 CHAPTER XIII. You will have heard from my mother of my ill luck falling sick again. The fact is that the spring in Egypt is very trying, and I came down the river a full month too soon. People do tell such lies about the heat. Today is the first warm day we have had, till now I have been shivering and sally too. I have been out twice, and saw the holy Mahmal rest for its first station outside the town. It is a deeply affecting sight, all those men prepared to endure such hardship. They halt among the tombs of the Caliphah, such a spot. Omar's eyes were full of tears, and his voice shaking with emotion, as he talked about it, and pointed out the Mahmal and the Sheik El-Gemel, who leads the sacred camel, naked to the waist with flowing hair. Muslim piety is so unlike what Europeans think it is, so full of tender emotions, so much more sentimental than we imagine, and it is wonderfully strong. I used to hear Omar praying outside my door while I was so ill. Oh God, make her better! Oh my God, let her sleep! As naturally as we should say, I hope she'll have a good night. The Sultan's coming is a kind of riddle. No one knows what he wants. The Pasha has ordered all the women of the lower classes to keep indoors while he is here. Arab women are outspoken, and might shout out their grievances to the great Sultan. April 15. I continue to get better slowly, and in a few days we'll go down to Alexandria. Omar has gone to Bulak to inquire the cost of a boat, as I am not fond of the railroad, and have a good deal of heavy baggage, cooking utensils, etc., which the railway charges enormously for. The black slave girl, sent as a present to the American Consul-General, is as happy as possible, and sings quaint, soft little quarter-fon songs all day. I hope you won't object to my bringing her home. She wails so terribly when Omar tells her she is not my slave, for fear I should leave her, and insists on being my slave. She wants to be a present to Rainy, the little sit, and laughs out so heartily at the thought of her. She is very quiet and gentle, poor little savage, and the utter slavishness of the poor little soul quite upsets me. She has no will of her own. Now she is taken to talking, and tells all her woes and how batal, bad, everyone was at cartoom, and then she rubs her little black nose on my hand, and laughs so merrily, and says all is quiesquetier, very good here, and she hugs herself with delight. I think Rainy will like her very much. I am going to visit an old Muslim French painter's family. He has an Arab wife and grown-up daughters, and is a very agreeable old man with a store of Arab legends. I am going to persuade him to write them and let me translate them into English. The sultan goes away to-day. Even water to drink has been brought from Constantinople. I hear that from Hekeke and Bey, who formerly owned the eunuch who is now Kislar Agassi to the sultan himself. Hekeke had the honor of kissing his old slave's hand. If anyone tries to make you believe any bosh about civilization in Egypt, laugh at it. The real life and the real people are exactly as described in the most voracious of books, The Thousand and One Nights. The tyranny is the same, the people are not altered, and very charming people they are. If I could but speak the language I could get into Arab society here, through two or three different people, and see more than many Europeans who have lived here all their lives. The Arabs are keenly alive to the least prejudice against them, but when they feel quite safe on that point they rather like the amusement of a stranger. Our devised glorious scheme. If I were only well and strong, of putting me in a top terra one and taking me to Mecca in the character of his mother, supposed to be a Turk. To a European man, of course, it would be impossible, but an enterprising woman might do it easily with a Muslim confederate. Fancy seeing the pilgrimage. In a few days I shall go down to Alexandria, if it makes me ill again I must return to Europe or go to Beirut. I can't get a boat under twelve pounds, thus do the Arabs understand competition. The owner of boats said so few were wanted, times were bad on account of the railway, etc. He must have double what he used to charge. In vain Omar argued that that was not the way to get employment. Malish, never mind, and so I must go by rail. Is that not eastern? Up the river, where there is no railroad, I might have had it at half that rate. All you have ever told me, as most Spanish in Spain, is in full vigor here, and also I am reminded of Ireland at every turn, the same causes produce the same effects. Today the calm scene is blowing and it is decidedly hot, quite unlike the heat at the Cape. This is close and gloomy, no sunshine. Although the climate is far less bright than I expected, very, very inferior to the Cape. Nevertheless I heartily agree to the Arab saying, He who has drunk Nile water will ever long to drink it again, and when a graceful woman in a blue shirt and veil lifts a huge jar from her shoulder and holds it to your lips with a hearty smile and a welcome, it tastes doubly sweet. Alhamdulillah! Sally says all other water is like bad small beer compared to sweet ale after the Nile water. When the calm scene is over Omar insists on my going to see the tree and the well, where Satina Miriam rested with Said Naissa in her arms during the flight into Egypt. It is venerated by Christian and Muslim alike, and is a great place for feasting and holiday making out of doors, which the Arabs so dearly love. Do write and tell me what you wish me to do. If it were not that I cannot endure not to see you and the children, I would stay here and take a house at Abbasiyah in the desert, but I could not endure it. Nor can I endure this wandering life much longer. I must come home and die in peace if I don't get really better. Right to Alexandria next. End of LETTER XI. Read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter XII of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mr. Tom Taylor. Cairo, April 18, 1863. My dear Tom, your letter and Laura's were a great pleasure to me in this distant land. I could not answer before as I had been very ill, but Samaritans came with oil and wine and comforted me. It had an odd dreary effect to hear my friend Hekekian Bey, a learned old Armenian, and Dileo Bey, my doctor, discoursing Turkish at my bedside, while my faithful Omar cried and prayed, Ya Rabina, Ya Satir, O Lord, preserver, don't let her die. Alec is quite right that I am in love with the Arabs' ways, and I have contrived to see and know more of family life than many Europeans who have lived here for years. When the Arabs feel that one really cares for them, they heartily return it. If I could only speak the language I could see anything. Cairo is the Arabian Nights. There is a little Frankish varnish here and there, but the government, the people, all is unchanged since that most voracious book was written. No words can describe the departure of the holy Mahmal and the pilgrims for Mecca. I spent half the day loitering about in the Bedouin tents admiring the glorious free people. To see a Bedouin and his wife walk through the streets of Cairo is superb. Her hand resting on his shoulder and scarcely daining to cover her haughty face, she looks down on the Egyptian veiled women who carries the heavy burden and walks behind her Lord and Master. By no deed of my own have I become a slave owner. The American Consul General turned over to me a black girl of eight or nine, and in consequence of her reports the poor little black boy who is the slave and marmitan of the cook here has been in treating Omar to beg me to buy him and take me with him. It is touching to see the two little black things recounting their woes and comparing notes. I went yesterday to deposit my cooking things and boat furniture at my washerwoman's house. Seeing me arrive on my donkey, followed by a cargo of household goods, about eight or ten Arab women thronged round delighted at the idea that I was coming to live in their quarter and offering me neighborly services. Of course, all rushed upstairs, and my old washerwoman was put to great expense in pipes and coffee. I think, as you, that I must have the black drop and that the Arabs see it, for I am always told that I am like them with praises of my former good looks. You were beautiful Harim once. Everything is more striking to me than the way in which one is constantly reminded of Herodotus. The Christianity and the Islam of this country are full of the ancient worship, and the sacred animals have all taken service with Muslim saints. At many a one reigns over crocodiles. Higher up I saw the whole of Escalapias's servant at Ghebel Sheikh Haridi. And I fed the birds, as did Herodotus, who used to tear the cordage of boats which refused to feed them, and who are now the servants of Sheikh Naona, and still come on board by scores for the bread which no raiz dares refuse them. Bubastus's cats are still fed in the Qadis court at public expense in Cairo, and behave with singular decorum when the servant of the cats serves them their dinner. Among gods Amun Ra, the sun god and serpent killer, calls himself Mar-Gyrgus, St. George, and is worshipped by Christians and Muslims in the same churches, and Osiris holds his festivals as riotously as ever at Tanta in the Delta under the name of Syed Elbedoui. The fellow women offer sacrifices to the Nile, and walk round ancient statues in order to have children. The ceremonies at births and burials are not Muslim, but ancient Egyptian. The cops are far more close and reserved and backward than the Arabs, and they have been so repudiated by Europeans that they are doubly shy of us. The Europeans' resent being called Nasrani as a gentile Hebrew gentleman may shrink from Jew. But I said boldly, Anna Nasraniya, alhamdulillah, I am a Nasrani, praise be to God, and found that it was much approved by the Muslims as well as the cops. Curious things are to be seen here in religion, Muslims praying at the tomb of Mar-Gyrgus, St. George, and the resting places of Satina Miriam and Syed Naissa, and miracles brand new of an equally mixed description. If you have any power over artists, send them to paint here. No words can describe either the picturesque beauty of Cairo, or the splendid forms of the people in Upper Egypt, and above all in Nubia. I was enraptured at seeing how superb an animal man and woman really is. My donkey-girl at thieves, dressed like a Greek statue, wore at a sham the rose of Syria, was a feast to the eyes, and here too what grace and sweetness, and how good is a drink of Nile water out of an amphora held to your lips by a woman as graceful as she is kindly. May it benefit thee, she says, smiling with all her beautiful teeth and eyes. Alhamdulillah, you reply, and it is worth thanking God for. The days of the beauty of Cairo are numbered. The mosques are falling to decay, the exquisite lattice windows rotting away and replaced by European glass and jealousies. Only the people and the government remained unchanged. Read all the pretty paragraphs about civilization here, and then say, Bosch. If you know anyone coming here and wanting a good servant and dregelman, recommend my dear Omar Abu El-Halawah of Alexandria. He has been my friend and companion, as well as my cook and general servant now for six months, and we are very sad at our approaching separation. I am to spend a day in his house with his young wife at Alexandria and to eat his bread. He sadly wants to go with me to Europe and to see my children. Sally, I think, is almost as fond of the Arabs as I am, and very popular. My poor ragged crew were forever calling out, Ya, Sarah, for some assistance or other, hurt fingers or such calamities, and the quantity of doctoring I did was fearful. Sally was constantly wishing for you to see all manner of things and to sketch. What a yarn I have made! END OF LETTER XII. Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. CHAPTER XIII. I have been here a fortnight, but the climate disagrees so much with me that I am going back to Cairo at once by the advice of the doctor of the Suez Canal. I cannot shake off my cough here. Mr. Thayer kindly lends me his nice little bachelor house, and I take Omar back again for the job. It is very hot here, but with a sea breeze which strikes me like ice. Strong people enjoy it, but it gives even Janet cold in the head. She is very well, I think, and seems very happy. She is time's correspondent and does it very well. I am terribly disappointed at not being as materially better as I had hoped I should be while in Upper Egypt. I cannot express the longing I have for home and my children, and how much I feel the sort of suspense it all causes to you and to Alec, and my desire to be with you. One must come to the East to understand absolute equality. As there is no education and no reason why the donkey boy who runs behind me may not become a great man, and as all Muslims are ipso facto equal, money and rank are looked on as mere accidents, and my Savva Vira was highly thought of because I sat down with Felaen and treated everyone as they treat each other. In Alexandria all that is changed. The European ideas and customs have extinguished the Arab altogether, and those who remain are not improved by the contact. Only the Bedouin preserve their haughty nonchalance. I found the Maghrabi bazaar full of them when I went to buy a white cloak, and was amused at the way in which one's blended bronze figure, who lay on the shop front, moved one leg to let me sit down. They got interested in my purchase, and assisted in making the bargain in wrapping the cloak round me, Bedouin fashion, and they too complimented me on having the face of the Arab, which means Bedouin. I wanted a little Arab dress for Rhaeny, but could not find one, as at her age none are worn in the desert. I dined one day with Omar, or rather I ate at his house, for he would not eat with me. His sister-in-law cooked a most admirable dinner, and everyone was delighted. It was an interesting family circle. A very respectable older brother, a confectioner, whose elder wife was a black woman, a really remarkable person, who speaks Italian perfectly, and gave me a great deal of information and asked such intelligent questions. She ruled the house but had no children, so he had married a fair, gentle-looking Arab woman who had six children, and all lived in perfect harmony. Omar's wife is a tall, handsome girl of his own age, with very good manners. She had been outside the door of the close little court which constituted the house once since her marriage. I now begin to understand all about the West Sin with the women. There is a good deal of chivalry in some respects, and in the respectable lower and middle classes the result is not so bad. I suspect that among the rich few are very happy. But I don't know them, or anything of the Turkish ways. I will go back and see the black woman again and hear more. Her conversation was really interesting. CHAPTER XII, 1863 DEAREST ALEC I only got your letter an hour ago, and the mail goes out at four. I enclosed to you the letter I had written to my mother, so I need not repeat about my plans. Need to write here a letter comes as soon and safer. My general health is so much stronger and better, especially before I had this last severe attack, that I still hope, though it is a severe trial of patience, not to throw it up and come home for good. It would be delightful to have you at Cairo now I have pots and pans and all needful for a house, but a carpet and a few mattresses, if you could camp with me a la rab. How you would revel in old Maser el-Kahira, peep up at lattice windows, gape like a gashim, green one in the bazaar, go wild over the masts, laugh at portly turks and dignified shakes on their white donkeys, drink sherbet in the streets, ride wildly about on a donkey, peer under black veils at beautiful eyes and feel generally intoxicated. I am quite a good Ciceroan now of the glorious old city. Omar is enraptured at the idea that the Cedil Kebir, the great master, might come, and still more if he brought the little master. He plans meeting you on the steamboat and bringing you to me, then I may kiss your hand, first of all. Masha'Allah, how our hearts would be dilated. End of Letter Fourteen, read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Fifteen of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austin, Maser el-Kahira, Cairo, May 21st, 1863. Dearest Mother I came here on Saturday night. Today is Wednesday and I am already much better. I have attached an excellent donkey and his master, a delightful youth called Hassan, to my household for fifteen piestras, under two shillings a day. They live at the door, and Hassan cleans the stairs and goes errands during the heat of the day, and I ride out very early, at six or seven, and again at five. The air is delicious now. It is very hot for a few hours, but not stifling, and the breeze does not chill one as it does at Alexandria. I live all day and all night with open windows, and plenty of fresh warm air is the best of remedies. I can do no better than stay here till the heat becomes too great. I left little Zaneb at Alexandria with Janet's maid Ellen, who quite loves her, and begged to keep her for company, and also to help in their removal to the new house. She clung about me and made me promise to come back to her, but was content to stop with Ellen, whose affection she of course returns. It was pleasant to see her so happy, and how she relished being put to bed with a kiss by Ellen or Sally. Her Turkish master, whom she pronounces to have been Batal, bad, called her Salim Asidi, the peace of her master, but she said that in her own village she used to be Zaneb, and so we call her. She has grown fatter and, if possible, blacker. Mabuka, good fortune, the elder wife of Higab, the confectioner, was much interested in her, as her fate had been the same. She was bought by an Italian who lived with her till his death, when she married Higheb. She is a pious Muslima, and invoked the intercession of Sayidna Muhammad for me when I told her I had no intention of baptising Zaneb by force, as had been done to her. The fault of my lodging here is the noise. We are on the road from the railway, and there is no quiet except in the few hot hours, when nothing is heard but the cool tinkle of the sakka's brass cup as he sells water in the street, or perchans irksus, licorice water, or kerub or raisin sherbet. The irksus is rather bitter and very good. I drink it a good deal, for drink one must, agulla of water is soon gone. Agulla is a wide-mouthed, porous jar, and nile water drunk out of it without the intervention of a glass is delicious. Omar goes to market every morning with a donkey. I went, too, and was much amused, and cooks, and in the evening goes out with me if I want him. I told him I had recommended him highly and hoped he would get good employment, but he declares that he will go with no one else so long as I come to Egypt, whatever the difference of wages may be. The bread I eat with you is sweet, a pretty little unconscious antithesis to Dante. I have been advising his brother, Haji Ali, to start a hotel at Thebes for invalids, and he has already said about getting a house there. There is one. Next winter there will be steamers twice a week, to ask one. Juvenile's distant sigine, where he died in banishment. My old washerwoman sent me a fervent entreaty through Omar that I would dine with her one day, since I had made Cairo delightful with my presence. If one will only devour these people's food they are enchanted. They like that much better than a present. Though I will honour her house some day. Good old Hannah, she is divorced for being too fat and old, and replaced by a young Turk whose family sponge on Haji Ali and our condescending. If I could afford it I would have a sketch of a beloved old mosque of mine, falling into decay, and with three palm trees growing in the middle of it. Indeed I would have a book full, for all is exquisite, and alas all is going. The old copped quarter is an tamay, and hideous, shabby French houses, like the one I live in, are being run up, and in this weather how much better would be the Arab courtyard with its mastaba and fountain. There is a quarrel now in the street, how they talk and gesticulate, and everybody puts in a word. A boy has upset a cake-seller's tray, naal abuk, curse on your father, he claims six piastras damages, and everyone gives an opinion poor Okontra. We all look out of the window, my opposite neighbour, the pretty Armenian woman, leans out, and her diamond head ornaments and earrings glitter as she laughs like a child. The Christian dyer is also very active in the row, which, like all Arab brows, ends in nothing, it evaporates in fine theatrical gestures and lots of talk. Curious! In the street they are so noisy, but get the same men in a coffee shop or anywhere, and they are the quietest of mankind. Only one man speaks at a time, the rest listen, and never interrupt. Twenty men don't make the noise of three Europeans. Hakekein Bay is my near neighbour, and he comes in and we fronder the government. His heart is sore with disinterested grief for the sufferings of the people. And they deserve to be decently governed, to be allowed a little happiness and prosperity. They are so docile, so contented, are they not a good people? Those were his words as he was recounting some new iniquity. Of course, half these acts are done under pretext of improving and civilising, and the Europeans applaud and say, oh, but nothing could be done without forced labour, and the poor fellow heen are marched off in gangs like convicts and their families starve, and, who'd have thought it, the population keeps diminishing. No wonder the cry is, let the English queen come and take us. You see, I don't see things quite as rost as, but mine is another stunned puked, and my heart is with the Arabs. I care less about opening up the trade with the Sudan and all the new railways, and I should like to see person and property safe, which no one's is here. Europeans, of course, accepted. Ishmael Pasha got the Sultan to allow him to take ninety thousand Fedens of uncultivated land for himself as private property. Very well, but the late Viceroy Said granted eight years ago certain uncultivated lands to a good many Turks, his employees, in hopes of founding a landed aristocracy and inducing them to spend their capital in cultivation. They did so, and now Ishmael Pasha takes their improved land and gives them Feden for Feden of his new land, which will take five years to bring into cultivation instead. He forces them to sign a voluntary deed of exchange, or they go off to Fazoglo, a hot Siberia whence none return. The Sultan also left a large sum of money for religious institutions and charities, Muslim, Jew, and Christian. None have received Afada. It is true the Sultan and his suite plundered the Pasha and the people here, but from all I hear the Sultan really wishes to do good. What is wanted here is hands to till the ground, and wages are very high, food, of course, gets dearer, and the forced labor inflicts more suffering than before, and the population will decrease yet faster. This appears to me to be a state of things in which it is of no use to say that public works must be made at any cost. The wealth will perhaps be increased if, meanwhile, the people are not exterminated. Then every new Pasha builds a huge new palace, while those of his predecessors fall to ruin. Mohammed Ali's sons even cut down the trees of his beautiful botanical garden and planted beans there, so money is constantly wasted more than if it were thrown into the Nile, for then the Felaheen would not have to spend their time, so much wanted for agriculture, in building hideous, barric-like so-called palaces. What chokes me is to hear English people talk of the stick being the only way to manage Arabs, as if anyone could doubt that it is the easiest way to manage any people where it can be used with impunity. Sunday. I went to a large, unfinished new Coptic church this morning. Omar went with me up to the women's gallery and was discreetly going back when he saw me in the right place, but the Coptic women began to talk to him and asked questions about me all the time I was looking down on the strange scene below. I believe they celebrate the ancient mystery still. The clashing of cymbals, the chanting, a humming unlike any sound I ever heard, the strange yellow copes covered with stranger devices, it was wunderlich. At the end everyone went away, and I went down and took off my shoes to go and look at the church. While I was doing so a side door opened and a procession entered. A priest dressed in the usual black robe and turban of all cops, carrying a trident-shaped sort of candlestick, another with cymbals, a lot of little boys, and two young ecclesiastics of some sort in the yellow satin copes, contrasting clearly with the familiar taboosh of common life on their heads, these carried little babies and huge wax tapers, each a baby and a taper. They marched round and round three times, the cymbals going furiously and chanting a jig tune. The dear little tiny boys marched just in front of the priest with such a pretty little solemn consequential air. Then they all stopped in front of the sanctuary, and the priest untied a sort of broad-colored tape which was round each of the babies, reciting something in coptic all the time, and finally touched their foreheads and hands with water. This is a ceremony subsequent to baptism, after I don't know how many days, but the priest ties and then unties the bands. If what is this symbolical? Je me perd. Then an old man gave a little round cake of bread, with a cobalistic-looking pattern on it, both to Omar and to me, which was certainly baked for ISIS. A lot of closely veiled women stood on one side in the aisle, and among them the mothers of the babies received them from the men in yellow copes at the end of the ceremony. One of these young men was very handsome, and as he stood looking down and smiling on the