 I am much better again. My cold went off without a violent illness, and I was only weak and nervous. I am very comfortable here, anchored off Bulak, with my raïse and one sailor who cleans and washes my clothes, which Omar irons. As at Luxor, he found the washerwoman here charged five francs a dozen for all small things, and more for dresses. A bad ha-shash-boy turned Ahmed's head, who ran away for two days and spent a dollar in riotous living. He returned penitent and got no fatted calf, but dry bread and a confiscation of his new clothes. The heat, when I left Luxor, was prodigious. I was detained three days by the death of Sheikh Yusuf's poor little wife and baby in childbirth, so I was forced to stay and eat the funeral feast and be present at the katma, reading of the Quran on the third night, or it would not have seemed kind. The qadi gave me a very curious prayer-book, The Guide of the Faithful, written in Darfur, in beautiful characters, with very singular decorations and in splendid binding. It contains the names of all the prophets and of the hundred appellations of Muhammad, and is therefore a powerful ha-ghab or talisman. He requested me to never give it away and always keep it with me. Such books cannot be bought with money at all. I also bought a most beautiful ha-ghab of Cornelian set in enamel, the verse of the throne splendidly engraved, and dated two hundred and fifty years ago. I sent over by Paul Grave to Alec, Mr. Brune's lovely drawings of Luxor and Karnak, and to Maurice a gold coin which I received as a fee from an old bedouin. It was so hot that I could not face the ride up to Kenna, when all my friends there came to fetch me, nor could I go to see it. I never felt such heat. At Benizuf I went to see our Maoun's daughter, married to another Maoun there. It was a pleasant visit. The master of the house was out, and his mother and wife received me, like one of the family, such a pretty woman and such darling children, a pale little slight girl of five, a sturdy boy of four, and a baby of one year old. The eager hospitality of the little creatures was quite touching. The little girl asked to have on her best frock, and then she stood before me and fanned me seriously and diligently, and asked every now and then, shall I make the asherbet, shall I bring thee a coffee, and then questions about grand-papa and grand-mama, and abed el-hamid and abed el-fata, while the boys sat on his heels before me and asked questions about my family and his baby-talk, and assured me it was a good day to him, and wanted me to stay three days and to sleep with him. Their father came in and gave each an asharah, ten fadas, and half piastra, which, after consulting together, they tied in the corner of my handkerchief to spend on my journey. The little girl took such care of my hat and gloves and shoes, all very strange garments to her, but politeness was stronger than curiosity with the little things. I breakfasted with them all day and found much cookery going on for me. I took a doll for my friend, Oyesha, and some sugar-plums for Mohammed, but they laid them aside in order to devote themselves to the stranger, all quietly and with no sort of show-off or obtrusiveness. Even the baby seemed to have the instinct of hospitality and was full of smiles. It was all of a peace with the good old lady, their grandmother at Luxor, who wanted to wash my clothes for me herself, because I said the black slave of Mohammed washed badly. Remember that to do menial offices for a guest is an honor and a pleasure, and not derogatory at all here. The ladies cook for you and say, I will cook my best for thee. The worst is that they stuff one so. Little Oyesha asked after my children and said, May God preserve them for thee. Tell the little girl that Mohammed and I love her from afar off. Whereupon Mohammed declared that in a few years, please God, when he should be Balal, mariajable, he would marry her and live with me. When I went back to the boat the offendee was ill with asthma, and I would not let him go with me in the heat. A polite man accompanies an honored guest back to his house or boat, or tent. So the little boy volunteered, and we rode off on the offendee's donkey, which I had to bestride with Mohammed on the hump of the saddle before me. He was delighted with the boat, of course, and romped and played about till we sailed, when his slave took him home. Those children gave me a happy day with their earnest, gracious hospitality. July 14th. Since I wrote this I have had the boat topsy-turvy with a carpenter and a meniget, cushion-stuffer, and had not a corner even to write in. I am better but still cough every morning. I am, however, much better, and have got quite over the nervous depression which made me feel unable and ashamed to write. My young carpenter, a Christian, half Syrian, half copped of the Greek rite, and all together a Kyrene would have pleased you. He would not work on Sunday, but instead came mounted on a splendid, tall black donkey and handsomely dressed to pay me a visit and go out with me for a ride. So he, I, and Omar went up to the city, lady, Zayneb's mosque, to inquire for Mustafa Bey Subki, the Hakim Pasha whom I had known at Luxor. I was told by the porter of the mosque to seek him at the shop of a certain grocer, his particular friend, where he sits every evening. On going there we found the shop with its lid shut down, a shop is like a box lay on its side with the lid pulled up when open and dropped when shut, as big as a cobbler's stall in Europe. The young grocer was being married and Mustafa Bey was ill. So I went to his house in the quarter, such narrow streets, and was shown up by a young eunuch into the harem, and found my old friend very poorly, but spent a pleasant evening with him, his young wife, a Georgian slave whom he had married, his daughter by a former wife whom he had married while he was fourteen, and the female dwarf buffoon of the Velayda Pasha, Ishmael's mother, whose heart I won by rising to her, because she was so old and deformed. The other women laughed, but the little old dwarf liked it. She was a Circassian and seemed clever. You see how the thousand and one nights are quite true and real, how great bays sit with grocers, and carpenters have no hesitation in offering civility to Nas-Ummra noble people. This is what makes Arab society quite unintelligible and impossible to most Europeans. My carpenter's boy was the son of a Munshid, singer in the mosque, and at night he used to sit in warble to us, with his little baby voice and round innocent face, the most violent love songs. He was about eight years old and sang with wonderful finish and precision, but no expression, until I asked him for a sacred song which begins, I cannot sleep for longing for thee, O full moon, the prophet, and then the little chap warmed his work, and the feeling came out. Paul Grave has left in my charge a black boy of his, now at Luxor, where he left him very ill with Mustafa Agha. The child told me he was a Nyan-Nyan, cannibal, but he did not look ogreish. I have written to Mustafa to send him me by the first opportunity. Ahmed has quite recovered his temper, and I do so much better without a maid that I shall remain so. The difference in expense is enormous, and the peace and quiet a still greater gain, no more grumbling and exsigences and worry. Omar irons very fairly, and the sailor washes well enough, and I don't want toilette. Anyhow, I would rather wear a sack than try the experiment again. An uneducated, course-minded European is too disturbing an element in the family life of Easterns. The sort of filial relation, at once familiar and reverential of servants, to a master like they, is odious to English and still more to French servants. If I fall in with an Arab or Abyssinian woman to suit me, I will take her, but of course it is rare. A raw slave can do nothing, nor can a fellaha, and a Cairo woman is bored to death up in the Said. As to care and attention I want for nothing. Omar does everything well and with pride and pleasure, and is delighted at the saving of expense in wine, beer, meat, etc., etc. One feeds six or eight Arabs well with the money for one European. While the carpenter, his boy, and two niggats were here, a very moderate dish of vegetables stewed with a pound of meat was put before me, followed by a chicken or a pigeon for me alone. The stew was then set on the ground to all the men, and two loaves of a piastre each, to every one. A jar of water, and alhamdulillah, four men and two boys had dined hamsonly. At breakfast a watermelon and another loaf of peace, and a cup of coffee all round, and I pass for a true Arab in hospitality. Of course no European can live so, and they despise the Arabs for doing it, while the Arab servant is not flattered at seeing the European get all sorts of costly luxuries which he thinks unnecessary. Besides, he has to stand on the defensive in order not to be made a dredge by his European fellow-servant, and despised for being one, so he leaves undone all sorts of things which he does with alacrity when it is for the master only. What Omar does now seems wonderful, but he says he feels like the sultan now he has only me to please. July 15. Last night came the two mniggats to pay a friendly visit, and sad and told stories, so I ordered coffee, and one took his sugar out of his pocket to put in his cup, which made me laugh inwardly. He told a fisherman who stopped his boat alongside for a little conversation the story of two fishermen, the one a Jew, the other a Muslim, who were partners in the time of the Arab prophet, upon whom be blessing in peace. The Jew, when he flung his nets, called on the prophet of the Jews, and hauled it up full of fish every time, then the Muslim called on our master Muhammad, et cetera, et cetera, and hauled up each time only stones, until the Jew said, Depart, O man, thou bringest us misfortune. Shall I continue to take half thy stones and give thee half my fish? Not so. So the Muslim went to our master Muhammad and said, Behold, I mention thy name when I cast my net, and I catch only stones and calamity. How is this? But the blessed prophet said to him, Because thy stomach is black inwardly, and thou thoughtest to sell thy fish at an unfair price, and to defraud thy partner and the people, while the Jew's heart was clean towards thee and the people, and therefore God listened to him rather than to thee. I hope our fisherman was edified by this fine moral. I also had good stories from the chief driver of Cairo who came to examine the bottom of my boat, and told me, in a whisper, a long tale of his grandfather's descent below the waters of the Nile, into the land of the people who lived there, and keep tamed crocodiles to hunt fish for them. They gave him a sleeveful of fish's scales, and told him never to return, and not to tell about them, but when he got home the scales had turned to money. But most wonderful of all was Huggy Hanna's story of her own life, and the journey of Omar's mother carrying her old mother in a basket on her head, from Damietta to Alexandria, and dragging Omar then a very little boy by the hand. The energy of many women here is amazing. The Nile is rising fast, and the Beshear is coming, the messenger who precedes the Hajj and brings letters. Beshear is good tidings to coin a word. Many hearts are lightened, and many half broken today. I shall go up to the Abbasia to meet the Mahmal and see the Hajjis arrive. Next Friday I must take my boat out of the water, or at least heal her over to repair the bad places made at Alexandria. It seems I once cured a raiz of the pashas of dysentery at Minia, and he has not forgotten it, though I had, so raiz awad will give me a good place on the pashas bank, and lend ropes and levers which will save a good deal of expense and trouble. I shall move out all the things and myself into a boat of zubeidas for four or five days, and stay alongside to super intend my caulkers. Miss Berry is dull, no doubt, but few books seem dull to me now. I can tell you, and I was much delighted with such a piaste de resistance. Miss Eden I don't wish for, that sort of theatre burlesque view of the customs of a strange country is inexpressibly tedious to one who is familiar with the akin to it. There is plenty of real fun to be had here, but that sort is only funny to cock-mease. I want to read Baker's book very much. I am much pleased with Abed El-Kadir's book which Dozen sent me, and I want the original dreadfully for Sheikh Yusuf to show him that he and I are supported by such an authority as the great Amir in our notions about the real unity of the faith. The book is a curious mixture of good sense and credulity, quite Arab of the Arabs. I will write a paper on the popular beliefs of Egypt. It will be curious, I think. By the way, I see in the papers and reviews speculations as to some imaginary Mohammedan conspiracy, because of the very great number of pilgrims last year from all parts to Mecca. C'est cher, midi, et cote aux heures. Last year, the day of Abraham's sacrifice, and therefore the day of the pilgrimage, the Sermon on the Mount Arifat, fell on a Friday, and when that happens there is always a rush, owing to the popular notion that the Hajj Al-Gama pilgrimage of the Friday is seven times blessed, or even equivalent to making it seven times in ordinary years. As any beggar in the street could tell a man this, it may give you some notion of how absurdly people make theories out of nothing for want of a little common sense. The Muleed and Nebi festival of the Prophet has just begun. I am to have a place in the great Derwisha's tent to see the dosa. The Nile is rising fast. We shall kill the poor little Luxor black lamb on the day of