 Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austen, Sunday, February 7th, 1864. DEAREST MUTTER We have had our winter pretty sharp for three weeks, and everybody has had violent colds and coughs—the Arabs, I mean. I have been a good deal ailing, but have escaped any violent cold altogether, and now the thermometer is up to sixty-four degrees, and it feels very pleasant. In the sun it is always very hot, but that does not prevent the air from being keen, and chapping lips and noses, and even hands. It is curious how a temperature, which would have been summer in England, makes one shiver at thebes. Alhamdulillah, it is over now. My poor shake Yusuf is in great distress about his brother, also a young shake, i.e. Jordan learned it in theology and competent to preach in the mosque. Shake Muhammad is, come home from studying al-Azhar at Cairo, I fear to die. I went with shake Yusuf at his desire to see if I could help him, and found him gasping for breath and very, very ill. I gave him a little soothing medicine and put mustard-plasters on him, and, as it relieved him, I went again and repeated them. All the family and a lot of neighbors crowded in to look on. There he lay in a dark little den with bare-mud walls, worse off to our ideas than any popper, but these people do not feel the want of comforts, and one learned to think it quite natural to sit with perfect gentlemen in places inferior to our cattle sheds. I pulled some blankets up against the wall, and put my arm behind shake Muhammad's back to make him rest while the poultices were on him, whereupon he laid his green turban on my shoulder, and presently held up his delicate brown face for a kiss like an affectionate child. As I kissed him, a very pious old mullah said, Bismillah. In the name of God, with an approving nod, and shake Muhammad's old father, a splendid old man in a green turban, thanked me with effusion, and prayed that my children might always find health and kindness. I suppose if I confessed to kissing a dirty Arab in a hovel, the English travelers would excite me, but it shows how much there is in Muslim bigotry, unconquerable hatred, etc., for this family are Syed's, descendants of the Prophet, and very pious. Shake Yusuf does not even smoke, and he preaches on Fridays. You would love these Syedys, they are such thorough gentlemen. I rode over to the village a few days ago to see a farmer named Omar. Of course I had to eat, and the people were enchanted at my going alone, as they are used to see the English armed and guarded. C.D. Omar, however, insisted on accompanying me home, which is the civil thing here. He piled on a whole stack of green fodder on his nimble little donkey, and hoisted himself atop of it without saddle or bridle. The fodder was for Mustafa Agha, and we trotted home across the beautiful green barley fields, to the amazement of some European young men out shooting. We did look a curious pair, certainly, with my English saddle and bridle, habit, hat and feather on horseback, and C.D. Omar's brown shirt, brown legs, and white turban, guiding his donkey with his chabook. We were laughing very merrily, too, over my blundering Arabic. Young Hethkut and Strutt called here, but were hurrying up on the river. I shall see more of them when they come down. Young Strutt is so like his mother, I knew him in the street. I would like to give him a Fantasia, but it is not proper for a woman to send for the dancing girls, and as I am the friend of the Maun, police magistrate, the Kedi, and the respectable people here, I cannot do what is indecent in their eyes. It is quite enough that they approve my unveiled face, and my associating with men. That is my custom, and they think no harm of it. Tomorrow or next day Ramadan begins at the first side of the new moon. It is a great nuisance, because everybody is cross. Omar did not keep it last year, but this year he will, and if he spoils my dinners who can blame him. There was a wedding close by here last night, and about ten o'clock all the women passed under my windows with cries of joy as Zagarete down to the river. I find on inquiry that in Upper Egypt, as soon as the bridegroom has taken the face of his bride, the women take her down to see the Nile. They have not yet forgotten that the old God is the giver of increase, it seems. I have been reading Miss Martino's book, the descriptions are excellent, but she evidently knew and cared nothing about the people, and had the feeling of most English people here that the difference of manners is a sort of impassable gulf, the truth being that their feelings and passions are just like our own. It is curious that all the old books of travels I have read mention the natives of strange countries in a far more natural tone, and with more attempt to discriminate character than modern ones, e.g., neighbors travels here and in Arabia, cooks voyages and many others. Have we grown so very civilized since a hundred years that outlandish people seem like mere puppets and not like real human beings? Miss M's bigotry against cops and Greeks is drawl