baby he held, with the light of the torch sharpening the lines of his features, he would have made a lovely picture. The expression was sweeter than St. Vincent de Paul, because his smile told that he could have played with the baby as well as have prayed for it. In this country one gets to see how much more beautiful a perfectly natural expression is than any degree of the mystical expression of the best painters, and it is so refreshing that no one tries to look pious. The Muslims look serious and often warlike, as he stands at prayer. The Christian just keeps his everyday face. When the Muslim gets into a state of devotional frenzy he does not think of making a face, and it is quite tremendous. I don't think the cop has any such ardors, but the scene this morning was all the more touching that no one was behaving him or herself at all. A little acolyte peeped into the sacramental cup and swigged off the drops left in it with the most innocent air, and no one rebuked him, and the quite little children ran about in the sanctuary, up to seven they are privileged, and only they and the priests enter it. It is a pretty commentary on the words, suffer the little children, etc. I am more and more annoyed at not being able to ask questions for myself, as I don't like to ask through a Muslim and no cop speak any foreign language, or very, very few. Omar and Hassan had been at five this morning to the tomb of Satina Zainib, one of the daughters of the prophet, to see her, Sunday is her day of reception, and say the fatah at her tomb. Next Friday the great Bérem begins, and every Muslim eats a beat of meat at his richer neighbor's expense. It is the day on which the pilgrims go up the sacred mountain near Mecca, to hear the sermon which terminates the hajj. Yesterday I went to call on pretty Mrs. Wilkinson, she is an Armenian of the Greek faith, and was gone to pray at the convent of Margirges, St. George, to cure the pains a bad rheumatic fever has left in her hands. Evidently Margirges is simply Amun Ra, the god of the sun and a great serpent slayer, who is still revered in Egypt by all sex, and Said Elbedoui is certainly one form of Osiris. His festivals, held twice a year at Tanta, still display the symbol of the creator of all things. The Bible is thus here, the women wail the dead, as on the old sculptures, all the ceremonies are pagan, and would shock an Indian Musselman as much as his objection to eat with a Christian, shocks an Arab. This country is a palimpsest, in which the Bible is written over Herodotus and the Quran over that. In the towns the Quran is most visible, in the country Herodotus. I fancied as most marked and most curious among the cops, whose churches are shaped like the ancient temples, but they are so much less accessible than the Arabs that I know less of their customs. Now I have filled such a long letter, I hardly know if it is worth sending, and whether you will be amused by my common places of Eastern life. I kill a sheep next Friday, and Omar will cook a stupendous dish for the poor fellow heen who are lying about the railway station, waiting to be taken to work somewhere. That is to be my barem, and Omar hopes for a great benefit for me from the process. End of LETTER XV. Read by Cibela Den. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter XVI of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Cairo May 25th, 1863. Dearest Alec. I have spun such a yarn to my mother that I shall make it serve for both. It may amuse you to see what impression Cairo makes. I ride along my valiant doci, led by the stalwart Hasan, and attended by Omar, and constantly say, O, if our master were here, how pleased he would be! Husband is not a correct word. I went out to the tombs yesterday, fancy that Omar witnessed the destruction of some sixty-eight or so of the most exquisite buildings, the tombs and mosques of the Arab caliphas, which Said Pasha used to divert himself with bombarding for practice for his artillery. Omar was then in the boy-core of camel artillery, now disbanded. Thus the Pasha added to the pecancy of sacrilege to barbarity. The street and the neighbors would divert you. Opposite lives a Christian dyer who must be the seventh brother of the admirable barber. The same impertinence, loquacity, and love of meddling in everybody's business. I long to see him thrashed, though he is a constant comedy. My delightful servant, Omar Abu El-Hallawa, the father of sweets, his family are pastry cooks, is the type of all the amiable jeun-première of the stories. I am privately of the opinion that he is better at din Hasan, the more that he can make cream tarts and there is no pepper in them. Cream tarts are not very good, but lamb stuffed with pistachio nuts fulfills all one's dreams of excellence. The Arabs next door and the leventines opposite are quiet enough, but how they do eat all the cucumbers they buy of the man who cries them every morning as fruit gathered by sweet girls in the garden with the early dew. The more I see of the black slums of Cairo, the more in love I am with it. The oldest European towns are tame and regular in comparison, and the people are so pleasant. If you smile at anything that amuses you, you get the kindest, brightest smiles in return. They give hospitality with their faces, and if one brings out a few words, Masha'Allah, what Arabic the sit English speaks. The Arabs are clever enough to understand the amusement of a stranger and to enter into it, and are amused in turn, and they are wonderfully unprejudiced. When Omar explains to me their views on various matters, he adds, the Arab people think so, I know not, if right, and the way in which the Arab merchants worked the electric telegraph and the eagerness of the Felaheen for steam plows are quite extraordinary. They are extremely clever and nice children, easily amused, easily roused into a fury which lasts five minutes and leaves no malice, and half the lying and cheating of which they are accused comes from misunderstanding and ignorance. When I first took Omar he was by way of ten pounds, twenty pounds, being nothing for my dignity. But as soon as I told him that my master was a bay who got one hundred pounds a month and nobok shish, he was as careful as if for himself. They see us come here and do what only their greatest pashas do, hire a boat to ourselves, and of course think our wealth is boundless. The lying is mostly from fright. They dare not suggest a difference of opinion to a European and lie to get out of scrapes which blind obedience has often got them into. As to the charges of shopkeepers, that is the custom, and the haggling of ceremony you must submit to. It is for the purchaser or employer to offer a price and fix wages, the reverse of Europe, and if you ask the price they ask something fabulous at random. I hope to go home next month, as soon as it gets too hot here and is likely to be warm enough in England. I do so long to see the children again. END OF LETTERS 16 Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 17 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucie Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Alexandria, October 19, 1863. We had a wretched voyage, good weather, but such a pétodière of a ship. I am competent to describe the horrors of the middle passage, hunger, suffocation, dirt, and such can I, high and low, on board. The only gentleman was a poor moor going to Mecca, who stowed his wife and family in a spare boiler on deck. I saw him washing his children in the morning, Cusse des Goutants, was the cry of the French spectators. If in Arab washes he is a sale Cuchon, no wonder. A delicious man who sat near me on deck, when the sun came round to our side, growled between his clenched teeth. Voilà un tas d'ingraton, un lambre tendus, que le soleil me grille à moi. A good résumé of French politics, me thinks. Well, on arriving at noon of Friday, I was consoled for all by seeing Janet in a boat looking as fresh and bright and merry as ever she could look. The heat has evidently not hurt her at all. Omar's joy was intense. He has had an offer of a place, as a messenger, with the males to Suez and back, sixty pounds a year, and also his brother wanted him for Lady Herbert of Lee, who has engaged Haji Ali, an Ali promised high pay, but Omar said that he could not leave me. I think my God gave her, to me, to take care of her. How then I leave her if she not well and not very rich? I can't speak to my God if I do bad things like that. I am going to his house today to see the baby and Haji Hanna, who has just come down from Cairo. Omar is gone to try to get Adahabiyah to go up the river, as I hear that the half-railway, half-steamer journey is dreadfully inconvenient and fatiguing, and the sight of the overflowing Nile is said to be magnificent. It is all over the land and eight miles of the railway gone. Omar kisses your hand and is charmed with the knife, but far more that my family should know his name and be satisfied with my servant. I cannot live in Ther's house because the march of civilization has led a party of French and Wallachian women into the ground floor thereof, to instruct the ignorant Arabs in drinking, card-playing, and other vices. So I will consult Haji Hanna today. She may know of an empty house and would make divan cushions for me. Mayneb is much grown and very active and intelligent, but a little louder and bolder than she was, owing to the maids here wanting to Christianize her, and taking her out unveiled and letting her be among the men. However, she is as affectionate as ever and delighted at the prospect of going with me. I have replaced the veil, and Sally has checked her tongue and scolded her sister Ellen for want of decorum, to the amazement of the latter. It has a darling Nubian boy. Oh, dear, what an elegant person Omar seemed after the French gentleman, and how noble was old Hamise's, Janet's doorkeeper, paternal but reverential blessing. It is a real comfort to live in a nation of truly well-bred people, and to encounter kindness after the savage incivility of France. Tuesday, October 20. Omar has got a boat for thirteen pounds, which is not more than the railway would cost, now that half must be done by steamer and a bit on donkeys or on foot. Poor Haji Hanna was quite knocked up by the journey down, I shall take her up in my boat. Two-and-a-half hours to sit grilling at Noonday on the banks, and two miles to walk carrying one's own baggage is hard lines for a fat old woman. Everything is almost double in price owing to the cattle Moran in the high Nile. Such an inundation as this year was never known before. Is the blue-god Resent speaks intrusion on his privacy? It will be a glorious sight, but the damage to the crops and even to the last year's stacks of grains and beans is frightful. One sails among the palm trees and over the submerged cotton fields. Ishmael Pasha has been very active, but alas, his eye is bad, and there have been as many calamities as under Pharaoh in his short reign. The cattle Moran is fearful, and is now beginning in Cairo and upper Egypt. Ross reckons the loss at twelve million sterling in cattle. The gazelles in the desert have it too, but not horses, asses, or goats. End of letter seventeen. Read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter eighteen of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Thank you, Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Alexandria, October 26, 1863. Dearest Alec. I went to two harems the other day, with a little boy of Mustafa Aga's, and was much pleased. A very pleasant Turkish lady put out all her splendid bedding in dresses for me, and was most amiable. At another, a superb Arab with most grand-dom manners, dressed in white cotton and with unpainted face, received me stately. Her house would drive you wild, such antique enameled tiles covering the panels of the walls, all divided by carved woods, and such carved screens and galleries, all very old and rather dilapidated, but superb, and the lady worthy of the house. A bold-eyed slave girl with a baby put herself forward for admiration, and was ordered to bring coffee with such cool, though polite imperiousness. One of our great ladies can't half-crush a rival in comparison. She does it too coarsely. The quiet scorn of the pale-faced, black-haired Arab was beyond any English powers. Then it was fun to open the lattice and make me look out on the square, and to wonder what the neighbors would say at the side of my face and European hat. She asked about my children and blessed them repeatedly, and took my hand very kindly in doing so, for fear I should think her envious and fear her eye. She had none. Tuesday the post goes out to-morrow, and I have such a cold I must stay in bed and cannot write much. I go on Thursday, and shall go to Briggs's house. Pray write to me at Cairo. Sally and I are both unwell and anxious to get up the river. I can't write more. End of Lutter 18 Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 19 Of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Kaffir Zeyat, October 