the opening of the canal and have a fantasia at night. Only I grieve for my little white Pussy, who sleeps every night on the ablux, the lamb's willy neck, and loves him dearly. Pussy, Bish is Arabic for Pus, was the gift of a Coptic boy at Luxor and is wonderfully famous, and as much more active and lissom than a European cat as an Arab is than an Englishman. She and Ahmed and ablux have fine games of romp. Omar has set his heart on an English signet ring with an oval stone to engrave his name on. Here, you know, they sign the papers with a signet, not with a pen. It must be solid to stand hard work. Well, I must finish this endless letter. Here comes such a bouquet from the poshest garden. Somebody's sister's son is servant to the chief eunuch and brings it to me. A great round of scarlet, surrounded with white and green, and with tall reeds, on which are threaded single two bro's flowers, rising out of it so as to figure a huge flower with white pistols. Arab gardeners beat French flower girls in bouquets. End of Letter eighty-two, read by Subella Denton. All Librivox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit Librivox.org. Letter eighty-three of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for Librivox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Cairo, July 17, 1866. Dearest Alec, I am perfectly comfortable now with my aquatic menage. The raïse is very well behaved and steady and careful, and the sort of collarbone of a sailor is a very worthy savage. Omar, of course, is hard-worked, what with going to market, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and generally keeping everything in nice order, but he won't hear of a maid of any sort. No wonder. A clever old raïse has just come and overhauled the bottom of the boat, and says he can mend her without taking her out of the water. We shall see. It will be great luck if he can. As I am the river-doctor, all the salering men are glad to do me a civility. We have had the hottest of summers. It is now ninety-eight degrees in the cabin. I have felt very unwell, but my blue devils are quite gone, and I am all together better. What a miserable war it is in Europe. I am most anxious for the next papers. Here it is money-misery. The pasha is something like bankrupt, and no one has had a day's pay these three months, even pensions of sixty piasters a month, seven shillings, to poor old female slaves of Muhammad Ali's, are stopped. August four. The heat is, and has been, something fearful. We are all panting and puffing. I can't think what Paul Grave meant about my being tired of poor old Egypt. I am very happy and comfortable. Only I felt rather weak and poorly this year, and sometimes I suppose rather welcome, as the Arabs say, after you and the children. The heat, too, has made me lazy. It is one hundred and ten degrees in the cabin and ninety-six at night. I saw the moulid and nebi, Festival of the Prophet, and the wonderful dosa, treading. It is an awful sight, so many men drunk with religious ardour. I also went to a Turkish harem, where my Darwish friend sent me. It is just like a tea-party at Hampton Court, only handsomer, not as to the ladies, but the clothes, furniture, and jewels, and not a bit like the description in Mrs. Lott's most extraordinary book. Nothing is so clean as a Turkish harem. The furniture is Dutch, as to cleanliness, and their persons only like themselves, but, oh, how dull and treest it all seemed. One nice lady said to me, if I had a husband and children like thee, I would die a hundred times rather than leave them for an hour. Another envied me the power of going into the street and seeing the dosa. She had never seen it and never would. Tomorrow Olenye will dine and spend the night here, to see the cutting of the canal and the bride of the Nile on Monday morning. We shall sail up to Old Cairo in the evening with the bride's boat. Also Hajihana is coming for the Fantasia. After the high Nile we shall take the boat out and caulk her, and then, if the excessive heat continues, I would rather think of a month's jaunt to Beirut just to freshen me up. Hajih Ali is there, with all his travelling materials and tents, so I need only take Omar and a bath and carpet-bag. If the weather gets cool I shall stay in my boat. The heat is far more oppressive here than it was at Luxor two years ago. It is not so dry. The viceroy is afraid of cholera and worried the poor Hajis this year with most useless quarantine. The mamma was smuggled into Cairo before sunrise, without the usual honours, and all sightseers and holiday-makers disappointed, and all good Muslims deeply offended. The idea that the Pasha has turned Christian or even Jew is spreading fast. I hear it on all sides. The new Furman illegitimizing so many of his children is of course just as agreeable to a sincere Muslim as a law sanctioning polygamy for our royal family would be to us. CHAPTER VIII. DEAREST ALEK. Since I wrote I have had a bad, bilious attack, which has, of course, aggravated my cough. Everyone has had the same, and most far worse than I, but I was very wretched and most shamefully cross. Omar said, That is not you but the sickness when I found fault with everything, and it was very true. I am still seedy. Also I am beyond measure exasperated about my boat. I went up to the Atah el-Kali, cutting of the canal, to see the great sight of the bride of the Nile, a lovely spectacle, and on returning we all but sank. I got out into a boat of Zubedahs with all my goods, and we hauled up my boat and found her bottom rotten from stem to stern. So here am I in the midst of wood merchants, soyers, etc., etc., rebuilding her bottom. My raiz said he had carried her on his head all this time, but what could such a one as he say against the word of a Haghawa, like Ross's storekeeper? When the English cheat each other there remains nothing but to seek refuge with God. Omar buys the wood and super intends, together with the raiz, and the builders seem good workmen in fair dealing. I pay day by day and have ascribe to keep the accounts. If I get out of it for one hundred and fifty pounds I shall think Omar has done wonders, for every atom has to be new. I never saw anything so rotten afloat. If I had gone up the Keter Act I should never have come down alive. It is a marvel we did not sink long ago. Maabruk, Paul Graves' boy, has arrived and turns out well. He is a stout, loverly boy, with infinite good humor, and not at all stupid, and laughs a good, real nigger yaya, which brings the fresh breezes and lilac mountains of the Cape before me when I hear it. When I tell him to do anything he does it with strenuous care, and then ask, Taiib, is it well, and if I say yes he goes off, as Omar says, like a cannon in Lady Ship's face, in a gaffah of satisfaction. Ahmed, who is half his size, orders him about and teaches him, with an air of extreme dignity, and says pityingly to me, You see, O Lady, he is quite new, quite green. Ahmed, who had never seen a garment or any article of European life two years ago, is now a smart valet, with very distinct ideas of waiting at table, arranging my things, etc., and cooks quite cleverly. Arab boys are amazing. I have promoted him to wages, one Napoleon a month, so now he will keep his family. He is about a head taller than rainy. I intend to write a paper on the various festivals and customs of cops and Muslims, but I must wait to see Abu Sefein, near Luxor, the great Christian saint, where all go to be cured of possession, all mad people. The viceroy wages steady war against all festivals and customs. The mamal was birked this year, and the ferret tanta forbidden. Then the Europeans spoil it all, the Arabs no longer go to the Atel El Khaliq, and at the Dosa the frangy carriages were like the Derby Day. It is only up-country that the real thing remains. Tomorrow my poor black sheep will be killed over the new prow of the boat, his blood streaked upon her, and his flesh soddened and eaten by all the workmen, to keep off the evil eye, and on the day she goes into the water some Fikis will read the Koran in the cabin, and again there will be boiled mutton and bread. The Christian ma alimain, skilled workmen, hold to the ceremony of the sheep quite as much as the others, and always do it over a new house, boat, mill, waterwheel, et cetera. Did I tell you Omar has another girl about two months ago? His wife and babies are to come up from Alexandria to see him, for he will not leave me for a day, on account of my constantly being so ailing and weak. I hope if I die away from you all, you will do something for Omar for my sake. I cannot conceive what I should do without his faithful and loving care. I don't know why he is so devotedly fond of me, but he certainly does love me, as he says, like his mother, and moreover, as a very affectionate son loves his other. How pleasant it would be if you could come, but please don't run any risks of fatigue or exposure to cold on your return. If you cannot come, I shall go to Luxor early in October and send back the boat to let. I hear from Luxor that the people are all running away from the land, unable to pay triple taxes and eat bread. The ruin is universal. The poor sheikhs El-Beled, who had the honour of dining with the viceroy at Minyya, have each had a squeeze politely administered. One poor devil I know had to make a present of fifty purses. How is my darling Rainy? I do so long for her earnest eyes at times, and I wonder if I shall ever be able to get back to you all again. I fear that breakdown at Sudan sent me down a great terrace. I have never lost the pain and the cough for a day since. I have not been out for an age or seen any one. Would you know the wife of your bosom in a pair of pink trousers and a Turkish tab? Such is my costume as I write. The woman who came to sew could not make a gown, so she made me a pair of trousers instead. Farewell, dearest, I hardly say how your hint of possibly coming has made me wish it, and yet I dread to persuade you. The great heat is quite over with the high nile and the air on the river fresh and cool, cold at night even. End of Letter Eighty-Four. Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Eighty-Five of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, off Bulak, August Twenty-Seventh, 1866. Dearest Alec, your letter of the Eighteenth has this moment arrived. I am very glad to hear you are so much better. I am still seedish, but no worse. Everybody is liver sick this year. I give Calamel and Jalap all round, except to myself. The last two or three days we have been in great tribulation about the boat. On Saturday her ribs were finished, and the planking and caulking ready to be put on, when in the night up came the old nile with a rush, and threatened to carry her off. But by the favor of Abul Hajjaj and Sheikh El Bastawee she was saved in this wise. You remember the tall old steersman who went with us to Bedrashayn, and whom we thought so ill-conditioned? Well, he was in charge of a Dahabiyah close by, and he called up all the Raises and Steersmen to help. O man of El Bastawee, this is our boat, i.e. we are the servants of her owner, and she is in our faces, and then he set the example, stripped, and carried dust and hammered in piles all night, and by the mooring she was surrounded by a dyke, breast-high. The longshoremen of Balak were not a little surprised to see dignified Raises working for nothing like Felaheen. Meanwhile my three Ma'alimin, the chief-builder, caulker, and foreman, had also stayed all night with Omar and my Raise, who worked like the rest, and the shake of all the boat-builders went to visit every one of my Ma'alimin, who is his nephew, and hearing the case came down to at one in the morning and stayed till dawn. Then, just as the workmen passed, going to their respective jobs, he called to them and said, Come finish this boat, it must be done by tomorrow night. Some men who objected, and said they were going to the poshest dockyard, got a beating, pro forma, and the end of it was, that I found forty-six men under my boat working like a freets and shitens when I went to see how all was going in the morning. The old shake marked out a peace to each four men, and then said, If that is not done to-night, O dogs, tomorrow I'll put on the hat, i.e., today I've beaten moderately like an Arab, but tomorrow, please, God, I'll beat like a Frank and be mad with the stick. Kresundgut, the boat which yesterday morning was a skeleton, is now, at four p.m. to-day, finished, cocked, pitched, and all capitally done, if the Nile carries off the dyke, she will float safe. The shore is covered with debris of other people's half-finished boats, I believe. I owe the ardor of the Ma'alim's and of the shake of the builders to one of my absurd pieces of Arab civility. On the day when Omar killed poor Ablouk, my black sheep, over the boughs and straked his blood upon them, the three Ma'alimine came on board this boat to eat their dish, and I followed the old Arab fashion and ate out of the wooden dish with them and the raïse for luck, or rather, for a blessing, as we say here, and it seems that this gave immense satisfaction. My raïse wept at the death of the black sheep, which used to follow him to the coffee-shop and the market and was to him as a son, he said, but he ate of him nevertheless. Omar surreptitiously picked out the best pieces for my dinner for three days, with his usual eye to economy, then lighted a fire of old wood, borrowed a cauldron of some darwishes, cut up the sheep, added water and salt, onions and herbs, and boiled the sheep. Then the big washing-copper, a large, round, flat tray like a sponging-bath, was filled with bread broken in pieces over which the broth was slowly poured till the