enough, compared to her very proper reverence for him who sleeps in filet, and her attack upon Harim's outrageous. She implies that they are brothels. I must admit that I have not seen a Turkish Harim, and she apparently saw no other, and yet she fancies the morals of Turkey to be superior to those of Egypt. It is not possible for a woman to explain all the limitations to which ordinary people do subject themselves. Great men I know nothing of, but women can and do, without blame, sue their husbands in law for the full payment of debt, and demand a divorce if they please in default. Very often a man marries a second wife out of duty to provide for a brother's widow and children, or the like. Of course, licentious men act loosely as elsewhere. Kalulam beni-atum, we are all sons of Adam, as Sheikh Yusuf says constantly, bad-bad and good-good, and modern travelers show strange ignorance in talking of foreign natives in the lump as they nearly all do. Monday I have just heard that poor Sheikh Mohammed died yesterday and was as usual buried at once. I had not been well for a few days, and Sheikh Yusuf took care that I should not know of his brother's death. He went to Mustafa Agha and told him not to tell anyone in my house till I was better, because he knew what was in my stomach towards his family and feared I should be made worse by the news. But how often I have been advised not to meddle with sick Arabs, because they are sure to suspect a Christian of poisoning those who die. I do grieve for the graceful, handsome young creature and his old father. Omar was vexed at not knowing of his death, because he would have liked to help carry him to the grave. I have at last learned the alphabet in Arabic, and can write it tidally, but now I am in a fix for want of a dictionary, and have written to Hekekian Bay to buy me one in Cairo. Sheikh Yusuf knows not a word of English, and Omar can't read or write, and has no notion of grammar or of word-for-word interpretation, and it is very slow work. When I walk through the court of the mosque I give the customary coppers to the little boys who are spelling away loudly under the arcade, Abasheda O Nusbateen, Ibasheda O Heftadine, etc., with a keen sympathy with their difficulties and well smudged tin slates. An additional evil is that the Arabic books printed in England and in English presses here require a forty-horsepower microscope to distinguish a letter. The ciphering is like ours, but with other figures, and I felt very stupid when I discovered how I had reckoned Arab fashion from right to left all my life, and never observed the fact. However, they cast down a column of figures from top to bottom. I am just called away by some poor men who want me to speak to the English travelers about shooting their pigeons. It is very thoughtless, but it is in great measure the fault of the servants and dregomans who think that they must not venture to tell their masters that pigeons are private property. I have a great mind to put a notice on the wall of my house about it. Here where there are nevertheless than eight or ten boats lying for three full months, the loss to the Felaheen is serious, and our consul Mustafa Agha is afraid to say anything. I have given my neighbors permission to call the pigeons mine as they roost in flocks on my roof, and go out and say that the sit objects to her poultry being shot, especially as I have had them shot off my balcony as they sat there. I got a note from Mr. Mounier yesterday inviting me to go and stay at El Mutana, Halim Pasha's greatest state, near Edfu, and offering to send his Dahabiya for me. I will certainly go as soon as the weather is decidedly hot. It is now very warm and pleasant. If I find thieves too hot as summer advances I must drop down and return to Cairo or try Suez, which I hear is excellent in summer, bracing desert air. But it is very tempting to stay here, splendid cool house, food extremely cheap, about one pound a week for three of us, for fish, bread, butter, meat, milk, eggs, and vegetables, all grocery of course, I brought with me, no trouble, rest and civil neighbors. I feel very disinclined to move unless I am baked out, and it takes a good deal to bake me. The only fear is the commissine wind. I do not feel very well. I don't ale anything in particular, blood spitting frequent, but very slight, much less cough, but I am so weak and good for nothing. I seldom feel able to go out or do more than sit in the balcony on one side or other of the house. I have no donkey here. The hired ones are so very bad and so dear, but I have written mounier to try and get me one at El Mutana and send it down in one of Halim Pasha's cornboats. There is no comfort like a donkey always ready. If I have to send for Mustapha's horse, I feel lazy and fancied is too much trouble, unless I can just go when I want. I have received a letter from Alexandria of January 8. What dreadful weather! We feel the ghost of it here in our three weeks of cold. As I feel as if I must go back to you all coot-de-coot, but I know it would be of no use to try it in the summer. I