31, 1863. Dearest Alec, We left Alexandria on Thursday about noon, and sailed with a fair wind along Muhammadiyah Canal. My little boat flies like a bird, and my men are a capital set of fellows, bold and careful sailors. I have only seven in all, but they work well, and at a pinch Omar leaves the pots and pans and handles a rope or a pole manfully. We sailed all night and passed the logs at Atlah at four o'clock yesterday, and were greeted by old Nile tearing down like a torrent. The river is magnificent, seven men's height, my raiz says, above its usual pitch. It has gone down five or six feet and left a sad scene of havoc on either side. However, what the Nile takes he repays with threefold interest, they say. The women are at work rebuilding their mud huts, and the men repairing the dykes. A Frenchman told me he was on board a poshest steamer under Monsieur de Lesseps' command, and they passed a flooded village where two hundred or so people stood on their roofs crying for help. Would you, could you, believe it, that they passed on and left them to drown? None but an eyewitness could have made me believe such villainy. All today we sailed in such heavenly weather, a sky like nothing but its most beautiful self. At the bend of the river just now we had a grand struggle to get round, and got entangled with a big timber boat. My crew got so vehement that I had to come out with an imperious request to every one to bless the Prophet. Then the boat nearly pulled the men into the stream, and they pulled and hauled and struggled up to their wastes in mud and water, and Omar brandished his pole and shouted, Islam, el Islam, which gave a fresh spirit to the poor fellows, and round we came with the dash and caught the breeze again. Now we have put up for the night, and shall pass the railway bridge to-morrow. The railway is all under water from here up to Tanta, eight miles, and in many places higher up. END OF LETTER XIX Read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter XX of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Cairo, November 14, 1863. Here I am at last in my old quarters at Thayer's house, after a tiresome negotiation with the vice-consul, who had taken possession and invented the story of women on the ground floor. I was a week in Briggs's damp house, and too ill to write. The morning I arrived at Cairo I was seized with hemorrhage, and had two days of it. However, since then I am better. I was very foolish to stay a fortnight in Alexandria. The passage under the railway bridge at Tanta, which is only opened once in two days, was most exciting and pretty. Such a scramble and dash of boats, two or three hundred at least. Old Zidane, the steersman, slid under the noses of the big boats with my little kanjia, and threw the gates before they were well open, and we saw the rush and confusion behind us at our ease, and headed the whole fleet for a few miles. Then we stuck, and Zidane raged, but we got off in an hour and again overtook and passed all. And then we saw the spectacle of devastation. Whole villages gone, submerged and melted, mud to mud, and the people with their animals encamped on spits of sand, or on the dykes, in long rows of ragged, makeshift tents, while we sailed over where they had lived, cotton rotting in all directions, and the dry tops crackling under the boughs of the boat. When we stopped to buy milk, the poor woman exclaimed, Milk? From where? Do you want it out of my breasts? Never she took our saucepan and went to get some from another family. No one refuses it if they have a drop left, for they all believe the moran to be a punishment for churlishness to strangers, by whom committed no one can say. Nor would they fix a price, or take more than the old rate. But here everything has doubled in price. Never did a present give such pleasure as Madame Deleo's bracelet. Deleo came quite overflowing with gratitude at my having remembered such a trifle as his attending me and coming three times a day. He thinks me looking better, and advises me to stay on here till I feel it cold. Mr. Thairs Underling has been doing leventine rogueries, selling the American protege's claims to the Egyptian government, and I witnessed a curious phase of Eastern life. Omar, when he found him in my house, went and ordered him out. I was ill in bed, and knew nothing till it was done, and when I asked Omar how he came to do it, he told me to be civil to him if I saw him, as it was not for me to know what he was. That was his, Omar's, business. At the same time Mr. Thairs' servant sent him a telegram so insolent that it amounted to a kicking. Such is the nemesis for being a rogue here. The servants know you, and let you feel it. I was quite flabbergasted at Omar, who was so reverential to me and to the Rosses, and who I fancied trembled before every European, taking such a tone to a man in the position of a gentleman. It is a fresh proof of the feeling of actual equality among men that lies at the bottom of such great inequality of position. Hekeke and Bey has seen a Turkish Pasa's shins kicked by his own servants, who were cognizant of his misdeeds. Finally on Thursday we got the keys of the house, and Omar came with two ferociouss, and shoveled out the leventine dirt, and scoured and scrubbed, and on Friday afternoon, yesterday, we came in. Zeynep has been very good ever since she has been with us. She will soon be a complete Drego woman, for she is learning Arabic from Omar and English from us fast. In Janet's house she only heard a sort of lingua franca of Greek, Italian, Nubian, and English. She asked me, how piccolo bent? How's the little girl? A fine specimen of Alexandrian. Ross is here and will dine with me tonight before starting by an express train which Ishmael Pasha gives him. On Thursday evening I rode to the Abysseia and met all the school boys going home for their Friday. Such a pretty sight! The little turks on grand horses, with velvet trappings and two or three Sais running before them, and the Arab boys fetched, some by proud fathers on handsome donkeys, some by trusty servants on foot, some by poor mothers astride on shabby donkeys and taking up their darlings before them, some two and three on one donkey, and crowds on foot. Such a number of lovely faces, all dressed in white European cut clothes and red tabooshes. Last night we had a wedding opposite. A pretty boy, about Maurice's size, or rather less, with a friend of his own size, dressed like him in a scarlet-robin turban on each side, and surrounded by men carrying tapers and singing songs, and proceeded by Cresset's flaring. He stepped along like Agag, very slowly and mincingly, and looked very shy and pretty. My poor Hassan, donkey-driver, is ill. I fear very ill. His father came with a donkey for me, and kept drawing his sleeve over his eyes, and sighing so heavily. Yah Hassan meskeen, Yah Hassan ibn, O poor Hassan, O Hassan my soul, and then, in a resigned tone, Allah kareem, God is merciful. I will go and see him this morning, and have a doctor to him by force, as Omar says, if he is very bad. There is something heart-rending in the patient helpless suffering of these people. Sunday Abu Hassan reported his son so much better that I did not go after him, having several things to do, and Omar being deep in cooking a festin de balthazar, because Ross was to dine with me. The weather is delicious, much what we had at Bournemouth in summer, but there is a great deal of sickness, and I fear there will be more, from people burying dead cattle on their premises inside the towns. It costs one hundred garish to bury one outside the town. All labor is rendered scarce, too, as well as food dear, and the streets are not cleaned and water hard to get. My Saka comes very irregularly, and makes quite a favour of supplying us with water. All this must tell heavily on the poor. Hekekeyan's wife had seventy head of cattle on her farm, one wretched bullock is left, and of seven to water the house in Cairo, also one left, and that expected to die. I wonder what ill-conditioned fellow of a Moses is at the bottom of it. Haji Ali has just been here, and offers me his tents, if I like to go up to Thebes and not live in a boat, so that I may not be dependent on getting a house there. He is engaged by Lady Herbert of Lee, so will not go up to Syria this year, and has all his tents to spare. I fancy I might be very comfortable among the tombs of the kings, or in the valley of Asiaph with good tents. It is never cold at all among the hills at Thebes, O Contraire. On the sunny side of the valley you are broiled and stunned with heat in January, and in the shade it is heavenly. How I do wish you could come to, how you would enjoy it. I shall rather like the change from a boat-life to a bed-a-wee one, with my own sheep and chickens and horse about the tent, and a small following of ragged retainers. Moreover, it will be considerably cheaper, I think. End of letter twenty. I shall stay on here till it gets colder, and then go up the Nile, either in a steamer or a boat. The old father of my donkey-boy, Hassan, gave me a fine illustration of Arab feelings towards women today. I asked if Abed Al-Qadr was coming here, as I had heard. He did not know, and asked me if he were not Akhul and Benat, a brother of girls. I prosaically said I did not know if he had sisters. The Arabs, O lady, call that man a brother of girls to whom God has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and strength and courage to fight for their protection. Omar suggested a thorough gentleman as the equivalent of Abu Hassan's title. Our European Galimatikas, about the smiles of the fair, etc., look very mean beside Akhul and Benat, me thinks. Moreover they carried into common life. Omar was telling me of some little family tribulations, showing that he is not a little hen-pecked. His wife wanted all his money. I asked how much she had of her own, as I knew she had property. Oh, ma'am, I can't speak of that. Shame for me if I ask what money she got. A man married in Alexandria, and took home the daily provisions for the first week. After that he neglected it for two days, and came home with a lemon in his hand. He asked for some dinner, and his wife placed the stool and the tray and the washing-bin and napkin, and on the tray the lemon cutting quarters. Well, and the dinner? Dinner? Where from? What man are you to want women when you don't keep them? I am going to the Qadi to be divorced from you. And she did. The man must provide all provisions necessary for his harem, and if she has money or earns any she spends it in dress. If she makes him a skull-cap or a handkerchief he must pay her for her work. Two Nesparoses, for these eastern tyrants, not to speak of the unbridled license of tongue allowed to women and children. Zaneb Hector's Omar and I cannot persuade him to check her. How I say anything to it, that one child. Of course the children are insupportable, and I fancy the women little better. A poor neighbor of mine lost his little boy yesterday and came out in the streets, as usual, for sympathy. He stood under my window leaning his head against the wall, and sobbing and crying till literally his tears wedded the dust. He was too grieved to tear off his turban or to lament in the harem, but clasped his hands and cried, Ya wellid, ya wellid, ya wellid, oh my boy, my boy! The bean-seller opposite shed his shop, the dyer took no notice but smoked his pipe. Some people passed on, but many stopped and stood round the poor man, saying nothing but looking concerned. Two were well-dressed cops on handsome donkeys, who dismounted and all waited till he went home, when about twenty men accompanied him with a respectful air. How strange it seems to us to go out into the streets and call on the passers-by to grieve with one. I was at the house of Hekeke and Bay the other day, when he received a parcel from his former slave, now the sultan's chief eunuch. It contained a very fine photograph of the eunuch, whose face, though negro, is very intelligent and of a charming expression, a present of illustrated English books and some printed music composed by the sultan, Abed El Aziz himself. Oh, tempura! Oh, mores! One was a waltz! The very ugliest and scrubbiest of street dogs has adopted me, like the Irishman who wrote to Lord Lansdowne that he had selected him as his patron, and he guards the house and follows me in the street. He is rewarded with scraps, and Sally cost me a new tin mug by letting the dog drink out of the old one which was used to scoop the water from the jars, forgetting that Omar and Zennib could not drink after the poor beast. One day, I went yesterday to the port of Cairo, Bula, to see Hasanane Efendi about boats. He was gone up the Nile and I sat with his wife, a very nice Turkish woman who speaks English to perfection, and heard all sorts of curious things. I heard the whole story of an unhappy marriage made by Leila, my hostess's sister, and much Cairo gossip. Like all Eastern ladies that I have seen, she complains of indigestion, and said she ought to go out more to