The Pace Was Too Severe
For Any Solemn Affectation Of Grief.
When first I arrived at Cairo the funerals that daily passed under
my windows were many, but still there were frequent and long
intervals without a single howl.
Every day, however (except one,
when I fancied that I observed a diminution of funerals), these
intervals became less frequent and shorter, and at last, the
passing of the howlers from morn till noon was almost incessant. I
believe that about one-half of the whole people was carried off by
this visitation. The Orientals, however, have more quiet fortitude
than Europeans under afflictions of this sort, and they never allow
the plague to interfere with their religious usages. I rode one
day round the great burial-ground. The tombs are strewed over a
great expanse, among the vast mountains of rubbish (the
accumulations of many centuries) which surround the city. The
ground, unlike the Turkish "cities of the dead," which are made so
beautiful by their dark cypresses, has nothing to sweeten
melancholy, nothing to mitigate the odiousness of death.
Carnivorous beasts and birds possess the place by night, and now in
the fair morning it was all alive with fresh comers - alive with
dead. Yet at this very time, when the plague was raging so
furiously, and on this very ground, which resounded so mournfully
with the howls of arriving funerals, preparations were going on for
the religious festival called the Kourban Bairam. Tents were
pitched, and SWINGS HUNG FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF CHILDREN - a ghastly
holiday; but the Mahometans take a pride, and a just pride, in
following their ancient customs undisturbed by the shadow of death.
I did not hear, whilst I was at Cairo, that any prayer for a
remission of the plague had been offered up in the mosques. I
believe that however frightful the ravages of the disease may be,
the Mahometans refrain from approaching Heaven with their
complaints until the plague has endured for a long space, and then
at last they pray God, not that the plague may cease, but that it
may go to another city!
A good Mussulman seems to take pride in repudiating the European
notion that the will of God can be eluded by eluding the touch of a
sleeve. When I went to see the pyramids of Sakkara I was the guest
of a noble old fellow, an Osmanlee, whose soft rolling language it
was a luxury to hear after suffering, as I had suffered of late,
from the shrieking tongue of the Arabs. This man was aware of the
European ideas about contagion, and his first care therefore was to
assure me that not a single instance of plague had occurred in his
village. He then inquired as to the progress of the plague at
Cairo. I had but a bad account to give. Up to this time my host
had carefully refrained from touching me out of respect to the
European theory of contagion, but as soon as it was made plain that
he, and not I, would be the person endangered by contact, he gently
laid his hand upon my arm, in order to make me feel sure that the
circumstance of my coming from an infected city did not occasion
him the least uneasiness.
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