I Had
No Means Of Knowing Whether The Numbers (Given Out, As I Believe
They Were, By Officials) Were At
All correct, but I could not help
knowing that from day to day the number of the dead was increasing.
My quarters were in a street which was one of the chief
thoroughfares of the city. The funerals in Cairo take place
between daybreak and noon, and as I was generally in my rooms
during this part of the day, I could form some opinion as to the
briskness of the plague. I don't mean this for a sly insinuation
that I got up every morning with the sun. It was not so; but the
funerals of most people in decent circumstances at Cairo are
attended by singers and howlers, and the performances of these
people woke me in the early morning, and prevented me from
remaining in ignorance of what was going on in the street below.
These funerals were very simply conducted. The bier was a shallow
wooden tray, carried upon a light and weak wooden frame. The tray
had, in general, no lid, but the body was more or less hidden from
view by a shawl or scarf. The whole was borne upon the shoulders
of men, who contrived to cut along with their burthen at a great
pace. Two or three singers generally preceded the bier; the
howlers (who are paid for their vocal labours) followed after, and
last of all came such of the dead man's friends and relations as
could keep up with such a rapid procession; these, especially the
women, would get terribly blown, and would straggle back into the
rear; many were fairly "beaten off." I never observed any
appearance of mourning in the mourners: 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. In that touch there was true
hospitality.
Very different is the faith and the practice of the Europeans, or
rather, I mean of the Europeans settled in the East, and commonly
called Levantines. When I came to the end of my journey over the
Desert I had been so long alone, that the prospect of speaking to
somebody at Cairo seemed almost a new excitement. I felt a sort of
consciousness that I had a little of the wild beast about me, but I
was quite in the humour to be charmingly tame, and to be quite
engaging in my manners, if I should have an opportunity of holding
communion with any of the human race whilst at Cairo. I knew no
one in the place, and had no letters of introduction, but I carried
letters of credit, and it often happens in places remote from
England that those "advices" operate as a sort of introduction, and
obtain for the bearer (if disposed to receive them) such ordinary
civilities as it may be in the power of the banker to offer.
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