bread was soaked. Next came a layer of boiled rice. On the top of that the pieces of boiled meat, and overall was poured butter, vinegar, and garlic boiled together. This is called feta, and is the orthodox dish of darwishes and given at al-Katmas and other semi-religious, semi-fested, semi-charitable festivals. It is excellent and not expensive. I asked how many had eaten, and was told one hundred and thirty men had blessed my hand. I expended one hundred and sixty piosters on bread, butter, vinegar, etc., and the sheep was worth two Napoleons, three Napoleons in all, or less, for I ate for two days of the mutton. The three Ma'alim's came on board this boat, as I said, and ate, and it was fine to hear us how polite we were. A bit more, O Ma'alim? Praise be to God we have eaten well. We will return to our work. By the prophet, coffee, and a pipe—truly thou art of the most noble people. O Ma'alim, ye have honoured us and rejoiced with us. Verily, this is a day wide among days, etc. A very clever Egyptian engineer, a pupil of Whitworths, who is living in a boat alongside mine, was much amused, and said, ah, you know how to manage them. I have learnt the story of the two dead bodies that hitched in my anchor-chain some time ago. They were not Europeans, as I thought, but Circassians, a young man and his mother. The mother used to take him to visit an officer's wife who had been brought up in the harem of the posh's mother. The husband caught them, killed them, tied them together, and flung them into the Nile near Rhoda, and gave himself into the hands of the police. All was, of course, hushed up. He goes to Fozoglo, and I don't know what becomes of the slave girl his wife. These sorts of things happen every day, as the bodies testify among the Turks, but the Europeans never hear it. I heard it by a curious chance. September 4. My boat will soon be finished, and now will be as good as new. Omar has worked like a good one from daybreak till night, overlooking, buying all the materials, selling all the old wood and iron, et cetera, and has done capitally. I shall take a paper from my ma alims, who are all first-class men, to certify what they have done that the boat is as good as new. Ida Effendi has kindly looked at her several times for me, and highly approves the work I never saw men do a better day's work than those at the boat. It is pretty to see the carpenter holding the wood with one hand, and one foot, while he saws it, sitting on the ground, just like the old frescoes. Do you remember the picture of boat-building in the tomb at Sakara? Well, it is just the same, all done with the odds, but it is stout work they put into it, I can tell you. If you do not come, and I do not like to press you, I fear the fatigue for you in the return to the cold winter, I shall go to Luxor in a month or so, and send back the boat to let. I have a neighbor now, Guda Effendi, an engineer, who studied and married in England. His wife is gone there with the children, and he is living in a boat close by, so he comes over of an evening very often, and I am glad of his company. He is a right good fellow and very intelligent. My best love to all at home. I have got a log from the cedars of Lebanon, my Muslim carpenter, who smoothed the broken end, swallowed the sawdust, because he believed Our Lady Mary had sat under the tree with Our Lord Jesus. End of Letter Eighty-Five, read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Eighty-Six of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon, off Bullock, September 21st, 1866. I am better now, and go on very comfortably with my two little boys. Omar is, from dawn till night, at work at my boat, so I have only Mabruk and Akhmet, and you would wander to see how well I am served. Akhmet cooks a very good dinner, and serves it and orders Maybrook about. Sometimes I whistle and hear Haider ready from the water and entumbles Akhmet, with the water running down his innocent nose and looking just like a little bronze triton of a renaissance fountain, with a blue shirt and white skull-cap added. Mabruk is a big, rubberly lad of the laugh-and-grow-fat breed, clumsy but not stupid and very good and docile. You would delight in his guffaws, and the merry games and hearty laughter of my menage is very pleasant to me. Another boy swims over from Goodisboat, his Akhmet, and then there are games at Piracy and much stealing of red pots from the potter's boats. The joke is to snatch one under the owner's very nose and swim off brandishing it, whereupon the boatman uses eloquent language, and the boys outhector him and everybody is much amused. I only hope Paul Grave won't come back from Sukum Kala and Fetch Mabruk, just as he has got clever, not at stealing jars, but in his work. He already washes my clothes very nicely indeed. His stout black arms are made for a washer-boy. Akhmet looked forward with great eagerness to your coming. He is mad to go to England, and in his heart planned to ingratiate himself with you, and go as a general servant. He is very little, if at all, bigger than a child of seven, but an Arab boy, Nadud de Rien, and does serve admirably. What would an English respectable cook say to seeing two dishes and a sweet, cooked over a little old wood on a few bricks, by a baby in a blue shirt, and very well-cooked, too, and followed by incomparable coffee? You will be pleased to hear that your capital story of the London Cabmen has its exact counterpart here. O gracious God, what alithy, O Akhmet my brother, and why is thy bosom contracted, that thou hast not once said to me, damn thy father, or son of a dog, or pig, as thou art used to do? Can't you save up your holidays, and come for four months next winter with my Maurice? However, perhaps you would be bored on the Nile, I don't know. People either enjoy it rapturously, or are bored, I believe. I am glad to hear from Janet that you are well. I am much better. The carpenter will finish in the boat today, then the painter begins, and in a week, inshallah, I shall get back to her. End of Letter Eighty-Six. Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Eighty-Seven of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Mrs. Austin, Off Bullock, September 21st, 1866. Dearest Mutter, I am a good deal better again. The weather is delightful, and the Nile in full flood, which makes the river scenery from the boat very beautiful. Alec made my mouth-water with his description of his rides with Janet about the dear old Surrey country, having her with him seems to have quite set him up. I have seen nothing and nobody but my next boat-neighbor, Gouda Effendi, as Omar has been at work all day in the boat, and I felt lazy and disinclined to go out alone. Big Hassan of the Donkeys has grown too lazy to go about, and I don't care to go alone with a small boy here. However, I am out in the best of air all day, and am very well off. My two little boys are very diverting and serve me very well. The news from Europe is to my ignorant ideas de solon, a de grand golad back into military despotism, which would have excited indignation with us in our father's days, I think. I get lots of newspapers from Ross, which afterwards go to an Arab grocer who reads the Times and the Saturday review in his shop in the Bazaar. What next? The cargo of books which Alec and you sent will be most acceptable for winter consumption. If I were a painter I would take up the Muslim traditions of Mary and Joseph. He was not a white-bearded old gentleman at all, you must know, but young, lovely, and pure as our lady herself. They were cousins brought up together, and she avoided the light conversation of other girls, and used to go to the well with her jar, hand in hand with Joseph carrying his. After the angel Gabriel had announced to her the will of God, and blown into her sleeve, whereby she conceived the spirit of God, Joseph saw her state with dismay and resolved to kill her as was his duty as her nearest male relation. He followed her, knife in hand, meaning always to kill her at the next tree, and each time his heart failed him, until they reached the well and the tree under which the Divine Messenger stood once more and said, Fear not, O Joseph! the daughter of thy uncle bears within her Issa, the Messiah, the spirit of God. Joseph married his cousin without fear. Is it not pretty? Two types of youthful purity and piety, standing hand in hand before the angel. I think a painter might make something out of the soft-eyed Syrian boy with his jar on his shoulder, hers on the head, and the grave modest maiden who shrank from all profane company. I now know all about Sheikh Salim and why he sits naked on the riverbank, from a very high authority, a great shake to whom it has been revealed. He was entrusted with the care of some of the holy she-camels, like that on which the Prophet rode to Jerusalem in one night, and which are invisible to all but the elect, and he lost one, and now he is God's prisoner till she is found. A letter from Aunt Charlie all about her own and Rhaeny's country life, school-feasts, et cetera, made me quite cry, and brought before me, O how vividly the difference between East and West, not quite all to the advantage of home, however, though mostly. What is pleasant here is the primitive ways. Three times since I have been here, lads of most respectable families of Luxor have come to ask hospitality, which consists in a place on the deck of the boat, and liberty to dip their bread in the common-dish with my slave-boy and Ahmed. The bread they brought with them, bread and shelter, were not asked, as they slept sub-deo. In England I must have refused the hospitality on account of genre and expense. The chief object to the lads was the respectability of being under my eye while away from their fathers, as a satisfaction to their families, and while they ate and slept like beggars, as we should say, they read their books and chatted with me, while I was out on deck, on perfectly equal terms, only paying the respect proper to my age. I thought of the orphanages and institutions, and all the countless difficulties of that sort, and wondered whether something was not to be said for this absence of civilization in knives, forks, beds, beer, and first and second tables above all. Of course climate has a good deal to do with the facility with which widows and orphans are absorbed here. Good-bye, dearest mutter, today is post-day, and Rais Mohammed is about to treach into town in such a darling white turban and such a grand black robe. His first wife, whom he was going to divorce for want of children, has brought him a son, and we jeer him a little about what he may find in Luxor from the second, and wish him a couple of dozen. End of Letter Eighty-Seven Letter Eighty-Eight of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon Read for LibriVox.org into the Public Domain To Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon, Cairo, October 15, 1866 Dearest Alec, I have been back in my own boat for days, and most comfortable she is. I enlarged the saloon, and made a good riding-table, and low, easy-devans instead of benches, and added a sort of pantry and sleeping-cabin in front, so that Omar has not to come through the saloon to sleep, and I have all the harine-part to myself. Inside there is a good-large, stern cabin, and wash-closet and two small cabins with beds, long enough even for you. Insha'Allah, you and Maurice will come next winter and go up the Nile and enjoy it with me. I intend to sail in ten days and to send back the uranium to seek work for the winter. We had a very narrow escape of being flooded this year. I fear a good deal of damage has been done to the dura and cotton crops. It was sad to see the villagers close by here trying to pull up a little green dura as the Nile slowly swallowed up the fields. I was forced to flog Maybrook yesterday for smoking on the sly, a grave offence here on the part of a boy. It is considered disrespectful, so he was ordered with much parade to lie down, and Omar gave him two cuts with a rope's end, an apology for a flogging which would have made an eaten boy's stare. The stick here is quite nominal, except in official hands. I can't say Maybrook seemed at all impressed, for he was laughing heartily with Omar in less than ten minutes, but the affair was conducted with as much solemnity as an execution. Sheikh Stanley's friend, Gezawi, has married his negro slave to his own sister on the plea that he was the best young man he knew. What would a Christian family say to such an arrangement? My boat is beautifully buoyant now, and has come up by the bows in fine style. I have not sailed her yet, but have no doubt she will walk well as the Arabs say. Omar got ten pounds by the sale of old wood and nails, and also gave me two thousand piastras, nearly twelve pounds, which the workmen had given him as a sort of Bakshish. They all pay one, two, or three piastras daily to any Waqeel agent who superintends. That is his profit, and it is enormous at that rate. I said, why did you not refuse it? But Omar replied they had pay enough after that reduction, which is always made from them, and that in his opinion therefore it came out of the master's pocket, and was cheatery. How people have been talking nonsense about Jamaica She'vu. I have little doubt Eir did quite right, and still less doubt that the niggers have had enough of the sort of provocation which I well know to account for the outbreak. Baker's effusion is a poor business. There may be blacks like tigers and whites, too, in London, for that matter. I myself have seen at least five sorts of blacks, negroes, not Arabs, more unlike each other than Swedes or unlike Spaniards, and many are just like ourselves. Of course they want