This Is Not A Tempting Picture, Yet Is The Wakalah A Most Amusing
Place, Presenting A Succession Of Scenes Which Would Delight Lovers Of
The Dutch School-A Rich Exemplification Of The Grotesque, And What Is
Called By Artists The "Dirty Picturesque."
I could find no room in the Wakalah Khan Khalil, the Long's, or
Meurice's of native Cairo; I was therefore obliged to put up with the
Jamaliyah, a Greek quarter, swarming with drunken Christians, and
therefore about as fashionable as Oxford Street or Covent Garden.
Even
for this I had to wait a week. The pilgrims were flocking to Cairo, and
to none other would the prudent hotel keepers open their doors, for the
following sufficient reasons. When you enter a Wakalah, the first thing
you have to do is to pay a small sum, varying from two to five
shillings, for the Miftah (the key). This is generally equivalent to a
month's rent; so the sooner you leave the house the better for it. I
was obliged to call myself a Turkish pilgrim in order to get possession
of two most comfortless rooms, which I afterwards learned were
celebrated for making travellers ill; and I had to pay eighteen
piastres for the key and eighteen ditto per mensem for
[p.43]rent, besides five piastres to the man who swept and washed the
place. So that for this month my house-hire amounted to nearly four
pence a day.
But I was fortunate enough in choosing the Jamaliyah Wakalah, for I
found a friend there.
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