When I Arrived At Cairo I Summoned Osman Effendi, Who Was, As I
Knew, The Owner Of Several Houses, And Would Be Able To Provide Me
With Apartments.
He had no difficulty in doing this, for there was
not one European traveller in Cairo besides myself.
Poor Osman! he
met me with a sorrowful countenance, for the fear of the plague sat
heavily on his soul. He seemed as if he felt that he was doing
wrong in lending me a resting-place, and he betrayed such a
listlessness about temporal matters, as one might look for in a man
who believed that his days were numbered. He caught me too soon
after my arrival coming out from the public baths, {33} and from
that time forward he was sadly afraid of me, for he shared the
opinions of Europeans with respect to the effect of contagion.
Osman's history is a curious one. He was a Scotchman born, and
when very young, being then a drummer-boy, he landed in Egypt with
Fraser's force. He was taken prisoner, and according to Mahometan
custom, the alternative of death or the Koran was offered to him;
he did not choose death, and therefore went through the ceremonies
which were necessary for turning him into a good Mahometan. But
what amused me most in his history was this, that very soon after
having embraced Islam he was obliged in practice to become curious
and discriminating in his new faith, to make war upon Mahometan
dissenters, and follow the orthodox standard of the Prophet in
fierce campaigns against the Wahabees, who are the Unitarians of
the Mussulman world. The Wahabees were crushed, and Osman
returning home in triumph from his holy wars, began to flourish in
the world. He acquired property, and became effendi, or gentleman.
At the time of my visit to Cairo he seemed to be much respected by
his brother Mahometans, and gave pledge of his sincere alienation
from Christianity by keeping a couple of wives. He affected the
same sort of reserve in mentioning them as is generally shown by
Orientals. He invited me, indeed, to see his harem, but he made
both his wives bundle out before I was admitted. He felt, as it
seemed to me, that neither of them would bear criticism, and I
think that this idea, rather than any motive of sincere jealousy,
induced him to keep them out of sight. The rooms of the harem
reminded me of an English nursery rather than of a Mahometan
paradise. One is apt to judge of a woman before one sees her by
the air of elegance or coarseness with which she surrounds her
home; I judged Osman's wives by this test, and condemned them both.
But the strangest feature in Osman's character was his
inextinguishable nationality. In vain they had brought him over
the seas in early boyhood; in vain had he suffered captivity,
conversion, circumcision; in vain they had passed him through fire
in their Arabian campaigns, they could not cut away or burn out
poor Osman's inborn love of all that was Scotch; in vain men called
him Effendi; in vain he swept along in eastern robes; in vain the
rival wives adorned his harem:
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