governing with a strong hand, like all ignorant childish creatures. But I am fully convinced that custom and education are the only real differences between one set of men and another. Their inner nature is all the same the world over. My raiz spoke a pretty parable the other day that I must needs right it. A coptic raiz stole some of my wood, which we got back by force, and there was some reviling of the Nazarenes and consequence from Hussein and Ali. But raiz Mohammed said, not so, Girgis is a thief, it is true, but many Christians are honest, and behold all the people in the world are like soldiers. Some wear red and some blue, some serve on foot, others on horseback and some in ships, but all serve one sultan, and each fights in the regiment in which the sultan has placed him, and he who does his duty best is the best man, be his coat red or blue or black. I said, excellent words, O raiz, and fit to be spoken from the best of pulpits. It is surprising what happy sayings the people here hit upon. They cultivate talk for want of reading, and the consequence is great facility of narration and illustration. Everybody enforces his ideas like Christ in parables. Haji Hanna told me two excellent fairy tales, which I will write for Rainy with some balderising, and several laughable stories, which I will leave unrecorded as savoring too much of Bacchio's manner, or that of the Queen of the Navarre. I told Akhmet to sweep the floor after dinner just now. He hesitated, and I called him again, What manner is this, not to sweep when I bid thee? By the most high God, said the boy, My hand shall not sweep in thy boat after sunset, O lady, I would rather have it cut off than sweep thee out of thy property. I found that you must not sweep at night, nor for three days after the departure of a guest whose return you desire, or the master of the house. Thinkest thou that my brother would sweep away the dust of thy feet from the floors at Luxor? continued Akhmet. He would fear never to see thy fortunate face again. If you don't want to see your visitor again, you break a gulla, water jar, behind him as he leaves the house, and sweep away his footsteps. What a canard your papers have in Europe about a constitution here. I don't write any politics. It is all true dreary, and Cairo gossip is odious, as you may judge by the productions of Madame Odard and Lot. Only remember this. There is no law nor justice but the will, or rather the caprice of one man. It is nearly impossible for any European to conceive such a state of things as really exists. Nothing but perfect familiarity with the governed, i.e. oppressed class will teach it. However intimate a man may be with the rulers he will never fully take it in. I am a londox here, and none of the people I know dare to come see me, Arab, I mean. It was whispered in my ear in the street by a friend I met. Ishmael Pasha's chief pleasure is gossip, and a certain number of persons, chiefly Europeans, furnish him with it daily, true or false. If the farce of the constitution ever should be acted here it will be superb. Something like the consul going in state to ask the Felaheen what wages they got. I could tell you a little of the value of consular information, but what is the use? Europe is enchanted with the enlightened Pasha who has ruined this fine country. I long to see you in rainy, I don't like to hope too much, but inshallah next year I shall see you all. I shall soon sail up the river. Yesterday Saeed Mustafa arrived, who says that the Greeks are all gone, and the poor Austrian at Thebes is dead, so I shall represent Europe in my single person from sea-ute to, I suppose, cartoon. You would delight in Maybrook, a man asked him the other day after his flogging, if he would not run away, to see what he would say as alleged I suspect he meant to steal and sell him. I run away to eat lentils like you, when my offendi gives me meat and bread every day, and I eat such a lot? Is not that a delicious, practical view of liberty? The creature's enjoyment of life is quite a pleasure to witness, and he really works very well and with great alacrity. If Paul Grave claims him, I think I must buy him. I hear sad accounts from the Saeed, the new taxes and the new levies of soldiers are driving the people to despair, and many are running away from the land, which will no longer feed them after paying all its actions to join the Bedouin in the desert, which is just as if our peasantry churned gypsies. A man from Dishne visited me, the people there want me to settle in their village and offer me a voluntary Corvée if I will buy land. So many men to work for me two days a month each. I haven't a conception why. It is a place about fifty miles below Luxor, a large agricultural village. Omar's wife, Mebruka, came here yesterday, a nice young woman, and the babies are fine children and very sweet-tempered. She told me that the lion's head, which I sent down to Alexandria to go to you, was in her room when a neighbor of hers, who had never had a child, saw it, and at once conceived. The old image worship survives in the belief, which is all over Egypt, that the antiques, antiquities, can cure barrenness. Mebruka was, of course, very smartly dressed, and the reckless way in which eastern women treat their fine clothes gives them a grand air, which no Parisian duchess could hope to imitate. Not that I think it of virtue, mind you, but some vices are genteel. Last night was a great shake's vet, such drumming and singing and ferrying across the river. The Nile is running down unusually fast, and I think I'd better go soon, as the mud of Cairo is not so sweet as the mud of the upper land. CHAPTER XXVIII DEAREST MUTTER I have got all ready and shall sail on Saturday. My men have baked the bread, and received their wages to go to Luxor and bring the boat back to Lett. It is turning cold, but I feel none the worse for it, though I shall be glad to go. I've had a dreary worrying time here, and am tired of hearing all the meanness and wickedness which constitute the andee here. Not that I hear much, but there is nothing else. I shall be best at Luxor now the winter has set in so early. You would laugh at such winter when one sits out all day under an awning in English summer clothes, and once only two blankets at night. But all is comparative, Isiba, and I call it cold, and Maybrook ceases to consider his clothes such a grievance as they were to him at first, and takes kindly to a rough capote for the night. I have just been interrupted by my raïse and one of my men who came in to display the gorgeous printed calico they have bought, one for his Luxor wife and the other for his betrothed up near Aswan. The latter is about eight years old, and Hasein has dressed her and paid her expenses these five years, as is the custom up in that district. The raïse has bought a silk headkerchief for nine shillings, but that was in the marriage contract. So I must see and admire and wish good luck to the finery, and to the girls who are to wear it. Then we had a little talk about the prospects of letting the boat, and, inshallah, making some money for El Gamma, i.e., all our company or all of us together. The raïse hopes that the Haghawat will not be too outrageous in their ways, or given to use the stick, as the solution of every difficulty. The young sharafa of Abul Hajjaj came from Gamal-Asr today to bid me good-bye and bring their letters for Luxor. I asked them about the rumours that the Ulima are preaching against the Franks, which is always being said, but they had heard nothing of the sort, and said they had not heard of anything the Franks had done lately which was signified to the Muslims at all. It is not the Franks who pressed so many soldiers, or levy such heavy taxes three months in advance. I will soon write again. I feel rather like the wandering Jew and long for home and rest, without being dissatisfied with what I have, and enjoy, God knows. If I could get better and come home next summer. End of Letter Ninety, read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Ninety-one of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Luxor, November 21st, 1866. Dearest Alec. I arrived here on the morning of the eleventh. I am a beast not to have written, but I caught cold after four days, and have really not been well, so forgive me, and I will narrate and not apologize. We came up best pace, as the boat is a flier now, only fourteen days to Thebes, and to Kenna only eleven. Then we had bad winds, and my men pulled away at the rope, and sang the raïs al-Rusa, bridegroom going to his bride, and even Omar went and pulled the rope. We were all very merry, and played practical jokes on a rascal who wanted a pound to guide me to the tombs. We made him run miles, fetch innumerable donkeys, and then laughed at his beard. Such is boatman fun. On arriving at Luxor I had a shari-vari of voices, and I knew I was at home, by the shrill pipe of the little children, el-sit, el-sit. Visitors all day of course, at night comes up another dahabiya, great commotion as it had been telegraphed from Cairo, which I knew before I left, and was to be stopped. So I coolly said, O Mustafa, the Indian saint Wali is in thine eye, seeing that an Indian is all as one with an Englishman. How did I know there was an Indian and a Wali, etc.? Meanwhile the Wali had a bad thumb, and someone told his slave there was a wonderful English doctoress, so in the morning he sent for me, and I went inside the harem. He was very friendly, and made me sit close beside him, told me he was forth in descent from Abid el-Qadir Gilami of Baghdad, but his father settled at Hyderabad, where he has great estates. He said he was a Wali, or saint, and would have it that I was on the path of the Darwishes, gave me medicine for my cough, asked me many questions, and finally gave me five dollars and asked if I wanted more. I thanked him heartily, kissed the money politely, and told him I was not poor enough to want it, and would give it in his name to the poor of Luxor, but that I would never forget that the Indian Shake had behaved like a brother to an English woman in a strange land. He then spoke in great praise of the laws of the English, and said many more kind things to me, adding again, I tell thee thou art a Darwish, and do not forget me. Another Indian from Lahore, I believe the Shake's tailor, came to see me, an intelligent man, and a Syrian doctor, a manifest scamp. The people here said he was Balawar, rope dancer. Well, the authorities detained the boat with fair words till orders came from Kenna to let them go up further. Meanwhile, the Shake came out and performed some miracles which I was not there to see, perfuming people's hands by touching them with his, and taking English sovereigns out of a pocketless jacket, and the doctor told wonders of him. Anyhow he spent ten pounds in one day here, and he is a regular Darwish. He and all the Harim were poorly dressed, and wore no ornaments whatever. I hope Saeed Adu-Rakman will come down safe again, but no one knows what the government wants of him, or why he is so watched. It is the first time I ever saw an Oriental traveling for pleasure. He had about ten or twelve in the Harim, among them his three little girls, and perhaps twenty men outside, Indians and Arabs from Syria, I fancy. Next day I moved into the old house, and found one end in ruins, owing to the high Nile and want of repair. However, there is plenty more safe and comfortable. I settled all accounts with my men, and made an inventory in Arabic, which Shake Yusuf wrote for me, which we laughed over hugely. How to express a sauce-boat, a pie-dish, et cetera, in Arabic was a poser. A gentile offendee who sat by at last burst out in uncontrollable amazement. There is no God but God. Is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink, and sleep on a journey? Can be. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty. Whereupon Master Ahmed, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men held forth, O effendium, that is nothing. Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and peace, as we say there is an end of it. But thou shalt see the merchants of Eskanderia, Alexandria, three tablecloths, forty dishes, to each soul seven plates of all sorts, seven knives and seven forks and seven spoons, large and small, and seven different glasses for wine and beer and water. It is the will of God, replied the offendee, rather put down, but, he added, it must be a dreadful fatigue to them to eat their dinner. Then came an impudent merchant who wanted to go down with his bales and five souls in my boat for nothing. But I said, O man, she is my property, and I will eat from her of thy money as of the money of the Franks. Thereupon he offered one pound, but was bundled out amid general reproaches for his avarice and want of shame. So all the company set afata for the success of the voyage, and Rais Mohammed was extorted to open his eyes, and he should have a tarbouche if he did well. Then I went to visit my kind friend, the Maoun's wife, and tell her all about her charming daughter and grandchildren. I was, of course, an hour in the street, salaming, etc. Sharaftina Beledna, thou hast honored our country on all sides. Blessings come with thee, etc. Everything is cheaper than last year, but there is no money to buy with, and the taxes have grown beyond bearing. As a fellow said, O man, can't—we will express it, blow his nose, if you please—the real phrase was less parliamentary and expressive of something at once ventose and valueless, without a co-os behind him to levy a tax on it. The half-worth of onions we buy in the market is taxed on the spot, and the fish which the man catches under my window. I paid a tax on buying charcoal, and another on having it weighed. People are terribly beaten to get next year's taxes out of them, which they have not the money to pay. The Nubian MPs passed the other day in three boats, towed by a steamer, very frightened in the cellar. I fell in with some Egyptians on my way, and tried to talk the European style of talk. Now you will help to govern the country, what a fine thing for you, etc. I got such a look of rueful reproach. Laugh not thou at our beards, O effendim, God's mercy, what words are these? And who is there on the banks of the Nile, who can say anything but Hydeer, ready, with both hands on the head, and a salam to the ground, even to a mutter, and thou talkest of speaking before effendina? Art thou mad, effendim? Of all the vexations none are more trying than the distinctions which have been inflicted on the unlucky Shakespeare El-Bellet. In fear and trembling they ate their effendina's banquet, and sadly paid the bill. And those who have had the Nishan, the Order of the Majidi, have had to disperse fees, where at the Lord Chamberlain's staff's mouths might water, and now the wretched delegates to the European chambers, God save the mark, are going down with their hearts and their shoes. The Nubians say that the Devan is to be held in the Citadel, and that the road by which the Memluk Bay is lefted is not stopped up, though perhaps it goes underground nowadays. November 27. The first steamer full of travellers has just arrived, and with it the brother of the ladies all wanting my saddle. I forbade Mostafa to send for it, but they intimidate the poor old fellow, and he comes and kisses my hand, not to get him into trouble with one old woman, who says she is the relation of a consul and a great lady in her own country. I am what Mrs. Groot called cake enough to concede to Mostafa's fears what I had sworn to refuse henceforth. Last year five women on one steamer all sent for my saddle, besides other things—camp stools, umbrellas, beer, et cetera, et cetera. This year I'll bolt the doors when I see a steamer coming. I hear the big people are so angry with the Indian saint, because he treated them like dirt everywhere. One great man went with a mud-air to see him, and asked him to sell him a mem-look, a young slave-boy. The Indian, who had not spoken or saluted, burst forth, Be silent, thou wicked one! Dost thou dare to ask me to sell thee a soul to take it with thee to hell? Fancy the surprise of the distinguished Turk! Never had he heard such language. The story has travelled all up the river, and is, of course, much enjoyed. Last night Sheikh Yusuf gave an entertainment, killed a sheep, and had a reading of the Sirret al-Rasur, traptor on the prophet. It was the night of the prophet's great vision, and is a great night in Islam. I was sorry not to be well enough to go. Now that there is no cutty here, Sheikh Yusuf has lots of business to settle, and he came to me and said, expound to me the laws of marriage and inheritance of the Christians, that I may do no wrong in the affairs of the cops, for they won't go and be settled by the priest out of the Gospels, and I can't find any laws except about marriage in the Gospels. I set him up with the text of the tribute-money, and told him to judge according to his own laws, for that Christians had no laws other than those of the country they lived in. Poor Yusuf was sore perplexed about a divorce case. I refused to expound, and told him all the learned in the law in England had not yet settled which text to follow. Do you remember the German story of the lad who travelled Umdass-Gruselin, Zurlernen? Well I, who never Gresselt before, had a touch of it a few evenings ago. I was sitting here quietly drinking tea, and four or five men were present when a cat came to the door. I called, beast, beast, and offered milk, but pussy, after looking at us, ran away. Well, thus thou, O lady, said a quiet, sensible man, a merchant here, to be kind to the cat, for I dare say he gets little enough at home. His father, poor man, cannot cook for his children every day. And then, in an explanatory tone to the company, that is Ali Nasseri's boy Yusuf. It must be Yusuf, because his fellow-twin Ismaein is with his mule at Nagueta. Mere Gruselta, I confess, not but what I have heard things almost as absurd from gentlemen and ladies in Europe. But an extravagance in a kufdan has quite a different effect from one in a tailcoat. What, my butcher's boy, who brings them eat, a cat, I gasped, to be sure, and he knows well where to look for a bit of good cookery, you see. All twins go out as cats at night, if they go to sleep hungry, and their own bodies lie at home, like dead, meanwhile, but no one must touch them, or they would die. When they grow up to ten or twelve, they leave it off. Why, your boy Akmet does it. Oh, Akmet, do you go out as a cat at night? No, said Akmet, tranquilly. I am not a twin. My sister's sons do. I inquired if people were not afraid of such cats. No, there is no fear. They only eat a little of the cookery, but if you beat them they will tell their parents next day, so and so beat me in his house last night, and show their bruises. No, they are not a freaks. They are Benny-Adam, sons of Adam. Only twins do it, and if you give them a sort of onion-broth and camel's milk the first thing when they are born, they don't do it at all. Omar professed never to have heard of it, but I am sure he had, only he dreads being laughed at. One of the American missionaries told me something like it, as belonging to the cops, but it is entirely Egyptian and common to both religions. I asked several cops who assured me it was true, and told just the same. Is it a remnant of the doctrine of transmigration? However, the notion fully accounts for the horror people feel at the idea of killing Akhet. A poor pilgrim from the black country was taken ill yesterday at a village six miles from here. He could speak only a few words of Arabic and beg to be carried to the Ababda. So the Sheikh El-Belad put him on a donkey and sent him in his little boy, and laid him in Sheikh Hassan's house. He called for Hassan and begged him to take care of the child, and to send him to an uncle somewhere in Cairo. Hassan said, O you will get well, inshallah, etc., and take the boy with you. I cannot take him into the grave with me, said the black pilgrim. Well in the night he died, and the boy went to Hassan's mat and said, O Hassan, my father is dead. So the two Sheikhs and several men got up and went and sat with the boy till dawn, because he refused to lie down or to leave his father's corpse. At daybreak he said, Take me now and sell me, and buy a new cloth to dress my father for the tomb. All the Ababda cried when they heard it, and Hassan went and bought the cloth, and some sweet stuff for the boy who remains with him. Such is death on the road in Egypt. I tell it as Hassan's slave told it to me, and somehow we all cried again at the poor little boy rising from his dead father's side to say, Come now, sell me to dress my father for the tomb. These strange black pilgrims always interest me. Many take four years to Mecca and home, and have children born to them on the road, and learn a few words of Arabic. End of Letter ninety-one, read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter ninety-two of Letters from Egypt. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Ross, Luxor, December fifth, eighteen sixty-six. Dearest Janet. I write in answer to yours by the steamer, to go down by the same. I fancy I should be quite of your mind about Italy. I hate the return of Europe to the good old rule and ancient plan that he should take who has the power, and he should keep who can. Nor can I be bullied into looking on might as right. Many thanks for the papers. I am anxious to hear about the Candia business. All my neighbors are sick at heart. The black boy Paul Grave left with me is a very good lad, only he can't keep his clothes clean, never having been subject to that annoyance before. He has begun to be affectionate ever since I did not beat him for breaking my only-looking glass. I wish an absurd respect for public opinion did not compel him to wear a blue shirt and a tar-bouche, his suit. I see it as misery to him. He is a very gentle cannibal. I have been very unwell indeed, and still I am extremely weak, but hope I am on the mend. A eunuch here, who is a holy man, tells me he saw my boat coming up heavily laden in his sleep, which indicates a good let. I hope my reverend friend is right. If you sell any of your things when you leave Egypt, let me have some blankets for the boat. If she is let to a friendly dregelman, he will supply all deficiencies out of his own canteen. But if to one who knows not Joseph, I fear many things will be demanded by right-minded British travellers, which must be left to the raïs's discretion to buy for them. I hope all the fatahs said for the success of the Uranius voyage will produce a due effect. Here we rely a good deal on the favour of Abul Hajjaj in such matters. The naivete with which people pray here for money is very amusing, though really I don't know why one shouldn't ask for one's daily sixpence as well as one's daily bread. An idiot of a woman has written me to get her a place as governess in an European or Arabian family in the neighbourhood of Thebes. Considering she has been six years in Egypt as she says, she must be well-fitted to teach. She had better learn to make gilla and spin wool. The young Americans whom Mr. Hale sent were very nice. The Yankees are always the best bread and educated travellers that I see here. End of Letter ninety-two Read by Cibella Denton All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org Letter ninety-three of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon Luxor December thirty-first, eighteen sixty-six Dearest Alec I meant to have sent you a long yarn by a steamer which went the other day, but I have been in my bed. The weather set in colder than I ever felt it here, and I have been very unwell for some time. Dr. Osman Ibrahim, a friend of mine, an elderly man who studied in Paris in Muhammad Ali's time, wants me to spend the summer up here and take sand baths, i.e. bury myself up to the chin in the hot sand, and to get a dangola slave to rub me. A most fascinating derwiche from Esna gave me the same advice. He wanted me to go and live near him at Esna and let him treat me. I wish you could see Sheikh Saleem. He is the sort of remnant of the Memluk Bays, a Circassian who has inherited his master's property up at Esna and married his master's daughter. The master was one of the Bays, also a slave inheriting from his master. Well after being a terrible shaytan after drink, women, etc., Saleem has repented and become a man of pilgrimage and prayer and perpetual fasting. But he has retained the exquisite grace and charm of manner which must have made him irresistible in his shaytan days, and also the beautifully delicate style of dress, a dove-colored cloth-siba over a pale-blue silk-cuff-den, a turban like a snow-drift, under which flowed the silky fair hair and beard, and the dainty white hands under the long muslim shirt-sleeve made a picture, and such a smile and such ready graceful talk. Rick Youssef brought him to me as a sort of doctor and also to try and convert me on one point. Some Christians had made Youssef quite miserable by telling him of the doctrine that all unbaptized infants went to eternal fire, and, as he knew that I had lost a child very young, it weighed on his mind that perhaps I fretted about this, and so he could not refrain from trying to convince me that God was not so cruel and unjust as the Nazarene priests represented him, and that all infants whatsoever, as well as ignorant persons, were to be saved, would that I could take the cruel air out of the minds of all the hundreds and thousands of poor Christian mothers who must be tortured by it, said he, and let them understand that their dead babies are with him who sent and took them. I own I did not resent this interference with my orthodoxy, especially as it is the only one I ever knew Youssef to attempt. Dr. Osman is a lecturer in the Cairo School of Medicine, a sheriff, and eminently a gentleman. He came up in the passenger steamer and called on me and spent all his spare time with me. I liked him better than the bewitching Derwish Salim. He is so like my old love, Don Quixote. He was amazed and delighted at what he heard here about me. Ah, madame, on vos amées comme une sœur, et en vos respectées comme une graine, cela rejoute la cour des honnêtes gens, de voir tous les préduces obliés et détruits à ce point. We had no end of talk. Osman is the only Arab I know who has read a good deal of European literature and history and is able to draw comparisons. He said, Of course, this is between ourselves. I tell you, but I don't want to boast of the kind thoughts people have of me simply because I am decently civil to them. In Egypt we are eaten up with taxes. There is not a penny left to any one. The taxes for the whole year, eight months in advance, have been levied, as far as they can be beaten out of the miserable people. I saw one of the poor dancing girls the other day. There are three in Luxor, and she told me how cruel the new tax on them is. It is left to the discretion of the official who farms it to make each woman pay according to her presumed gains, i.e. her good looks, and thus the poor women are exposed to all the caprices and extortions of the police. This last new tax has excited more disgust than any. We now know the name of our ruler, said a fellow who had just heard of it. He is Mawash Pasha. I won't translate, but it is a terrible epithet when uttered in a tone which