long for more news of you and my chicks. End of Letter XXIX. Read by Sabella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter XXX of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Letter Mrs. Ross Luxor Tuesday, February 8, 1864. Dearest child, I got your letter number three about a week ago, and two others before it. I have been very lazy in writing, for it has been very cold, for thieves, and I have been very seedy—no severe attack, but no strength at all. The last three or four days the weather has been warm, and I am beginning to feel better. I send this to Cairo by a clever, pleasant, Madame de Bellancourt, a daughter of Maryshelle Castellane, who is here in one of the poshest steamers. She will call on you when she goes to Alexandria. I have been learning to write Arabic, and I know my letters. No trifle, I assure you. My shake is a perfect darling, the most graceful, high-bred young creature and a Said. These Saidese are much nicer than the lower Egypt people. They have good Arab blood in their veins, keep pedigrees, and are more manly and independent, and more liberal in religion. Shake Yusuf took me into the tomb of his ancestor, Shake Abul Hajjaj, the great saint here, and all the company Serafata for my health. It was on the night of Friday, during the moulid of the shake. Omar was surprised at the proceeding, and a little afraid the dead shake might be offended. My great friend is the Ma'un, police magistrate here, a very kind, good man, much like die here, by all except the Qadi, who was displeased at his giving the stick to a Musulman for some wrong to a cocked. I am beginning to stammer out a little Arabic, but find it horribly difficult. The plurals are bewildering, and the verbs quite heartbreaking. I have no books which makes learning very slow work. I have written to Haqqaqian Bay to buy me a dictionary. The house here is delightful, rather cold now, but will be perfect in hot weather, so airy and cheerful. I think I shall stay on, here, all the time, the expense is nil, and it is very comfortable. I have a friend in a farm in a neighboring village, and I am much amused at seeing country life. It cannot be rougher as regards material comforts in New Zealand or Central Africa, but there is no barbarism or lack of refinement in the manners of the people. Monsieur Mounier has invited me to go and stay with them at El Montana, and offers to send his dahabiya for me. When it gets really hot, I shall like the trip very much. Pray, when you see Madame Tostou, say civil things for me, and tell her how much I like the house. I think it wonderful that Omar cooked the dinner without being cross. I am sure I should swear if I had to cook for a heretic in Ramadan. End of LETTER XXXIV. We are in Ramadan now, and Omar really enjoys a good opportunity of making his soul. He fasts and washes vigorously, prays his five times a day, goes to mosque on Fridays, and is quite merry over it, and ready to cook infidels' dinners with exemplary good humor. It is a great merit in Muslims that they are not at all grumpy over their piety. The weather has set in since five or six days like a paradise. I sit on my lofty balcony and drink the sweet northerly breeze, and look at the glorious mountain opposite, and think if only you and the chicks were here it would be the best of life. The beauty of Egypt grows on one, and I think it far more lovely this year than I did last. My great friend, the Maoun, he is not the Nazir who is a fat little pig-eyed, jolly Turk, lives in a house which also has a superb view in another direction, and I often go and sit on the bench, i.e. the mastaba in front of his house, and do what little talk I can and see the people come with their grievances. I don't understand much of what goes on, as the Patois is broad and doubles the difficulty, or I would send you a Theban police report, but the Maoun is very pleasant in his manner to them, and they don't seem frightened. We have appointed a very small boy, our Bawab or porter, or rather he has appointed himself, and his assumption of dignity is quite delicious. He has provided himself with a huge staff, and he behaves like the most tremendous Janissary. He is about rainy size, as sharp as a needle, and possesses the remains of a brown shirt and a ragged kitchen-duster as a turban. I am very fond of little Akmet, and I like to see him doing the tableaux vivants from Marillo with a plate of broken vituals. The children of this place have become so insufferable about Bakshish that I have complained to the Maoun, and he will assemble a committee of parents and enforce better manners. It is only here and just where the English go. When I ride into the little villages I never hear the word, but I am always offered milk to drink. I have taken it two or three times and not offered to pay, and the people always seem quite pleased. Yesterday, Sheikh Yusuf came again, the first time since his brother's death. He was evidently deeply affected, but spoke in the usual way. It is the will of God, we all must die, etc. I wish you could see Sheikh Yusuf. I