walk, but custom e contra il nostro decoro. Mr. Thare will be back in Egypt on December 15th, so I shall embark about that time, as he may want his house here. It is now a little fresh in the early morning, but like fine English summer weather. Tuesday. Since I have been here my cough is nearly gone, and I am better for having good food again. Omar manages to get good mutton, and I have discovered that some of the Nile fish is excellent. The abyad, six or eight feet long and very fat, is delicious, and I am told there are still better. The eels are delicate and good, too. Maurice might hook an abyad, but how would he land him? The worst is that everything is just double the price of last year, as, of course, no beef can be eaten at all, and the draft oxen being dead makes labor dear as well. The High Nile was a small misfortune compared to the Moran. There is a legend about it, of course. A certain Sheikh El-Beled, burgamaster of some place, not mentioned, lost his cattle, and being rich defied God, and said he did not care and bought as many more. They died, too, and he was continued impenitent and defiant, and bought on till he was ruined, and now he is sinking into the earth bodily, though his friends dig and dig without ceasing night and day. It is curious how like the German legends the Arab ones are. All those about wasting bread wantonly are almost identical. If a bit is dirty, Omar carefully gives it to the dog. If clean he keeps it in a drawer for making breadcrumbs for cutlets. Not a bit must fall on the floor. In other things they are careless enough, but Das Liboprad is sacred. Vida grims Deutsches Sagen. I am constantly struck with resemblances to German customs. A fellow wedding is very like the German Baron Huxite, firing of guns and display of household goods, only on a camel instead of a cart. I have been trying to get a teacher of Arabic, but it is very hard to find one who knows any European language, and the consular Drago-man asks four dollars a lesson. I must wait till I get to Thebes, where I think a certain young Said can teach me. Meanwhile I am beginning to understand rather more and to speak a very little. Please direct me to Briggs and company at Cairo. If I am gone the letters will follow up the river. Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon To Mrs. Ross, Cairo, December 1st, 1863. Dearest Janet, I should much like to go with Thayer if his times and seasons will suit mine, but I cannot wait indefinitely, still less come down the river before the end of April. But most likely the Pasha will give him a boat. It is getting cold here and I feel my throat sore to-day. I went to see Hassan yesterday. He is much better, but very weak in pale. It is such a nice family, old father, mother, and sister, all well-bred and pleasing like Hassan himself. He almost shrieked at hearing of your fall and is most anxious to see you when you come here. Zayneb, after behaving very well for three weeks, has turned quietly sullen and displays great religious intolerance. It would seem that the Barbary men have put it into her head that we are inferior beings, and she pretends not to be able to eat because she thinks everything is pig. Omar's eating the food does not convince her. As she evidently does not like us I will offer her to Mrs. Hekeke and Bey, and if she does not do there in a household of black muslim slaves they must pass her on to a Turkish house. She is very clever and I am sorry, but to keep a sullen face about me is more than I can endure, as I have shown her every possible kindness. I think she despises Omar for his affection towards me. How much easier it is to instill the bad part of religion than the good. It is really a curious phenomenon in so young a child. She waits capitally at table, and can do most things, but she won't move if the fancy takes her except when ordered, and spends her time on the terrace. One thing is that the life is dull for a child, and I think she will be happier in a larger, more bustling house. I don't know whether, after the fearful example of Mrs. B., I can venture to travel up the Nile with such a seducture as our dear Mr. Thayer. What do you think? Will gray hairs on my side and mutual bad lungs guarantee our international virtue, or will someone ask the potter when he means to divorce me? Would it be considered that Yankee Doodle had stuck a feather in his cap by leading a British matron and grandmother astray? Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Cairo December 2, 1863 It is beginning to be cold here, and I only await the results of my inquiries about possible houses at Thebes to hire a boat and depart. Yesterday I saw a camel go through the eye of a needle, i.e., the low arched door of an enclosure. He must kneel and bow his head to creep through, and thus the rich man must humble himself. See how a false translation spoils a good metaphor, and turns a familiar simile into a ferociously communist sentiment. I expect Henry and Janet here in four or five days when her uncle allows her to travel. If I get a house at Thebes I will only hire a boat up and dismiss it, and trust to Allah for my return. There are rumors of troubles at Jeddah and a sort of expectation of fighting somewhere next spring. Even here people are buying arms to a great extent. I think the gunsmith's bazaar looks unusually lively. I do look forward to next November and you're coming here. I know you would donkey-ride all day in a state of ecstasy. I never saw so good a servant as Omar and such a nice creature, so pleasant and good. When I hear and see what other people spend here in traveling and in living, and what bother they have, I say, may God favor Omar and his descendants. I stayed in bed yesterday for a cold, and my next-door neighbor, a Coptic merchant, kept me awake all night by auditing his accounts with his clerk. How would you like to chant your rows of figures? He had just bought lots of cotton, and I had to get into my door on Monday over a camel's back, the street being filled with bales. END OF LETTER XXIII The House at Thieves, of which my mother speaks, in the following letter, was built about 1815, over the ancient temple of Khem, by Mr. Salt, English consul-general in Egypt. He was an archaeologist and a student of hieroglyphics, and when Belzoni landed at Alexandria was struck by his ability and sent him up to Thebes to superintend the removal of the great bust of Memnon, now in the British museum. Belzoni, I believe, lived for some time in Mr. Salt's house, which afterwards became the property of the French government, and was known as the Maison de France. It was pulled down in 1884 when the great temple of Luxor was excavated by Mr. Maspero. My late friend, Miss A. B. Edwards, wrote a description of his work in the illustrated London News, from which I give a few extracts. QUOTE Squatters settled upon the temple like a swarm of mason bees, and the extent of the mischief they perpetrated in the course of centuries may be gathered from the fact that they raised the level of the surrounding soil to such a height that the obelisks, the Colossi, and the entrance pylon were buried to a depth of forty feet, while inside the building the level of the native village was fifty feet above the original pavement. Seven months ago the first court contained not only the local mosque, but a labyrinthine maze of mud structures, numbering some thirty dwellings, and eighty straw sheds, besides yards, stables, and pigeon-towers, the hole being intersected by innumerable lanes and passages. Two large mansions, real mansions, spacious, and in Arab fashion luxurious, blocked the great colonnade of the Hormhebi, while the second court and all the open spaces and ruined parts of the upper end of the temple were encumbered by sheepfolds, goat yards, poultry yards, donkey sheds, clusters of mud huts, refuge heaps, and piles of broken pottery. Upon the roof of the portico there stood a large, rambling, ruinous old house, the property of the French government, and known as the Maison de France. Within its walls the illustrious Champollion and his ally Rossellini lived and worked together in eighteen twenty-nine during part of their long sojourn at Thebes. Here the naval officers sent out by the French in eighteen thirty-one to remove the obelisks which now stands in the Place de la Concorde took up their temporary quarters. And here, most interesting to English readers, Lady Duff Gordon lingered through some of her last winters and wrote most of her delightful letters from Egypt. A little balcony with a broken veranda and a bit of latticework peripet juts out above some mud walls at the end of the building. Upon that balcony she was wont to sit in the cool of the evening, watching the boats upon the river and the magical effect of the afterglow upon the Libyan mountains opposite. All these buildings, Maison de France, Stores, Yards, etc., are all swept away. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Cairo, December seventeenth, nineteen-sixty-three. Dearest Alec, at last I hope I shall get off in a few days. I have had one delay and bother after another, chiefly caused by relying on the fine speeches of Mr. D. On applying straight to the French consulate at Alexandria, Janet got me the loan of the Maison de France at Thebes at once. Monsieur Monnier, the agent to Halim Pasha, is going up to Esna and will let me travel in the steamer which is to tow his Dahabia. It will be dirty, but will cost little and take me out of this dreadful cold weather in five or six days. December twenty-second. I wrote the above five days ago, since when I have had to turn out of Thayer's house, as his new vice consul wanted it, and and back at Briggs's. Monsieur Monnier is waiting in frantic impatience to set off, and I ditto, but Ishmael Pasha keeps him from day to day. The worry of depending on anyone in the East is beyond belief. Tell your mother that Lady Herbert is gone up the river, her son was much the better for Cairo. I saw Pietro, her courier, who is dependously grand, he offered Omar eight pounds a month to go with them. You may imagine how Pietro despised his heathenish ignorance in preferring to stay with me for three pounds. It quite confirmed him in his contempt for the Arabs. You would have laughed to hear me buying a carpet. I saw an old broker with one on his shoulder in the bazaar, and asked the price, eight Napoleons. Then it was unfolden and spread in the street, to the great inconvenience of passers-by, just in front of a coffee shop. I look at it superciliously, and say, three hundred piestras, oh uncle. The poor old broker cries out in despair to the men sitting outside the coffee shop. Oh Muslims, hear that and look at this excellent carpet. Three hundred piestras, by the faith it is worth two thousand. But the men take my part and one mildly says, I wonder that an old man as thou art should tell us that this lady, who is a traveler and a person of experience, values it at three hundred. Think as thou we will give you more. Then another suggests that if the lady will consent to give four Napoleons he had better take them and that settles it. Everybody gives an opinion here, and the price is fixed by a sort of improvised jury. Christmas Day At last my departure is fixed. I embark tomorrow afternoon at Bulac, and we sail, or steam, rather, on Sunday morning early, and expect to reach thieves in eight days. I heard a curious illustration of Arab manors today. I met Hassan, the Janissary of the American Consulate, a very respectable good man. He told me he had married another wife since last year. I asked what for? It was the widow of his brother, who had always lived with him in the same house, and who died leaving two boys. She is neither young nor handsome, but he considered it his duty to provide for her and the children and not let her marry a stranger. So you see that polygamy is not always sensual indulgence, and a man may practice greater self-sacrifice so than by talking sentiment about deceased wives' sisters. Hassan has three pounds a month, and two wives come expensive. I said, laughing to Omar as we left him, that I did not think the two wives sounded very comfortable. Oh, no, not comfortable at all for the man, but he take care of the woman, that's what is proper. That is the good Muslim. I shall have the company of a Turkish effendi on my voyage, a commissioner of inland revenue, in fact, going to look after the tax-gatherers in the Said. I wonder whether he will be civil. Sally is gone with some English servants out to the Virgin's Tree, the great picnic frolic of Kyrene Christians, and indeed of Muslimeen also at some seasons. Omar is gone to Akatma, a reading of the Quran, at Hassan, the donkey boy's house. I was asked but am afraid of the night air. A good deal of religious celebration goes on now, the middle of the month of Rageb, six weeks before Ramadan. I rather dread Ramadan as Omar is sure to be faint and ill, and everybody else crossed during the first five days or so, then their stomachs get into training. The new passenger steamers have been promised