gives it the true meaning, though in a general way the commonest word of abuse to a donkey or a boy or to any other cattle. The wages of prostitution are unclean, and this tax renders all government salaries unlawful according to strict law. The capitation tax, too, which was remitted for three years on the Pasha's ascension to the people of Cairo, Alexandria, Damietta, and Rashid, is now called for. Omar will have to pay about eight pounds back tax, which he had fondly imagined himself excused from. You may conceive the distress this must cause among artisans, etc., who have spent their money and forgotten it, and feel cheated out of the blessings they then bestowed on the Pasha. As to that they will take out the change in curses. There was a meeting here the other day of the Qadi, Sheikh el-Beled, and other notables to fix the amount of tax each man was to pay towards the increased police tax, and the old Sharif at the end spoke up and said, he had heard that one man had asked me to lend him money, and that he hoped such a thing would not happen again. Everyone knew I had heavy expenses this year, and most likely had not much money, that my heart was soft, and that as everyone was in distress it would be breaking my head, and in short, that he should think it unmanly if anyone tried to trouble a lone woman with his troubles. I did offer one man two pounds that he might not be forced to run away to the desert, but he refused it and said, I had better go at once and rob out there and not turn rogue against thee. Never could I repay it. The people are running away in all directions. When the muleed of the sheikh came, the whole family Abul-Hajjaj could only raise six hundred and twenty piastras among them to buy the buffalo cow, which by custom, strong as the laws of the medis and persians, must be killed for the strangers who come, and a buffalo cow is worth one thousand piastras. So the stout old Sharif, aged eighty-seven, took his staff and the six hundred and twenty piastras, and sallied forth to walk to ermint and see what God would send them, and a charitable woman in ermint did give a buffalo cow for the six hundred and twenty piastras, and he drove her home the twenty miles rejoicing. There has been a burglary over at Guernah, an unheard of event. Some men broke into the house of the Coptic Gabit, tax-gatherer, and stole the money-box containing about sixty purses. Over one hundred and fifty pounds. The Gabit came to me, sick with the fright which gave him jaundice, and about eight men are gone in chains to Kenna on suspicion. Haji Baba, too, a Turkish Kawas, is awfully billious. He says he is sick from beating men, and it's no use. You can't coin money on their backs and feet when they haven't a para in the world. Altogether everyone is gloomy and many desperate. I never saw the aspect of a population so changed. God bless you, dearest Alec, and grant you many good years more. I must finish this to go to-morrow by the steamer. I would give a great deal to see you again, but when will that be? End of LETTER No. 93, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. LETTER No. 94 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Luxor, January 12, 1867. Dearest Alec. Only two days ago I received letters from you of the 17th September and the 19th November. I wonder how many get lost and where. Janet gives me hopes of a visit of a few days in March and promises me a little terrier dog, where at Omar is in raptures. I have made no plans at all, never having felt well enough to hope to be able to travel. The weather has changed for the better, and it is not at all cold now. We shall see what the warmth does for me. You make my bowels yearn with your account of rainy. If only we had Prince Ahmed's carpet, and you could all come here for a few months. We were greatly excited here last week. A boy was shot out in the sugarcane field. He was with four cops, and at first it looked ugly for the cops. But the my own tells me he is convinced they are innocent and that they only prevaricated from fear. It was robbers that shot the poor child. What stuck and surprised me in the affair was the excessive horror and consternation it produced. The my own had not had a murder in his district at all in eight years. The marketplace was thronged with wailing women, Omar was sick all day, and the my own pale and wretched. The horror of killing seems greater here than I ever saw it. Paul Graves says the same of the Arabian Arabs in his book. It is not one's notion of oriental feeling, but a murder in England is taken quite as a joke compared with the scene here. I fear there will be robberies owing to the distress and the numbers who are running away from the land unable to pay their taxes. Don't fear for me, for I have two watchmen in the house every night. The regular guard and an amateur, a man whose boy I took down to Cairo to study in Gamal Asar. Paul Graves has written to Ross wanting Maverick back. I am very sorry. The more so as Maverick is recalcitrant. I want to stay with thee. I don't want to go back to the Nazarene. A boy who heard him said, but the lady is a Nazarene, too, whereupon Maverick slapped his face with great vigor. He will be troublesome if he does turn restive, and he is one who can only be managed by kindness. He is as good and quiet as possible with us, but the stubborn will is there, and he is too ignorant to be reasoned with. Story 14 Today the Four Cops have again changed their story, and after swearing that the robbers were strangers, have accused a man who has shot birds for me all this winter, and the poor devil has gone to Kenna in chains. The weather seems to have set in steadily for fine. I hope soon to get out, but my donkey has grown old and shaky, and I am too weak to walk, so I sit in the balcony. Letter 95 Dearest Mother. We have had a very cold winter, and I have been constantly ailing. Finally the cuff has transferred itself from the night to the day, and I get some good sleep. The last two days have been much warmer, and I hope matters will mend. I am beginning to take cod liver oil, as we can't find a milch camel anywhere. My boat has been well let in Cairo and is expected here every day. The gentlemen shoot, and tell the crew not to row, and in short take it easy, and give them two pounds in every place. Imagine what luxury for my crew. I shall have to dismiss the lot. They will be so spoiled. The English Consul General came up in a steamer with Dr. Patterson and Mr. Francis. I dined with them one day. I wish you could have seen me carried in my armchair high up on the shoulders of four men, like a successful candidate, or more like one of the pharaohs in an ancient bar relief, preceded by torchbearers and other attendants and followers. My procession was quite regal. I wish I could show you a new friend of mine, Osman Ibrahim, who studied medicine five years in Paris. My heart warmed to him directly, because like most highbread arrows he is so like Don Quixote, only Don Quixote quite in his senses. The sort of innocent sententiousness and perfectly natural love of fine language and fine sentiments is unattainable to any European, except I suppose a Spaniard. It is quite unlike Italian fustien or French sentiment. I suppose to most Europeans it is ridiculous, but I used to cry when the carriers beat the most noble of all nights when I was little girl in red Don Quixote, and now I feel, as it were, like Sancho, when I listen to Osman reciting bits of heroic poetry or uttering wise saws and modern instances, with the peculiar mixture of strong sense of exultation, which stamps the great dawn. I may not repeat all I heard from him of the state of things here and the insults he had to endure, a Sharif and an educated man from Korsh, Turkish Pashas. It was the carriers over again. He told me he had often cried like a woman at night in his own room at the miseries he was forced to witness and could do nothing to relieve. All the men I have particularly liked, I find, are more or less pupils of the Sheikh El-Baghuri, now dead, who seems to have had the gift of inspiring, honourable feeling. Our good Ma'un is one. He is no conjurer, but the honesty and goodness are heroic, which lead a man to starve on fifteen pounds a month, when he is expected to grow rich on plunder. The war in Crete saddens many a household here. Shake use of brother, shake urus is serving there, and many more. People are actually beginning to say, we hope the English and French won't fight for the Sultan if the Muscovites want to eat him. There will be no good for us till the Turks are driven out. All the old religious devotion to the Sultan seems quite gone. Poor Mustafa has been very unwell, and I stopped his Ramadan, gave him some physic and ordered him not to fast, for which I think he is rather grateful. The Imam and Mufti always endorse my prohibitions of fasting to my patience. Old Ishma'in is dead, aged over a hundred, he served Belzoni, and when he grew doting was always wanting me to go with him to join Belzoni at Abu-Simbal. He was not at all ill, he only went out like a candle. His grandson brought me a bit of the meat cooked at his funeral and begged me to eat it, that I might live to be very old, according to the superstition here. When they killed the buffalo for the Sheikh Abul-Hajjaj, the man who had a right to the feet kindly gave them to Omar, who wanted to make calf's foot jelly for me. I had a sort of profane feeling as if I were eating a descendant of the bull Apis. I am reading Madame du Diffon's letters. What a repulsive picture of a woman! I don't know which I dislike most, Horace Walpole or herself. The conflict of selfishness, vanity, and enn-wee disguised as sentiment is quite hateful. To her Turgod was unsol-animal so much for her great gifts. Remember me kindly to William and tell him how much I wish I could see his improvements. Omar also desires his salam to him, having a sort of fellow feeling for your faithful henchmen. I need not say he kisses your hand most dutifully. Read of Letter Ninety-Five, read by Cebella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Ninety-Six of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon, Luxor, January 22, 1867. Dearest Alec, the weather has been lovely for the last week, and I am therefore somewhat better. My boat arrived to-day with all the men in high good humour, and Omar tells me all is in good order, only the people in Cairo gave her the evil eye, and broke the iron part of the rudder which had to be repaired at Vene Suf. Mr. Lear has been here the last few days, and is just going up to the second cataract. He has done a little drawing of my house for you, a new view of it. He is a pleasant man, and I was glad to see him. Such a queer fellow came here the other day, a tall, stalwart hostiner, I should think a man of fifty, who has been four years up in the Sudan and Sennar, and being penniless, had walked all through Nubia begging his way. He was not the least down upon his luck, and spoke with enthusiasm of the hospitality and kindness of Sir Samuel Baker's Tigers. Ya, das sin directen carols, das ist das glucky kleven. This account is that if you go with an armed party the blacks naturally show fight as men with guns in their eyes are always slave hunters, but if you go alone and poor they kill an ox for you unless you prefer a sheet, give you a hut and generally anything they have to offer, maricy, beer to make you as drunk as a lord, and young ladies to pour it out for you, and you need not wear any clothes. If you had heard him you would have started for the interior at once. He gave him a dinner and a bottle of common wine, which he emptied, and a few shillings, and a way he trudged merrily towards Cairo. I wonder what the Nubians thought of a Hagawa begging. He said they were all kind, and that he was sure he often ate what they pinched themselves to give, dura bread and dates. In the evening we were talking about this man's stories, and of Anthropopagi and men whose heads do grow to a prodigious height, by means of an edifice woven of their own hair and other queer things, when Hassan told me a story which pleased me particularly. My father said he, Sheikh Mohammed, who was a taller and handsomer man than I am, was travelling very far up in the black country, and he and the men he was with had very little to eat, and had killed nothing for many days. Presently they heard a sort of wailing from a hole in the rock, and some of the men went in and dragged out a creature. I know not, and my father knew not, whether a child of Adam or a beast. But it was like a very foul and ill-shaped woman, and had six toes on its feet. The men wished to slay it, according to the law declaring it to be a beast unlawful food. But when it saw the knife it cried, sadly, and covered its faith with its hands in terror, and my father said, By the most high God you shall not slay the poor woman beast which thus begs its life. Tell you it is unlawful to eat one so like the children of Adam. And the beast or woman clung to him and hid under his cloak, and my father carried her for some time behind him on his horse, until they saw some creatures like her, and then he sent her to them, but he had to drive her from him by force, for she clung to him. Thinkest thou, O Lady, it was really a beast or some sort of the children of Adam. God knows, and he only, said I piously, but by his indulgent name thy father, O Sheikh, was a true nobleman. Sheikh Yusuf chimed in and gave a decided opinion that a creature able to understand the side of the knife and act so was not lawful to kill for food. You see what a real Arab Don Quixote was. It is a picture worthy of him, the tall, noble-looking Ababda sheltering the poor woman beast, most likely