He then burst open a door with his shoulder, and reeled into a room
where two aged dames were placidly reposing by the side of their
spouses, who were basket-makers. They immediately awoke, seeing a
stranger, and, hearing his foul words, they retorted with a hot volley
of vituperation.
Put to flight by the old women's tongues, Ali Agha, in spite of all my
endeavours, reeled down the stairs, and fell upon the sleeping form of
the night porter, whose blood he vowed to drink-the Oriental form of
threatening "spiflication." Happily for the assaulted, the Agha's
servant, a sturdy Albanian lad, was lying on a mat in the doorway close
by. Roused by the tumult, he jumped up, and found the captain in a
state of fury. Apparently the man was used to the master's mood.
Without delay he told us all to assist, and we lending a helping hand,
half dragged and half carried the Albanian to his room. Yet even in
this ignoble plight, he shouted with all the force of his lungs the old
war-cry, "O Egyptians! O race of dogs! I have dishonoured all
Sikandariyah-all Kahirah-all Suways.[FN#31]" And in this vaunting frame
of mind he was put to bed. No Welsh undergraduate at Oxford, under
similar circumstances, ever gave more trouble.
"You had better start on your pilgrimage at once,"
[p.140]said Haji Wali, meeting me the next morning with a "goguenard"
smile.
He was right. Throughout the Caravanserai nothing was talked of for
nearly a week but the wickedness of the captain of Albanian Irregulars,
and the hypocrisy of the staid Indian doctor. Thus it was, gentle
reader, that I lost my reputation of being a "serious person" at Cairo.
And all I have to show for it is the personal experience of an Albanian
drinking-bout.
I wasted but little time in taking leave of my friends, telling them,
by way of precaution, that my destination was Meccah via Jeddah, and
firmly determining, if possible, to make Al-Madinah via Yambu'.
"Conceal," says the Arab's proverb, "Thy Tenets, thy Treasure, and thy
Travelling."
[FN#1] Festival. It lasts the three first days of Shawwal, the month
immediately following Ramazan, and therefore, among Moslems,
corresponds with our Paschal holidays, which succeed Lent. It is called
the "Lesser Festival," the "Greater" being in Zu'l Hijjah, the
pilgrimage-month.
[FN#2] In Chap. V. of this Volume, I have mentioned this cemetery as
Burckhardt's last resting-place.
[FN#3] You are bound also to meet even your enemies in the most
friendly way-for which mortification you afterwards hate them more
cordially than before.
[FN#4] Persian.
[FN#5] With due deference to the many of a different opinion, I believe
"Kahirah" (corrupted through the Italian into Cairo) to mean, not the
"victorious," but the "City of Kahir," or Mars the Planet. It was so
called because, as Richardson has informed the world, it was founded in
A.D. 968 by one Jauhar, a Dalmatian renegade before mentioned, when the
warlike planet was in the ascendant.
[FN#6] "There were no weeping women; no neighhours came in to sit down
in the ashes, as they might have done had the soldier died at home;
there was no Nubian dance for the dead, no Egyptian song of the women
lauding the memory of the deceased, and beseeching him to tell why he
had left them alone in the world to weep."-(Letter from Widdin, March
25, 1854, describing a Turkish soldier's funeral.)
[FN#7] Captain Haines wisely introduced the custom into Aden. I wonder
that it is not made universal in the cities of India, where so much
iniquity is perpetrated under the shadow of night.
[FN#8] The reason being that respectable Europeans, and the passengers
by the Overland Mail, live and lodge in this quarter.
[FN#9] "Our lord," i.e. H.H. the Pasha. "Kikh" is an interjection
noting disapproval, or disgust.-"Fie!" or "Ugh!"
[FN#10] Shortly after the Ramazan of 1853, the Consul, I am told,
obtained an order that British subjects should be sent directly from
the police office, at all hours of the night, to the Consulate. This
was a most sensible measure.
[FN#11] Most Eastern nations, owing to their fine ear for sounds, are
quick at picking up languages; but the Armenian is here, what the
Russian is in the West, the facile princeps of conversational
linguists. I have frequently heard them speak with the purest accent,
and admirable phraseology, besides their mother tongue, Turkish,
Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani, nor do they evince less aptitude for
acquiring the Occidental languages.
[FN#12] It has been too frequently treated of, to leave room for a
fresh description. Though pretty and picturesque, it is open to the
reproach of Moslem dressing, namely, that the in-door toilette admits
of a display of bust, and is generally so scanty and flimsy that it is
unfit to meet the eye of a stranger. This, probably the effect of
secluding women, has now become a cause for concealing them.
[FN#13] He was from the banks of the Nile, as his cognomen, al-Basyuni
proves, but his family, I was told, had been settled for three or four
generations at Meccah.
[FN#14] Almost all the articles of food were so far useful, that they
served every one of the party at least as much as they did their owner.
My friends drank my coffee, smoked my tobacco, and ate my rice. I
bought better tea at Meccah than at Cairo, and found as good sugar
there. It would have been wiser to lay in a small stock merely for the
voyage to Yambu', in which case there might have been more economy. But
I followed the advice of those interested in setting me wrong. Turks
and Egyptians always go pilgrimaging with a large outfit, as notably as
the East-Indian cadet of the present day, and your outfitter at Cairo,
as well as Cornhill, is sure to supply you with a variety of
superfluities.
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