ever since the sixth, and will not go up now till after the races, the sixth or seventh of next month. Fancy the Cairo races. It is growing dreadfully caught me here. I must go to Timbuktu, and we are to have a railway to Mecca, and take return tickets for the Hajj from all parts of the world. End of letter twenty-four, read by Cebella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter twenty-five of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austin, Bulak, on board a river steamboat, December twenty-seventh, eighteen-sixty-three. Dearest Mother, after infinite delays and worries we are at last on board, and shall sail tomorrow morning. After all was comfortably settled, Ishmael Pasha sent for all the steamers up to Rota, near Miniya, and at the same time ordered a Turkish general to come up instantly somehow. So Latif Pasha, the head of the steamers, had to turn me out of the best cabin, and if I had not come myself, and taken rather forcible possession of the four-castle cabin, the servants of the Turkish general would not have allowed Omar to embark the baggage. He had been waiting all the morning in despair on the bank, but at four I arrived, and ordered the Hamas to carry the goods into the four-cabin, and walked on board myself, where the Arab captain pantomimically placed me in his right eye and on the top of his head. Once installed this has become a harem, and I may defy the Turkish offendi with success. I have got a good-sized cabin with good clean devans round three sides for Sally and myself. Omar will sleep on deck and cook where he can. A poor Turkish lady is to inhabit a sort of dust-hole by the side of my cabin, if she seems decent I will entertain her hospitably. There is no furniture of any sort but the devan, and we cook our own food, bring our own candles, jugs, basins, beds, and everything. If Sally and I were not such complete Arabs we should think it very miserable, but as things stand this year we say, Alhamdulillah it is no worse. Luckily it is a very warm night, so we can make our arrangements unshilled. There is no door to the cabin, so we nail up an old plaid, and as no one ever looks into a harem it is quite enough. All on board are Arabs, captain, engineer, and men. An English sit is a novelty, and the captain is unhappy that things are not a la Franca for me. We are to tow three Dahabiyas, Mr. Mouniers, one belonging to the envoy from the Sultan of Darfur, and another. Three steamers were to have done it, but the Pasha had a fancy for all the boats, and so our poor little craft must do her best. Only fancy the queen ordering all the river steamers up to Windsor. At Menea the Turkish general leaves us, and we shall have the boat to ourselves, so the captain has just been down to tell me. I should like to go with the gentleman from Darfur, as you may suppose. See what strange combinations of people float on old Nile. Two English women, one French, Madame Mouniers, one Frenchman, Turks, Arabs, Negroes, Circassians, and men from Darfur all in one party. Perhaps the third boat contains some other strange element. The Turks are from Constantinople and can't speak Arabic, and make faces at the muddy river water, which indeed I would rather have filtered. I hope to have letters from home tomorrow morning. Hassan, my faithful donkey-boy, will go to the post as soon as it is open and bring them down to Boulac. Darling Rhaeny sent me a card with a cock-robin for Christmas, how terribly I miss her dear little face and talk. I am pretty well now. I only feel rather weaker than before and more easily tired. I send you a kind letter of Madame Tostues, who got her son to lend me the house at Thebes. End of letter twenty-five, read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter twenty-six of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, on board the steamer, near Sioux, Sunday, January third, eighteen-sixty-four. Dearest Alec. We left Cairo last Sunday morning, and a wonderfully queer company we were. I had been promised all the steamer to myself, but owing to Ishmael Pasha's caprices our little steamer had to do the work of three, i.e. to carry passengers, to tow Monsieur Monnier's d'Arabia, and to tow the oldest, dirtiest, queerest Nubian boat in which the young son of the sultan of Darfur and the sultan's envoy, a handsome black of dangala, not a negro, had visited Ishmael Pasha. The best cabin was taken by a sulky old one-eyed Turkish Pasha, so I had the four cabin, luckily a large one, where I slept with Sally on one devan and I on the other, and Omar at my feet. He tried sleeping on deck, but the Pasha's r-knots were too bad company, and the captain begged me to cover my face and let my servant sleep at my feet. Besides, there was a poor old asthmatic Turkish effendi going to collect the taxes, and a lot of women in the engine room and children also. It would have been insupportable, but for the hardy politeness of the Arab captain, a regular old salt, and owing to his attention and care it was only very amusing. At Benesuf, the first town above Cairo, seventy miles, we found no coals. The Pasha had been up and taken them all. So we kicked our heels on the bank all day, with the prospect of doing so for a week. The captain brought his royal highness of Darfur to visit me, and to beg me to make him hear reason about the delay, as I, being English, must know that a steamer could not go without coals. His royal highness was a pretty, imperious little nigger about eleven or twelve, dressed in a yellow silk captain in a scarlet burnoise, who cut the good old captain short by saying, Why, she is a woman, she can't talk to me. Voila! Voila! What a way to talk to an English harem, shrieked the captain, who was about to lose his temper, but I had a happy idea and produced a box of French sweet-meats, which altered the young prince's views at once. I asked if he had brothers. Who can count them? They are like mice. He said that the Pasha had given him only a few presents and was evidently not pleased. Some of his sweet are the most formidable looking wild beasts in human shape I have ever beheld. Bulldogs and wild boars black as ink, red-eyed and ye gods, such jowls and throats and teeth. Others like monkeys, with arms down to their knees. The Illyrian are-nuts on board our boat are revoltingly white, like fish or drowned people, no pink in the tallowy skin at all. There were Greeks also who left us at Minia, second-large town, and the old Pasha left this morning at Rhoda. The captain at once ordered all my goods into the cabin he had left and turned out the Turkish offendi who wanted to stay and sleep with us. No impropriety. He said he was an old man and sick, and my company would be agreeable to him. Then he said he was ashamed before the people to be turned out by an English woman. So I was civil and begged him to pass the day and to dine with me, and that set all right, and now after dinner he has gone off quite pleasantly to the four cabin and left me here. I have a stern cabin, a saloon, and an enteroom here, so we are comfortable enough, only the fleas. Never till now did I know what fleas could be, even Omar groaned and tossed in his sleep and Sally and I woke every ten minutes. Perhaps this cabin may be better, some fleas may have landed in the beds of the Turks. I send a dish from my table every day henceforth to the captain. As I take the place of apasha is part of my dignity to do so, and as I occupy the kitchen and burn the ship's coals, I may as well let the captain dine a little at my expense. In the day I go up and sit in his cabin on deck, and we talk as well as we can without an interpreter. The old fellow is sixty-seven, but does not look more than forty-five. He has just the air and manner of a seafaring man with us, and has been wrecked four times, the last in the black sea during the Crimean War when he was taken prisoner by the Russians and sent to Moscow for three years until the peace. He has a charming boy of eleven with him, and he tells me he has twelve children in all, but only one wife, and is as strict a monogamous as Dr. Primrose, for he told me he should not marry again if she died, nor he believed would she. He is surprised at my gray hair. There are good many cops on board, too, of a rather low class and not pleasant. The Christian gentlemen are very pleasant, but the low are low indeed compared to the Muslimine, and one gets a feeling of dirtiness about them to see them eat all among the coals, and then squat there and pull out their beads to pray without washing their hands even. It does look nasty when compared to the Muslim coming up clean washed and standing erect and manly, looking to his prayers, besides they are coarse in their manner and conversation and have not the Arab respect for women. I only speak of the common people, not of educated cops. The best fun was to hear the Greeks, one of whom spoke English abusing the cops, rogues, heretics, schismatics from the Greek church, ignorant, rapacious, cunning, impudent, etc., etc. In short, they narrated the whole fable about their own sweet sales. I am quite surprised to see how well these men manage their work. The boat is quite as clean as an English boat, as crowded could be kept, and the engine in beautiful order. The head engineer, Ahmed Effendi, and indeed all the crew in Captain Two, wear English clothes and use the universal, all right, stopper, furra, full speed, half speed, turner head, etc. I was delighted to hear, all right, go ahead, el fatah, in one breath. Here we always say the fatah, first chapter of the Quran, nearly identical with the Lord's prayer, when starting on a journey, concluding a bargain, etc. The combination was very quaint. There are rats and fleas on board, but neither bugs nor cockroaches. Already the climate has changed, the air is sensibly drier and cleaner and the weather much warmer, and we are not yet at sea-ute. I remarked last year that the climate changed most at Kenna, forty miles below Thebes. The banks are terribly broken and washed away by the inundation, and the Nile far higher even now than it was six weeks earlier last year. At Benesouf, which used to be the great cattle-place, not a buffalo was left, and we could not get a drop of milk. But since we left Miniya we see them again, and I hear the disease is not spreading up the river. Omar told me that the poor people at Benesouf were complaining of the drought and prospect of scarcity as they could no longer water the land for want of oxen. I paid ten Napoleon's passage money and shall give four or five more as Bakshish, as I have given a good deal of trouble with all my luggage, beddings, furniture, provisions for four months, etc., and the boat's people have been more than civil, really kind and attentive to us, but a bad Dahabiyah would have cost forty, so I am greatly the gainer. Nothing can exceed the muddle, uncertainty, and carelessness of the administration at Cairo. No coals at the depots, boats announced to sail and dwaddling on three weeks, no order and no care for anybody's convenience but the Poshish's own. But the subordinates on board the boats do their work perfectly well. We go only half as quickly as we ought, because we have two very heavy Dahabiyahs in tow instead of one. But no time is lost, as long as the light lasts we go and start again as soon as the moon rises. The people on board have promoted me in rank, and call me El Amira, an obsolete Arab title which the engineer thinks is the equivalent of Lady Sheep, as he calls it. Citi, he said, was the same as Mises. I don't know how he acquired his ideas on the subject of English precedents. Omar has just come in with coffee, and begs me to give his best salam to his big master and his little master and lady, and not to forget to tell them he is their servant and my memlook, slave, from one hand to the other, the whole body. If we stay at Sioud I will ride a donkey up to Wasav's house, and leave this letter for him to send down with his next opportunity to Cairo. At Kenna we must try to find time to buy two filters and some gellas, water coolers, they are made there. At Thebes nothing can be got. How I do wish you were here to enjoy all the new and strange sights. I am sure it would amuse you, and as the fleas don't bite you there would be no drawback. Janet sent me a photo of dear little Rainy. It is ugly, but very like the Zoeya, little one. Give her no end of kisses, and thank her for the cock robin which pleased me quite as much as she thought it would. End of Letter twenty-six, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter twenty-seven of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon. Tuesday, January 5th, 1864. We left Siut this afternoon. The captain had announced that we should start at ten o'clock, so I did not go into the town, but sent Omar to buy food and give my letter and best salam to Wasif. But the men of Darfur all went off declaring that they would stop, promising to cut off the captain's head if he went without them. Hassan Effendi, the Turk, was furious and threatened to telegraph his