a guerrilla or chimpanzee, and carrying her on croupée. End of Letter ninety-six. Read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter ninety-seven of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austin. Luxor. January twenty-sixth, eighteen-sixty-seven. Dearest Mutter. I must betray dear Sheikh Yusuf's confidence and tell you his love story. A young fellow ran away with a girl he loved a short time ago, she having told him that her parents wanted to marry her to another, and that she would go to such a spot for water, and he must come on a horse, beat her, and carry her off. The beating saves the maiden's blushes. Well, the lad did it, and carried her to Salamea where they were married, and then they went to Sheikh Yusuf to get him to conciliate the family, which he did. He told me the affair, and I saw he sympathized much with the runaways. Ah, he said, Lady, it is love, and that is terrible. I can tell thee, love is dreadful indeed to bear. Then he hesitated and blushed and went on. I felt it once, Lady, it was the will of God that I should love her who is now my wife. Thirteen years ago I loved her and wished to marry her, but my father and her grandfather, my uncle the Sharif, had quarreled, and they took her and married her to another man. I never told any one of it, but my liver was burning and my heart ready to burst for three years. But when I met her I fixed my eyes on the ground for fear she should see my love, and I said to myself, O Yusuf, God has afflicted thee, praise be unto him. Do thou remember thy blood, Sharif, and let thy conduct be that of the Bene Azra, who, when they are thus afflicted, die rather than sin, for they have the strongest passion of love in the greatest honor. And I did not die, but went to Cairo to the Gamal Azar and studied, and afterwards I married twice, as thou knowest, but I never loved any but that one, and when my last wife died the husband of this one had just divorced her to take a younger and prettier one, and my father desired me then to take her, but I was half afraid not knowing whether she would love me, but praise be to God I consented, and behold, poor thing, she also had loved me in like manner. I thought when I went to see her that she was unusually radiant with new-married happiness, and she talked of El Sheik with singular pride and delight, and embraced me and called me mother most affectionately. Is this not a pretty piece of regular Arab romance like Gamem? My boat has gone up to-day with two very nice Englishmen in her. Their young Maltese Dregelman, aged twenty-four, told me his father often talked of the commissioners and all they had done, and how things were changed in the island for the better. Everything spiritual and temporal has been done for the boat's safety in the cataract. Urgent letters to the Ma'on El-Batter, and him of Aswan to see the men, and plenty of prayers and vows to Abul-Hazaz on behalf of the property of the lady, or Kurzweg, our boat, as she is commonly called in Luxor. Here we have the other side of the misery of the Kendiyan business. In Europe, of course, the obvious thing is the suffering of the Kretans, but really I am more sorry for the poor fellow lads who are dragged away to fight in a quarrel they had no hand in raising, and with which they have no sympathy. The time suggests that the sultan should relinquish the island, and that has been said in many an Egyptian hut long before. The sultan is worn out, and the Muslims here know it, and they say it would be the best day for the Arabs if he were driven out. After all, a Turk never was the true Amir el-Muamin, commander of the faithful. Only in Europe people talk and write as if it were all Muslims versus Christian, and the Christians were all oppressed, and the Muslims all oppressors. I wish they could see the domineering of the Greeks and Maltese as Christians. The Englishmen domineers as a free man and a Britain, which is different, and that is the reason why the Arabs wish for English rule, and would dread that of Eastern Christians. Well they may, for if ever Greeks do reign in Stambul, the sufferings of the Muslims will satisfy the most eager fanatic that ever cursed Mahon. I know nothing of Turkey, but I have seen and heard enough to know that there are plenty of other divisions besides that of Christian and Muslim. Here in Egypt is clear enough, it is Arab versus Turk, and the cop siding with the stronger for his interest, while he rather sympathizes with his brother Fella. At all events the cop don't want other Christians to get power. He would far rather have a Muslim than a heretic ruler, above all the hated Greek. The Englishman he looks on is a variety of Muslim, a man who washes, has no pictures in his church, who has married bishops, and above all, who does not fast, from all that has life for half the year, and this heresy is so extreme as not to give offence unless he tries to convert. The Pasha's sons have just been up the river. They ordered a reading of the Quran at the tomb of Abul-Hajjaj, and gave every Aleem six pence. We have not left off chafing, as Maurice would say, Sheikh Allah-ud-Din, the Muezzin, and sundry others on this superb Bakshish, and one old Fiki never knows whether to laugh, to cry, or to scold, when I ask to see the shawl and Tarbous she has bought with the presence of Pashas. Yusuf and the Qadi, too, had been called on to contribute baskets of bread to the steamer, so that their six pence's were particularly absurd. The little boy whose father died is still with Ababda, who will not let him travel to Cairo till the weather is warmer and they find a safe person to be kind to him. Rachma says, please God, he will go with the sit, perhaps. Hassan has consoled him with sugarcane and indulgence, and if I lose my brook and the little boy likes me, he may fall into my hands as Rachma has done. I hear he is a good boy, but a perfect savage, that, however, I find makes no difference. In fact I think they learn faster than those who have ways of their own. So I see Terrence was a nigger. I would tell Rachma so if I could make him understand who Terrence was, and that he, Rachma, stood in need of any encouragement, but the worthy fellow never imagines that his skin is in any way inferior to mine. End of Letter ninety-seven. Read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter ninety-eight of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Luxor, February 3, 1867. Dearest Alec. The boat goes down to-morrow, and I have little to add to Mutter's letter, only that I am better. There is a man here from Girga, who says he is married to a Guinea fairy-princess. I have asked to be presented to her, but I suspect there will be some hitch about it. It will be like Alexis' ale, madame, vous êtes trop incredueux. The unintelligible thing is that the motive which prompts wonders and miracles here, seeing that the wonder-workers do not get any money by it, and indeed very often give, like the Indian saint I told you of who gave me four dollars. His miracles were all gratis, which was the most miraculous thing of all in a saint. I am promised that the Guinea shall come through the wall. If she should do it, I shall be compelled to believe in her, as there are no mechanical contrivances in Luxor. All the harem here believe it, and the man's human wife swears she waits on her like a slave, and backs her husband's lie or delusion fully. I have not seen the man, but I should not wonder if it were a delusion. Real bona fide visions and revelations are so common, and I think there is but little downright imposture. Meanwhile, familiarity breeds contempt. Jins, afreeds, and shaitans inspire far less respect than the stupidest ghost at home, and the devil, Iblis, is reduced to deplorable insignificance. He is never mentioned in the pulpit or in religious conversation, with the respect he enjoys in Christian countries. I suppose we may console ourselves with the hope that he will pay off the Muslims for their neglect of him hereafter. I cannot describe to you the misery here now. Indeed it is weary some even to think of, every day some new tax. Now every beast, camel, cow, sheep, donkey, horse is made to pay. The Felaen can no longer eat bread, they are living on barley meal, mixed with water and new green stuff, vetches, etc., which to people used to good food is terrible, and I see all my acquaintances growing seedy and ragged and anxious. Yusuf is clear of debt, his religion having kept him from borrowing, but he wants to sell his little slave girl and has sold his donkey and he is the best off. The taxation makes life almost impossible. One hundred piastras for feddon, a tax on every crop, on every annual fruit, and again when it is sold in the market, on every man, on charcoal, on butter, on salt, on the dancey girls. I wonder I am not tormented for money. Not above three people have tried to beg or borrow. Thanks for the Westminster epilogue. It always amuses me much. So Terence was a nigger. There is no trace of the negro boy in his Davis. My nigger has grown huge and has developed a voice of thunder. He is of the elephantine rather than the tiger species, a very mild young savage. I shall be sorry when Paul Grave takes him. I am tempted to buy Yusuf's nice little dinka girl to replace him, only a girl is such an impossibility where there is no regular harem. In the boat, Ahmed is enough under Omar, but in this large, dusty house, and with errands to run, and comers and goers to look after, pipes and coffee and the like, it takes two boys to be comfortable. Maybrook, too, washes very well. It is surprising how fast the boys learn and how well they do their work. Ahmed, who is quite little, would be a perfectly sufficient servant for a man alone. He can cook, wash, clean the rooms, make the beds, do all the table service, knife and plate cleaning all fairly well, and I believe now he would get along even without Omar's orders. Mybrook is slower, but he has the same merit Alpour Hassad had. He never forgets what he has been once told to do, and he is clean in his work, though hopelessly dirty as to his clothes. He cannot get used to them, and takes a roll in the dust or leans against a dirty wall, oblivious of his clean-washed blue shirt. Ahmed is quicker and more careless, but they both are good boys and very fond of Omar. Uncle Omar is the form of a dress, though he scolds them pretty severely if they misbehave, and I observe that the hijinks take place chiefly when only I am in the way, and Omar gone to market or the mosque. The little rogues have found out that their laughing does not affect my nerves, and I am often treated to a share in the joke. How I wish Rainy could see the children they would amuse her. Yusuf's girl, Meir and Nezil, is a charming child and very clever. Her enigmatic way of explaining everything to me, and her gestures would delight you. Her cousin and future husband, age five, she is six, broke the doll which I had given her, and her description of it was most dramatic, ending with a weedling glance at the cupboard, and of course there are no more dolls there, oh no, no more. She is a fine little creature, far more Arab than Felaah, quite a she-ten, her father says. She came in full of making cakes for Biram, and offered her services. My aunt, if thou wantest anything I can work, said she, tucking up her sleeves. End of Letter ninety-eight. Read by Cebella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter ninety-nine of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austin, Luxor, March six, eighteen-sixty-seven. Dearest mother. The warm weather has set in, and I am already as much the better for it as usual. I had a slight attack, not nearly so bad as that at Sudan, but it lingered and I kept my bed as a measure of precaution. Dear Yusuf was with me the evening I was attacked, and sat up all night to give me my medicine every hour. At the prayer of dawn, an hour and a half before sunrise, I heard his supplications for my life and health, and for you and all my family, and I thought of what I had lately read, how the Greeks massacred their own patriots because the Turks had shown them mercy, a display of temper which I hope will enlighten Western Christendom as to what the Muslims have to expect, if they, the Western Christians, helped the Eastern Christians to get the upper hand. Yusuf was asking about a lady the other day who has turned Catholic. Poor thing, said he, the priests have drawn out her brains through her ears no doubt, but never fear, her heart is good and her charity great, and God will not deal hardly with those who serve him with their hearts, though it is sad she should bow down before images. But look at thy slave, Maybrook, can he understand one hundredth part of the thoughts of thy mind? Nevertheless he loves thee, and obeys thee with pleasure and alacrity, and wilt thou punish him because he knows not all thy ways? And shall God, who is so much higher above us as thou art above thy slave, be less just than thou? I pinned him at once and insisted on knowing the orthodox belief, but he quoted the Koran and the decisions of the Ulima to show that he stretched no point as far as Jews and Christians are concerned, and that even idolaters are not to be condemned to my man. Yusuf wants me to write a short account of the faith from his dictation. Would any one publish it? It annoys him terribly to hear the Muslims constantly accused of intolerance and he is right, it is not true. They show their conviction that their faith is the best in the world, with the same sort of naivete that I have seen in very innocent and ignorant English women, in fact display a sort of religious conceit, but it is not often bitter or haynose, however much they are in earnest. I