think he is the sweetest creature in look and manner I ever beheld, so refined and so simple, and with the animal grace of a gazelle. A high-bred Arab is as graceful as an Indian, but quite without the feline, gasmiticate, or the look of dissimulation. The eye is as clear and frank as a child's. Mr. Rukul, the Austrian consul here, who knows Egypt and Arabia well, tells me he thinks many of them quite as good as they look, and said of Sheikh Yusuf, Irrest Soge Mutlik. There is a German here deciphering hieroglyphics, Herr Dumakin, a very agreeable man, but he has gone across the river to live at Al-Karna. He has been through Ethiopia in search of temples and inscriptions. I am to go over and visit him and see some of the tombs again in his company, which I shall enjoy, as a good interpreter is sadly wanted in those mysterious regions. My chest is wonderfully better these last six or seven days. It is quite clear that downright heat is what does me good. Moreover, I have just heard from Monsieur Monnier that a good donkey is en route and on a boat from El-Montana. He will cost me between four pounds and five pounds, and will enable me to be about far more than I can by merely borrowing Mustafa's horse, about which I have scruples as he lends it to other lady-travelers. Uncle Ahmed will be my saïs as well as my doorkeeper, I suppose. I wish you would speak to Layard in behalf of Mustafa Agha. He has acted as English consul here for something like thirty years, and he really is the slave of travelers. He gives them dinners, mounts them, and does all the disagreeable business of wrangling with the raïs and dregomans for them, makes himself a postmaster, takes care of their letters and sends them out to the boats, and does all manner of services for them, and lends his house for the infidels to pray in on Sunday when a clergyman is here. For this he has no remuneration at all, except such presence as the English sea-fit to make him, and I have seen enough to know that they are neither large nor always gracefully given. The old fellow at Kenna, who has nothing to do, gets regular pay, and I think Mustafa ought to have something. He is now old and rather infirm, and has to keep a clerk to help him. At least his expenses should be covered. Please say this to Layard, from me, as my message to him. Don't forget it, please, for Mustafa is a really kind friend to me at all times and in all ways. February 14. Yesterday we had a dust storm off the desert. It made my head heavy and made me feel languid, but did not affect my chest at all. Today is a soft gray day. There was a little thunder this morning, and a few, very few drops of rain, hardly enough for even Herodotus to consider pretentious. My donkey came down last night, and I tried him today, and he is very satisfactory, though alarmingly small, as the real Egyptian donkey always is. The big ones are from the Hejaz. But it is wonderful how the little creatures run along under one as easily as possible, and they have no will of their own. I rode mine out to Karnak and back, and he did not seem to think me at all heavy. When they are overworked and over-galloped they become bad on the legs and easily fall, and all those for hire are quite stumped up, poor beasts, they are so willing and docile that everyone over-drives them. End of Letter XXXI. Read by Cebella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter XXXII. Of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austin, Luxor, February 19, 1864. Dearest Mother. I have only time for a few lines to go down by Mr. Strutt and Hethkitt's boat to Cairo. They are very good specimens and quite recognized as belonging to the higher people, because they do not make themselves big. I received your letter of January XXI with little, darling rainies three days ago. I am better now that the weather is fine again. We had a whole day's rain, which Herodotus says is important here, and a hurricane from the south worthy of the cape. I thought we should have been buried under the drifting sand. Today is again heavenly. I saw Abed El Aziz, the chemist in Cairo. He seemed a very good fellow and was a pupil of my old friend, Mr. Chevreux, and highly recommended by him. Here I am out of all European ideas. The Sheikh El Arab of the Abadah tribe, who has a sort of townhouse here, has invited me out into the desert to the black tents, and I intend to pay a visit with old Mustafa Agha. There is a Roman well in his yard with a ghoul in it. I can't get the story from Mustafa, who is ashamed of such superstitions, but I'll find it out. We had a Fantasia at Mustafa's for young Strutt and company, and a very good dancing girl. Some dear old prosy English people made me laugh so. The lady wondered how the women here could wear clothes so different from English females, poor things. But they were not malvelant, only pitying and wonder-struck. Nothing astonished them so much as my salutations with Salim Effendi, the Ma'un. I begin to feel the time before me to be away from you all very long indeed. But I do think my best chance is a long spell of real