complaints to Cairo if we did not go directly, and the poor captain was in a sad quandary. He appealed to me, peaceably sitting on the trunk of a palm tree, with some poor fellaheen, of whom more are none. I uttered the longest sentence I could compose in Arabic to the effect that he was captain, and that while on the boat we were all bound to obey him. Masha'Allah! One English harem is worth more than ten men for sense. These Inglazi have only one word both for themselves and for other people. Dogri, dogri, right is right. This Amira is ready to obey like a mumluk, and when she has to command, hew, with a most expressive toss back of the head. The bank was crowded with poor fellaheen who had been taken for soldiers and sent to await the Pasha's arrival at Girga. Three weeks they lay there and were then sent down to Suhaj. The Pasha wanted to see them, himself, and pick out the men he liked. Eight days more at Suhaj, then to Syud, eight days more, and meanwhile Ishmael Pasha has gone back to Cairo, and the poor souls may wait indefinitely, for no one will venture to remind the Pasha of their trifling existence. Wallah, wallah! While I was walking on the bank with Masha'ur and Madame Mounier, a person came up and saluted them whose appearance puzzled me. Don't call me a Persian when I tell you it was an eccentric Bedouin young lady. She was eighteen or twenty at most, dressed like a young man, but small and feminine and rather pretty, except that one eye was blind. Her dress was handsome, and she had women's jewels, diamonds, et cetera, and a European watch and chain. Her manner was excellent, quite ungenurt, and not the least impudent or swaggering, and I was told, indeed I could hear, that her language was beautiful, a thing much esteemed among Arabs. She is a virgin and fond of traveling and of men's society, being very clever, so she has her dromedary and goes about quite alone. No one seemed surprised, no one stared, and when I asked if it was proper our captain was surprised. Why not? If she does not wish to marry, she can go alone. If she does, she can marry. What harm? She is a virgin and free. She went to breakfast with the Munye's on their boat. Madame Munye is Egyptian-born, and both speak Arabic perfectly, and the young lady had many things to ask them, she said. She expressed her opinions freely as far as I could understand her. Madame Munye had heard of her before, and said she was much respected and admired. Monsieur Munye had heard that she was a spy of the Pashas, but the people on board the boat here say that the truth was that she went before Said Pasha herself to complain of some tyrannical mutter who ground and imprisoned the Felaheen, a bold thing for a girl to do. To me she seems, anyhow, far the most curious thing I have yet seen. The weather is already much warmer, it is nine in the evening, we are steaming along and I sit with the cabin window open. My cough is, of course, a great deal better. In shala. Above Kenna, about another one hundred and fifty miles, it will go away. Today, for the first time, I pulled my cloak over my head in the sun, it was so stinging hot, quite delicious, and it is the fifth of January. Pauverivois in the cold. Our captain was prisoner for three years at Moscow and at Bakshi Sarai, and declares he never saw the sun at all, hard lines for an Egyptian. Do you remember the cigarettes you bought for me at Osbon? Well, I gave them to the old Turkish Effendi, who is dreadfully asthmatic, and he is enchanted. Of course five other people came to be cured directly. The rhubarb pills are a real comfort to travelers, for they can't do much harm and inspire great confidence. Luckily we left all the fleas behind in the fore-cabin, for the benefit of the poor old Turk, who I hear suffers severely. The devans were all brand new, and the fleas came in the cotton stuffing, for there are no live things of any sort in the rest of the boat. Girga, January 9, 1864. We have put in here for the night. Today we took on board three convicts in chains, two bound for Fuzgulow, one for Columny and Perjury, and one for Manslaughter. Hard labor for life in that climate will soon dispose of them. The third is a petty thief from Kenna, who has been a year in chains in the Custom House of Alexandria, and is now being taken back to be shown in his own place in his chains. The cause salera of this country would be curious reading. They do their crimes so differently to us. If I can get hold of any one who can relate a few cases well, I'll write them down. Omar has told me a few, but he may not know the details quite exactly. I made further inquiries about the Bedouin lady, who is older than she looks, for she has traveled constantly for ten years. She is rich and much respected, and received in all the best houses, where she sits with the men all day and sleeps in the Harim. She has been in the interior of Africa and Temeca, speaks Turkish, and Monsieur Monnier says he found her extremely agreeable, full of interesting information about all the countries she had visited. As soon as I can I must try and find her out. She likes the company of Europeans. Here is a contribution to folklore, new even to Helene, I think. When the coffee-seller lights his stove in the morning he makes two cups of coffee of the best and nicely sugared and pours them out all over the stove, saying God bless or favour shake Shad-Hili and his descendants. The blessing on the saint who invented coffee, of course I knew, and often utter, but the libation is new to me. You see the ancient religion crops up even through the severe faith of Islam. If I could describe all the details of an Arab and still more of a Coptic wedding you would think I was relating to mysteries of Isis. At one house I saw the bride's father looking pale and anxious, and Omar said, I think he wants to hold his stomach with both hands till the women tell him if his daughter makes his face white. It was such a good phrase for the sinking at heart of anxiety. It certainly seems more reasonable that a woman's misconduct should blacken her father's face than her husband's. There are good many things about Harim here which I am barbarian enough to think extremely good and rational. An old Turk of Cairo who had been in Europe was talking to an Englishman a short time ago who politely chafed him about Muslim license. The venerable Muslim replied, Pray, how many women have you who are quite young, seen, that is the Eastern phrase, in your whole life. The Englishman could not count, of course not. Well, young man, I am old, and was married at twelve, and I have seen in all my life seven women. Four are dead, and three are happy and comfortable in my house. Where are all yours? Hassanin Effendi heard the conversation, which passed in French, and was amused at the question. I find that the criminal convicted of columny accused, together with twenty-nine others not in custody, the Shake-El-Bellied of his place of murdering his servant, and produced a basket full of bones as proof, but the Shake-El-Bellied produced the living man and his detractor gets hard labor for life. The proceeding is characteristic of the childish ruses of this country. I inquired whether the thief who was dragged in chains through the streets would be able to find work, and was told, Oh, certainly is he not a poor man? For the sake of God everyone will be ready to help him. An absolute uncertainty of justice naturally leads to this result. Our captain was quite shocked to hear that in my country we did not like to employ a returned convict. Luxor, January 13th, 1864. We spent all the afternoon of Saturday at Kenna, where I dined with the English consul, a worthy old Arab, who also invited our captain, and we all sat round his copper tray on the floor and ate with our fingers, the captain who sat next to me, picking out the best bits and feeding me and Sally with them. After dinner the French consul, a copped, one Jesus Bactour, sent to invite me to a fantasia at his house, where I found the mouniers, the mudur, and some other turks, and a disagreeable Italian who stared at me as if I had been young and pretty, and put Omar into a great fury. I was glad to see the dancing girls, but I liked old Said Ahmed's patriarchal ways much better than the tone of the French-ified copped. At first I thought the dancing queer and dull. One girl was very handsome, but cold and uninteresting, one who sang was also very pretty and engaging, and a dear little thing. But the dancing was contortions, more or less graceful, very wonderful as gymnastic feats, and no more. But the captain called out to one Latifa, an ugly, clumsy-looking wench, to show the sit what she could do. And then it was revealed to me. The ugly girl started on her feet and became the serpent of old Nile, the head, shoulders, and arms eagerly bent forward, waist in, and haunches advanced on the bent knees, the posture of a cobra about to spring. I could not call it voluptuous any more than Racine's fadre. It is Venus toute entière à sa poire attachée, and to me seemed tragic. It is far more realistic than the Fandango and far less coquettish, because the thing represented is au grand sérieuse, not travestide, gaze, or played with, and like all such things the Arab men don't think it the least improper. Of course the girls don't commit any endocroms before European women, except the dance itself. Syed Ahmed would have given me a fantasia, but he feared I might have men with me, and he had a great annoyance with two Englishmen who wanted to make the girls dance naked, which they objected to, and he had to turn them out of his house after hospitably entertaining them. Our procession home to the boat was very drall. Madame Mounier could not ride an Arab saddle, so I lent her mine and invochéed my donkey, and away we went with men running with mush-hulls, fire-baskets on long poles, and lanterns, and the captain shouting out full speed and such English phrases all the way, like a regular old salt as he is. We got here last night, and this morning Mustafa Agha and the Nazir came down to conduct me up to my palace. I have such a big rambling house all over the top of the Temple of Khem. How I wish I had you and the chicks to fill it. We had about twenty fellas to clean the dust of three years' accumulation, and my room looked quite handsome with carpets and a divan. Mustafa's little girl found her way here when she heard I was come, and it seemed quite pleasant to have her playing on the carpet with a dolly and some sugar-plums, and making a feast for dolly on a saucer, arranging the sugar-plums Arab fashion. She was monstrously pleased with Rainy's picture and kissed it. Such a quiet, nice little brown tot, and curiously like Rainy and walnut juice. The view all round my house is magnificent on every side, over the Nile and front facing northwest, and over a splendid range of green and distant orange buff-hills to the southeast, where I have a spacious covered terrace. It is rough and dusty to the extreme, but it will be very pleasant. Mustafa came in just now to offer me the loan of a horse, and to ask me to go to the mosque in a few nights to see the illumination in honor of a great shake, a son of Sidi Hossein or Hossein. I asked whether my presence might not offend any Muslim in, and he would not hear of such a thing. The sun set while he was here, and he asked if I objected to his praying in my presence, and went through his four wreckas very comfortably on my carpet. My next-door neighbor, across the courtyard, all filled with antiquities, is a nice little cop who looks like an antique statue himself. I saw Voisignyere with his family. He sent me coffee as soon as I arrived and came to help. I am invited to El Montenay a few hours up the river to visit the mouniers, and to Kenna to visit Saeed Akmet, and also the head of the merchants there who settled the price of a carpet for me in the bazaar, and seemed to like me. He was just one of those handsome, high-bred, elderly merchants with whom a story always begins in the Arabian nights. When I can talk I will go and see a real Arab harem. A very nice English couple, a man and his wife, gave me breakfast in their boat, and turned out to be a business connection of Rosses, of the name Aerosmith. They were going to Aswan, and I shall see them on their way back. I asked Mustafa about the Arab young lady, and he spoke very highly of her, and is to let me know if she comes here to offer hospitality for me. He did not know her name, she is called El Haga, the pilgrimess. Thursday. Now I am settled in my Theban palace. It seems more and more beautiful, and I am quite melancholy that you cannot be here to enjoy it. The house is very large and has good thick walls, the comfort of which we feel today, for it blows a hurricane, but indoors it is not at all cold. I have glass windows and doors to some of the rooms. It is a lovely dwelling. Two funny little owls, as big as my fist, live in the wall under my window, and come up and peep in, walking on tiptoe, and looking inquisitive, like owls in the hieroglyphics, and a