am going to write to Paul Grave and ask him to let me send another boy, or the money for my brook, who can't endure the notion of leaving me. Ahmed, who was always hankering after the flesh-pots of Alexandria, got some people belonging to the boats to promise to take him, and came home and picked a quarrel and departed. Poor little chap, the sheikh El-Beled put a spoke in his wheel by informing him he would be wanted for the poshest works, and must stay in his own place. Since he went my brook has come out wonderfully and does his own work and occupants with the greatest satisfaction. He tells me he likes it best, he likes to be quiet. He just suits me and I him, it is humiliating to find how much more I am to the taste of savages than of the polite circles. The old lady of the moan promised to come to me, but I would not let her leave her home, which would be quite an adventure to her. I knew she would be exclamatory and lament over me and say every minute, oh, my liver, oh, my eyes, the name of God upon thee and never mind, to-morrow, please, God, thou wilt be quite well, and so forth. People send me such odd dishes, some very good. Yusuf's wife packed two calves' feet, tight in a little black earthen pot, with a seasoning of herbs and baked it in the bread oven and the result was excellent. Also she made me a sort of small macaroni, extremely good. Now, too, we can get milk again, and Omar makes quista, alias, clotted cream. Do send me a good addition of the Arabian knights in Arabic, and I should much like to give Yusuf Lane's Arabic dictionary. He is very anxious to have it. I can't read the Arabian knights, but it is a favorite amusement to make one of the party read aloud. A stray copy of Qamar as Semen and Siddh Budhurah went all around Luxor and was much coveted for the village schwares, but its owner departed and left us to mourn over the loss of his manuscripts. I must tell you a black standard of respectability. It is quite equal to the English one of the gig or the ham for breakfast. I was taking counsel with my friend Rakhma, a negro, about Mabruk, and he urged me to buy him of Paul Grave, because he saw that the lad really loved me. Moreover, said he, the boy is of a respectable family, for he told me his mother wore a cow's tail down to her heels. That and a girdle to which the tail is fastened, and a tiny leather and apron in front, constituted her whole wardrobe. And that she beat him well when he told lies or stole his neighbor's eggs. Our woman, I wish this abominable slave-trade had spared her and her boy. What folly it is to stop the Circassian slave-trade if it is stopped and to leave this. The Circassians take their own children to market as a way of providing for them handsomely, and both boys and girls like being sold to the rich Turks, but the blacks and Abyssinians fight hard for their own liberty and that of their cubs. Mabruk swears that there were two Europeans in the party which attacked his village and killed he knew not how many and carried him and others off. He was not stolen by Arabs or by Barbaris like Hassan, but taken in a war from his home by the seaside, a place called Buki, and carried in a ship to Jeddah and thence back to Kossir and Kenna, where Paul Grave bought him. I must say that once here the slaves are happy and well off, but the waste of life and the misery caused by the trade must be immense. The slaves are coming down the river by hundreds every week and are very cheap, twelve to twenty pounds for a fine boy and nine pounds and upwards for a girl. I heard that the last Gilab offered a woman and a baby for anything anyone would give for them on the count of the trouble of the baby. By the by Mabruk displays the negro talent for babies. Now that Ahmed is gone, who scolded them and drove them out, Muhammad's children, quiet babies, are forever trotting after Mabu, as they pronounce his name, and he talks incessantly to them. It reminds me so of Janet and poor Hassan, but Mabruk is not like Hassan, he is one of the sons of Anak, and already as big and strong as a man, with the most prodigious chest and limbs. Don't be at all uneasy about me as to care. Omar knows exactly what to do, as he showed the other day when I was taken ill. I had shown him the medicines and given him instructions, so I had not even to speak. And if I were to be ill enough to want more help, Yusuf would always sit up alternate nights. But it is not necessary. Arabs make no grievance about broken rest. They don't go to bed properly, but lie down half dressed, and have a happy faculty of sleeping at odd times, and anyhow, which enables them to wait on one night and day, without distressing themselves as it distresses us. Thursday. A telegram has just come, announcing that Janet will leave Cairo tomorrow in a steamer, and therefore be here, inshallah, this day week. I enclose a note from a copped boy, which will amuse you. He is sapping in English, and I teach him whenever I am able. I am a special favorite with all the young lads. They must not talk much before grown men, so they come and sit on the floor round my feet, and ask questions and advice, and enjoy themselves amazingly. Hobbled ahoyhood is very different here from what it is with us. They care earlier for the affairs of the grown-up world, and are more curious and more polished, but lack the fine animal gaiety of our boys. The girls are much more gamine than the boys, and more romping and joyous. It is very warm now. I fear Janet will sigh terribly over the heat. They have left their voyage too late for such as do not love the Shem's El Kabir, the big son, which has just begun. I who worship Amun Ra love to feel him in his glory. It is long since I had any letters. I want so to hear how you all are. End of Letter ninety-nine, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter one hundred of letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, March seventh, eighteen sixty-seven, dearest Alec. I have written a long yarn to mutter, and am rather tired, so I only right to say I am much better. The heat has set in, and of course with it my health has mended, but I am a little shaky and afraid to tire myself. Moreover, I want to nurse up and be stronger by next Thursday, when Janet and Ross are expected. Who wants to whitewash Miss Ramp Sinaitis and identify her with the beloved of Solomon, or Salim? My brain spun round as I read it. Must I answer him, or will you? A dregelman gave me an old broken traveling armchair, and Yusuf sat in an armchair for the first time in his life. May the soul of the man who made it find a seat in paradise, was his exclamation, which strikes me as singularly appropriate on sitting in a very comfortable armchair. Yusuf was thankful for small mercies in this case. I am afraid Janet may be bored by all the people's civility. They will insist on making great dinners and fantasias for her, I am sure. I hope they will go on to Aswan and take me with them. The change will do me good, and I should like to see as much of her as I can before she leaves Egypt for good. The state of business here is curious. The last regulations have stopped all money lending, and the prisons are full of Sheikh El-Belad whose villages can't pay the taxes. Most respectable men have offered me to go partners with them now in their wheat, which will be cut in six weeks, if only I would pay their present taxes, I to take half the crop and half the taxes with interest out of their half. Some such trifle is thirty percent per month. Our prison is full of men, and we send them their dinner at tour de rôle. The other day a woman went with a big wooden bowl on her head, full of what she had cooked for them, accompanied by her husband. Then Khalil Effendi, a new vaquil here, was there and said, What does thou ask here, thou harlot? Her husband answered, That is no harlot, O Effendi, but my wife. Whereupon he was beaten till he fainted, and then there was a lamentation. They carried him down past my house, with a crowd of women all shrieking like mad-creatures, especially his wife, who yelled and beat her head and threw dust over it, more majorum as you see in the tombs. The humours of tax-gathering in this country are quite impayable, you perceive, and ought to be set forth on the escutcheon of the new night of the bath, whom the queen hath delighted to honour. Kahuas-battant, fellow rampant, and fellow haplurant would be the proper blazen. Distress in England is terrible, but at least it is not the result of extortion as it is here, while everything from nature is so abundant and glorious, and yet mankind so miserable. It is not a little hunger, it is the cruel oppression which maddens the people now. They never complained before, but now whole villages are deserted. The boat goes to-morrow morning, so I must say good-bye. I have just received your letters, including the one for Omar, which I read to him, and which he kissed and said he should keep as a ha-gib, talisman. I have given him an order on Cout's correspondence for the money in case I die. Omar proposes to wait till we get to Cairo and then to buy a little house, or a floor in one. I am to keep all the money till the house is found, so he will in no way be tempted to do anything foolish with it. I hope you approve? Janet's visit was quite an ead, festival, as the people said. When I got up on the morning she was expected, I found the house decked with palm branches and lemon blossoms, and the holy flags of Abul Hajj, waving over my balcony. The mosque people had brought them, saying all the people were happy to-day, because it was a fortunate day for me. I suppose if I had a mind to testify I ought to have indignantly torn down the banners which bore the declaration, there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet. But it appeared to me that if imams and moesans could send their banners to decorate a Christian house, the Christian might manage to endure the kindness. Then there was Fantasia on horseback, and all the notables to meet the boat, and general welcome and jubilation. Next day I went on with Henry and Janet in the steamer and had a very pleasant time to ask one and back, and they stayed another day here, and I hired a little dahabiya which they towed down to Kenna where they stay to-day, after which shake Yusuf and I sailed back again to Luxor. As bad luck would have it we had hot weather just the week they were up here, since then it has been quite cool. Janet has left me her little black-and-tan terrier, a very nice little dog, but I can't hope to rival Omar in his affections. He sleeps in Omar's bosom and Omar spoils and pets him all day, and bows to the people how the dog drinks tea and coffee and eats dainty food, and the people say ma-shallah, whereas I should have expected them to curse the dog's father. The other day a scrupulous person drew back with a narrow alarm from Bob's approach, whereupon the dog stared at him and forthwith plunged into shake Yusuf's lap, from which stronghold he yapped defiance at whoever should object to him. I never laughed boreheartily, and Yusuf went into foo-rear. The mouth of the dog only is unclean, and Yusuf declares he is a very well-educated dog, and does not attempt to lick. He pats him accordingly, and gives him tea in his own saucer, only not in the cup. I am to inherit another little blackie from Omar's agency at Kenna, the funniest little chap. I cannot think why I go on expecting so-called savages to be different from other people. My brooks simple talk about his village and the animals and the victuals, and how the men of a neighboring village stole him in order to sell him for a gun, the price of a gun is a boy, but were prevented by a razia of turks, etc., who killed the first aggressors and took all the children. All this he tells just as an English boy might tell of bird-nesting, delights me. He has the same general notion of right and wrong, and yet his tribe know neither bread nor any sort of clothes, nor cheese nor butter, nor even drink milk, nor the African beer, and it always rains there and is always deadly cold at night, so that without a fire they would die. They have two products of civilization, guns and tobacco, for which they pay in boys and girls whom they steal. I wonder where the country is. It is called so-wagly, and the next people are Musa on the sea- coast, and it is not so hot as Egypt. It must be in the southern hemisphere. The new Negrion is from Darfur. Won't Maurice be amused by his attendance? The Darfur boy will trot after him, as he can shoot in clean guns, tiny as he is. Maurice seems to wish to come, and I hope Alexander will let him spend the winter here, and I will take him up to the second cataract. I really think he would enjoy it. My boat will not return, I think, for another six weeks. Mr. Eaton and Mr. Baird were such nice people. Their Dregoman, a Maltese, appeared to hate the Italians with ferocity. He said all decent people in Malta would ten times rather belong to the Mohammedans than to the Italians. After all, blood tells. He was a very respectable young man, and being a Dregoman and the son of a Dregoman he has seen the world, and particularly the Muslims. I suppose it is the Pope that makes the Italians so hateful to them. The post here is dreadful. I would not mind their reading one's letters if they would only send them on. Omar begs we to say that he and his children will pray for you all his life, please God, not for the money only, but still more for the good words and the trusting him. But he says, I can't say much, politica, please God, she shall see, only I kiss her hand now. You will hear from Janet about her excursion. What I liked best was shooting the cataract to a small boat. It was fine Fantasia. End of letter 100.