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.
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