heat. I have got through this winter without once catching cold at all to signify, and now the fine weather has come. I am writing an Arabic from Sheikh Yusuf's dictation, the dear old story of the barber's brother with the basket of glass. The Arabs are so diverted at hearing that we all know the alf-leila, the thousand nights and a night. The want of a dictionary with a teacher knowing no word of English is terrible. I don't know how I learn it all. The post is pretty quick up to here. I got your letter within three weeks, you see, but I get no newspapers. The post is all on foot and can't carry anything so heavy. One of my men of last year, as Galani the Steersman, has just been to see me, he says his journey was happier last year. I hear that Philips is coming to Cairo and have written to him there to invite him up here to paint these handsome Syedis. He could get up in a steamer as I did through Hasanane Effendi for a trifle. I wish you could come, but the heat here which gives me life would be quite impossible to you. The thermometer in the cold antechamber is now sixty-seven degrees where no sun ever comes, and the blaze of the sun is prodigious. End of letter thirty-two, read by Sabehledin. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter thirty-three of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Luxor, February 26th, 1864 Dearest Alec, I have just received your letter of the third instance, and I am glad to get such good tidings. You would be amused to see Omar bring me a letter and sit down on the floor till I tell him the family news, and then alhamdulillah we are so pleased, and he goes off to his pots and pans again. Lord and Lady Spencer are here and his sister in two boats. The Englishmalord, extinct on the Continent, has revived in Egypt, and is greatly reverenced and usually much liked. These high English have mercy in their stomachs, said one of my last year's sailors, who came to kiss my hand, a pleasing fact in natural history. Fawahelord was little ragged Ahmed's announcement of Lord Spencer. Here's a Lord. They are very pleasant people. I heard from Janet today of ice at Cairo and at Shubra and famine prices. I cannot attempt Cairo with meat at one shilling three pence a pound, and will Ian stay here and grill at Thebes. Mary, come up with your Thebes and savagery. What if we do wear ragged brown shirts? Tis manners maketh man, and we defy you to show better breeding. We are now in the full enjoyment of summer weather. There has been no cold for fully a fortnight, and I am getting better every day now. My cough has quite subsided, and the pain in the chest much diminished. If the heat does not overpower me, I feel sure it will be very healing to my lungs. I sit out on my glorious balcony and drink the air from early morning till noon, when the sun comes upon it and drives me under cover. The thermometer has stood at sixty-seven degrees for a fortnight or three weeks, rising sometimes to sixty-seven, but the people in the boats tell me it is still cold at night on the river. Up here, only as stones throw from it, it is warm all night. I fear the loss of cattle has suspended irrigation to a fearful extent, and that the harvest of lower Egypt of all kinds will be sadly scanty. The disease has not spread above Minia, or very slightly, but of course cattle will rise in prize here also. Already food is getting dearer here. Meat is four-and-a-half piastras, seven pence, the rotil, a fraction less than a pound, and bread has risen considerably. I should say corn, for no bakers exist here. I pay a woman to grind and bake my wheat, which I buy, and delicious bread it is. It is impossible to say how exactly like the early parts of the Bible every act of life is here, and how totally new it seems when one reads it here. Old Jacob's speech to Pharaoh really made me laugh, don't be shocked, because it is so exactly what a fellow says to Apasha. Few and evil have been the days, etc. Jacob being a most prosperous man. But it is manners to say all that, and I feel quite kindly to Jacob, whom I used to think ungrateful and discontented. And when I go to C. D. Omar's farm, does he not say that take now fine meal and bake cakes quickly, and wants to kill a kid? Fatira, with plenty of butter, is what the three men who came to Abraham ate, and the way that Abraham's chief memlook, acting as Vakil, manages Isaac's marriage with Rebecca. All the vulgarized associations with Puritanism and abominable little scripture tales and pictures peel off here, and the inimitably truthful representation of life and character, not a flattering one, certainly, comes out, and it feels like Homer. Joseph's tears and his love for his brother, born out of the same mother, is so perfect. Only one sees what a bad inferior race the Bene Israel were compared to the Bene Ishmael or to the Egyptians. Leviticus and Deuteronomy are so very heathenish compared to the law of the Koran or to the early days of Abraham. Verily, the ancient Jews were a foul nation, judging by the police regulations needful for them. Please don't make these