splendid horus, the sacred hawk, frequents my lofty balcony. Another of my contempler gods I sacrilegiously killed last night, a whip-snake. Omar is rather in consternation, for fear it should be the snake of the house, for Islam has not dethroned the Daiilaris a tutelaris. I have been sapping at the Alif Bay, A-B-C, today, under the direction of Sheikh Yusuf, a graceful, sweet-looking young man with a dark brown face and such fine manners in his fellow dress, a coarse brown woolen shirt, a libda, or felt-skull cap, and a common red shawl round his head and shoulders, riding the wrong way is very hard work. Some men came to mend the staircase which had fallen in and which consists of huge solid blocks of stone. One crushed his thumb, and I had to operate on it. It is extraordinary how these people bear pain, he never winced in the least, and went off thanking God and the lady quite cheerfully. Till to-day the weather has been quite heavenly. Last night I sat with my window open, it was so warm. If only I had you all here! How rainy would play in the temple! Maurice, fish in the Nile, and you go about with your spectacles on your nose. I think you would discard frangy dress and take to a brown shirt and a libda and soon be as brown as any fellow. It was so curious to see Sheikh Yusuf blush from shyness when he came in at first. It shows quite as much in the coffee-brown Arab skin as in the fairest European, quite unlike the much lighter-colored mulatto or mullet, who never changed color at all. A photographer who was living here showed me photographs done high up the white Nile. One negro girl is so splendid that I must get him to do me a copy to send you. She is not perfect like the Nubians, but so superbly strong and majestic. If I can get hold of a handsome fellow here, I'll get her photograph to show you in Europe what a woman's breast can be, for I never knew it before I came here. It is the most beautiful thing in the world. The dancing girl I saw moved her breasts by some extraordinary muscular effort, first one and then the other. They were just like pomegranates and gloriously independent of stays or any support. End of Letter twenty-seven, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter twenty-eight of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon Wednesday, January 20th, 1864. I received your welcome letters of December 15th and 25th on Monday to my great joy, but was much grieved to hear of Thomas's death, and still more so to hear from Janet that Thackeray and Mrs. Allison were dead. She died the morning I left Cairo, so her last act almost was to send sweetmeats to the boat after me on the evening before. Poor dear soul, her sweetness and patience were very touching. We have had a week of piercing winds, and yesterday I stayed in bed, to the great surprise of Mustafa's little girl who came to see me. Today was beautiful again, and I mounted old Mustafa's cobpony and jogged over his farm with him, and lunching on delicious sour cream and fatiera at a neighboring village, to the great delight of the Feline. It was more biblical than ever, the people were all relations of Mustafa's, and to see Sidi Omar, the head of the household, and the young men coming in from the field, and the flocks and herds and camels and asses was like a beautiful dream. All these people are of high blood, and a sort of role of battle is kept here for the genealogies of the noble Arabs who came in with Amr, the first Arab conqueror and lieutenant of Omar. Not one of these brown men, who do not own a second shirt, would give his brown daughter to the greatest Turkish Pasha. This country no bless is more interesting to me by far than the town people, though Omar, who is quite a cockney and peaks himself on being delicate, turns up his nose at their beggarly pride, as Londoners used to do at bare-legged Highlanders. The air of perfect equality, except as to the respect due to the head of the clan, with which the villagers treated Mustafa, and which he fully returned, made it all seem so very gentlemanly. They are not so dazzled by a little show, and far more manly than the Kyrenes. I am on visiting terms with all the county families resident at Luxor already. The Nazir magistrate is a very nice person, and my Sheikh Yusuf, who is of the highest blood, being descended from Abul Hajjaj himself, is quite charming. There is an intelligent little German here as Austrian consul, who draws very nicely. I went into his house, and was startled by hearing a pretty Arab boy, his servant, inquire, solit in coffee-bringon? What next? They are all mad to learn languages, and Mustafa begs me in Sally to teach his little girl Zainab English. Friday, twenty-second. Yesterday I rode over to Karnak, with Mustafa Saïse running by my side. Glorious, hot sun and delicious air. To hear the Saïse chatter away, his tongue running as fast as his feet, made me deeply envious of his lungs. Mustafa joined me and pressed me to go to visit the Sheikh's tomb for the benefit of my health, as he and Sheikh Yusuf wished to say a fatah for me. But I must not drink wine at dinner. I made a little difficulty on the score difference of religion, but Sheikh Yusuf, who came up, said that he presumed I worshipped God and not stones, and that the sincere prayers were good anywhere. Clearly the bigotry would have been on my side if I had refused any longer. So in the evening I went with Mustafa. It was a very curious sight. The little dome illuminated, with as much oil as the mosque could afford, and the tombs of Abu El-Hajjaj and his three sons. A magnificent old man, like Father Abraham himself, dressed in white, sat on a carpet at the foot of the tomb. He was the head of the family of Abu El-Hajjaj. He made me sit by and was extremely polite. Then came the Nazir, the Qadi, a Turk travelling on government business, and a few other gentlemen, who all sat down round us after kissing the hand of the old Sheikh. Everyone talked. In fact it was a soiree for the entertainment of the dead Sheikh. A party of men sat at the further end of the place, with their faces to the Qibla, and played on a tarabuka, sort of a small drum stretched on earthenware which gives a peculiar sound, a tambourine without bells, and a little tinkling cymbals fitted on thumb and fingers, krotales, and chanted songs in honour of Muhammad and verses from the Psalms of David. Every now and then one of our little party left off talking, and prayed a little or counted his beats. The old Sheikh sent for coffee, and gave me the first cup, a wonderful concession. At last the Nazir proposed a fata for me, which the whole group rounded me repeated aloud, and then each said to me, Our Lord God bless and give thee health and peace, to thee and thy family, and take thee back safe to thy master and thy children, one adding Amin and giving this along with the hand. I returned it and said, Our Lord reward thee and all the people of kindness to strangers, which was considered a very proper answer. After that we went away, and the worthy Nazir walked home with me to take a pipe and a glass of sherbet, and enjoy a talk about his wife and eight children, who were all in fume, El Bakr, except two boys at school and Cairo. Government appointments are so precarious that it is not worthwhile to move them up here, as the expense would be too heavy on a salary of fifteen pounds a month, with the chance of recall any day. In Cairo or lower Egypt it would be quite impossible for a Christian to enter a Sheikh's tomb at all, of all on his birthday, festival, and on the night of Friday. Friday, January twenty-nine. I have been too unwell to write all this week, but will finish this to-day to send off by Lady Herbert's boat. The last week has been very cold here, the thermometer at fifty-nine degrees and sixty degrees, with a nipping wind and bright sun. I was obliged to keep my bed for three or four days, as, of course, a palazzo without doors or windows to speak of was very trying, though far better than a boat. Yesterday and today are much better, not really much warmer, but a different air. The Muleed Festival of the Sheikh terminated last Saturday with a procession in which the new cover of his tomb and the ancient sacred boat were carried on men's shoulders. It all seemed to have walked out of the royal tombs, only dusty and shabby instead of gorgeous. These festivals of the dead are such as Herodotus alludes to, as held in honor of him whose name he dares not mention, him who sleeps in filet, only the name is changed and the mummy is absent. For a fortnight every one who had a horse and could ride came and made Fantasia every afternoon for two hours before sunset, and very pretty it was. The people here show their good blood in their riding. On the last three days all strangers were entertained with bread and cooked meat at the expense of the Luxor people. Every house killed a sheep and baked bread. As I could not do that for want of servants enough I sent one hundred piestras, twelve shillings, to the servants of Abu El Hajj at the mosque to pay for the oil burnt at the tomb, etc. I was not well and in bed, but I hear that my gift gave immense satisfaction, and that I was again well prayed for. The Coptic Bishop came to see me, but he is a tipsy old monk and an impudent beggar. He sent for tea as he was ill, so I went to see him and perceived that his disorder was Iraqi. He has a very nice black slave, a Christian, Abyssinian I think, who is a friend of Omar's, and who sent Omar a handsome dinner already cooked. Among other things a chicken stuffed with green wheat was excellent. Omar constantly gets dinner sent him, a lot of bread, some dates and cooked fowls or pigeons, and fatira with honey, all tied up hot in a cloth. I gave an old fellow a pill and dose some days ago, but his dura ilia took no notice, and he came for more and got castor oil. I have not seen him since, but his employer, fellow Omar, sent me a lot of delicious butter in return. I think it shows great intelligence in these people, how none of them will any longer consult an Arab haqeem if they can get a European to Physicum. They now ask directly whether the government doctors have been to Europe to learn haqmah, and if not they don't trust them, for poor savages and heathens senes pa si bet. I had to interrupt my lessons from illness, but Sheikh Yusuf came again last night. I have mastered Abbas Shedda o Musbutin, Ebi Shedda o Haftedin, etc. Oh, dear, what must poor Arab children suffer in learning ABC? It is a terrible alphabet, and the shekel points are desesperant. But now I stick for want of a dictionary. Mr. Aerosmith kindly gave me Miss Martino's book, which I have begun. It is true as far as it goes, but there is the usual defect. The people are not real people, only part of the scenery to her as to most Europeans. You may conceive how much we are naturalized when I tell you that I have received a serious offer of marriage for Sally. Mustafa Agha has requested me to give her to him for his eldest son Said, a nice lad of nineteen or twenty at most. As Mustafa is the richest and most considerable person here, it shows that the Arabs draw no unfavorable conclusions as to our morals from the freedom of our manners. He said, of course, she would keep her own religion and her own customs. Said is still in Alexandria, so it will be time to refuse when he returns. I said she was too old, but they think that no objection at all. She will have to say that her father would not allow it, for, of course, a handsome offer deserves a civil refusal. Sally's proposals would be quite an ethnological study. Mustafa asked what I should require as dowry for her. Fancy Sally as Harim of the Shekel Beled of Luxor. I am so charmed with my house that I begin seriously to contemplate staying here all the time. Cairo is so dear now, and so many dead cattle are buried there, that I think I should do better in this place. There is a huge hall, so large and cold now as to be uninhabitable, which in summer would be glorious. My dear old captain of steamer twelve would bring me up coffee and candles, and if I sap and learn to talk to people, I shall have plenty of company. The cattle disease has not extended above Menea to any degree, and here there has not been a case. Alhamdulillah. Food is very good here, rather less than half Cairo prices even now. In summer it will be half that. Mustafa urges me to stay and proposes a picnic of a few days over in the tombs with his Harim as a diversion. I have got a photo for a stereoscope which I send you of my two beloved lovely palm trees on the riverbank just above and looking over Filet. Hitherto my right side has been the bad one, but now one side is uneasy and the other impossible to lie on. It does not make me sleep pleasantly, and the loss of my good sound sleep tries me, and so I don't seem well. We shall see what hot weather will do, if that fails I will give up the contest, and come home to see as much as I shall have time for, of you and my chicks. End of letter twenty-eight, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the pub.