I
followed him into the outer gallery, pulling him, and begging him, as a
despairing wife might urge a drunken husband, to return home. And he,
like the British husband, being greatly irritated by the unjovial
advice, instantly belaboured with his pipe-stick[FN#30] the first person
[p.139]he met in the gallery, and sent him flying down the stairs with
fearful shouts of "O Egyptians! O ye accursed! O genus of Pharaoh! O
race of dogs! O Egyptians!"
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.