remarks public, or I shall be burnt with Stanley and Colenso, unless I suffer shake Yusuf to propose me El Islam. He and Monsieur du Ruge were here last evening, and we had an Arabic soiree. Monsieur du Ruge speaks admirably, quite like an aleem, and it was charming to see shake Yusuf's pretty look of grateful pleasure at finding himself treated like a gentleman and a scholar by two such eminent Europeans. For I, as a woman, am quite as surprising as even Monsieur du Ruge's knowledge of hieroglyphics and Arabic fausia. It is very interesting to see something of Arabs who have read and have the gentleman ideas. His brother, the Imam, has lost his wife. He was married twenty-two years and won't hear of taking another. I was struck with the sympathy he expressed with the English sultana, as all the uneducated people say, why doesn't she marry again? It is curious how refinement brings out the same feelings under all dispensations. I apologize to Yusuf for inadvertently returning the salam aleikum, peace be with thee, which he said to Omar and which I, as an unbeliever, could not accept. He colored crimson, touched my hand, and kissed his own, quite distressed lest the distinction might wound me. When I think of a young, parsonic prig at home, I shudder at the difference. But Yusuf is superstitious. He told me how someone down the river cured his cattle with water poured over a mushaf, a copy of the Qur'an, and has hinted at writing out a chapter for me to wear as a hagab, an amulet for my health. He is interested in the antiquities and in Mr. Derujay's work, and is quite up to the connection between ancient Egypt and the books of Moses, exaggerating the importance of Sayidna Musa, of course. If I go down to Cairo again, I will get letters to some of the Aleem there from Abid Alwaris, the Imam here, and I shall see what no European but Lane has seen. I think things have altered since his day, and that men of that class would be less inaccessible than they were then. And then a woman who is old, Yusuf guessed me at sixty, and educated does not shock, and does not interest them. All the Europeans here are traitors, and only speak the vulgarest language, and don't care to know, Arab gentleman. If they see anything above their servants, it is only Turks or Arab merchants at times. Don't fancy that I can speak at all decently yet, but I understand a good deal, and stammer out a little. End of Letters 33, read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter 34 of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Austin, Luxor, March 1, 1864. Dearest Mutter, I think I shall have an opportunity of sending letters in a few days by a fast steamer, so I will begin one on the chance and send it by post if the steamer is delayed long. The glory of the climate now is beyond description, and I feel better every day. I go out early, at seven or eight o'clock, on my tiny black donkey, and come into breakfast around ten, and then go out again about four. I want to photograph Yusuf for you, the feelings and prejudices and ideas of a cultivated Arab, as I get at them little by little, are curious beyond compare. It won't do to generalize from one man, of course, but even one gives some very new ideas. The most striking thing is the sweetness and delicacy of feeling, the horror of hurting any one. This must be individual, of course, it is too good to be general. I apologized to him two days ago for inadvertently answering the salam alekum, which he, of course, said to Omar on coming in. Yesterday evening he walked in and startled me by a salam aleki addressed to me. He had evidently been thinking it over, whether he ought to say it to me, and come to the conclusion that it was not wrong. Only it is well for all the creatures of God to speak salam, peace, to each other, said he. Now no uneducated Muslim would have arrived at such a conclusion. Omar would pray, work, lie, do anything for me, sacrifice money even, but I doubt whether he could utter salam alekum to any but a Muslim. I answered as I felt, peace, O my brother, and God bless thee. It was almost as if a Catholic priest had felt impelled by charity to offer the communion to a heretic. I observed that the story of the barber was new to him, and asked if he did not know the thousand and one nights. No, he studied only things of religion, no light amusements were proper for an aleem, elder of religion. We Europeans did not know that, of course, as our religion was to enjoy ourselves, but he must not make merry with diversions or music or drawl stories. See the mutual ignorance of all ascetics? He has a little girl of six or seven, and teaches her to write and to read. No one else, he believes, thinks of such a thing out of Cairo. There many of the daughters of the aleem learn, those who desire it. His wife died two years ago, and six months ago he married again, a wife of twelve years old. Sheikh Yusuf is thirty, he tells me. He looks twenty-two or twenty-three. What a stepmother and what a wife! He can repeat the whole Quran without a book. It takes twelve hours to do it. He has read