Realm.

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