the Torwat, Old Testament, and the El Andiel, Gospels, of course. Every aleem reads them. The words of Said Naissa are the true faith, but Christians have altered and corrupted their meaning. So we Muslims believe. We are all the children of God. I asked if Muslims call themselves so, or only the slaves of God. Tizal one, children or slaves, does not a good man care for both tenderly alike? Pray observe the Oriental feeling here. Slave is a term of affection, not contempt, and remember the centurion's servant, slave, whom he loved? He had heard from Fadal Pasha how a cow was cured of the prevailing disease in Lower Egypt by water weighed against a Mushaf, copy of the Quran, and had no doubt it was true. Fadal Pasha had tried it. Yet he thinks the Arab doctors know use it all who use verses of the Quran. Madame du Rouge, the great Egyptologue, came here one evening. He speaks Arab perfectly, and delighted Sheikh Yusuf, who was much interested in the translations of the hieroglyphics, and anxious to know if he had found anything about Musa, Moses, or Yusuf, Joseph. He looked pleased and grateful to be treated like a gentleman and a scholar by such an aleem as Monsieur du Rouge, and such a sheikhah as myself. As he acts as clerk to Mustafa, our consular agent, and wears a shabby old brown shirt, or gown, and speaks no English, I daresay he not seldom encounters great slights from sheer ignorance. He produced a bit of old Cufik manuscript, and consulted Monsieur du Rouge as to its meaning, a pretty little bit of flattery in an Arab aleem to a Frenchman, to which the latter was not insensible, I saw. In answer to the invariable questions about all my family, I once told him my father had been a great aleem of the law, and that my mother had got ready his written books and put some lectures in order to be printed. He was amazed, first, that I had a mother, as he told me he thought I was fifty or sixty, and immensely delighted at the idea. God has favoured your family with understanding and knowledge. I wish I could kiss the sheikhah your mother's hand. May God favour her. Maurice's portrait, as usual, he admired fervently, and said one saw his good qualities in his face, a compliment I could have fully returned, as he sat looking at the picture with an affectionate eye, and praying, sato voce, for Elgera, Elgameo, the youth, the beautiful, in the words of the Fatha, O give him guidance and let him not stray into the paths of the rejected. Altogether, something in shake Yusuf reminds me, forcefully, there is the same look of Selene Reinhart, with far less thought in intelligence, indeed little thought, of course, and an additional childlike innocence. I suppose some medieval monks may have had the same look, but no Catholic I have ever seen looked so peaceful or so unpretending. I see in him, like in all people who don't know what doubt means, that easy familiarity with religion. I hear him joke with Omar about Ramadan, and even about Omar's insidious prayers, and he is a frequent and hearty laugher. I wonder whether this gives you any idea of a character new to you. It is so impossible to describe manner which gives so much of the impression of novelty. My conclusion is, the heretical one, that to dream of converting here is absurd, and I will add, wrong. All that is wanted is general knowledge and education, and the religion will clear and develop itself. The elements are identical with those of Christianity, unencumbered, as that has been, with asceticism and intolerance. On the other hand, the creed is simple and there are no priests, a decided advantage. I think the faith has remained wonderfully rational considering the extreme ignorance of those who hold it. I will add Sally's practical remark that, the prayers are a fine thing for lazy people, they must wash first, and the prayer is a capital drill. You would be amazed to hear Sally when Omar does not wake in time to wash, pray, and eat before daybreak now in Ramadan. She knocks at his door and acts as a mu'azin. Come, Omar, get up and pray and have your dinner. The evening meal is breakfast, and the early morning one dinner. Being a light sleeper, she hears the mu'azin, which Omar often does not, and passes on, the prayers is better than sleep in a prose version. Ramadan is a dreadful business, everybody is cross and lazy, no wonder. The camelman quarreled all day under my window yesterday, and I asked what it was all about. All about nothing, it is Ramadan with them, said Omar, laughing. I want to quarrel with someone myself. It is hot today, and thirsty weather. Moreover, I think it injures the health of numbers permanently, but of course it is the thing of most importance in the eyes of the people. There are many who never pray at ordinary times, but few fail to keep Ramadan. It answers to the scotch Sabbath, a comparison also borrowed from Sally. Friday. My friend Salim Effendi has just been here talking about his own affairs and a good deal of theology. He is an immense talker, and I just put Iwas, Yes, and La, No, and Sahi, very true, and learn manners and customs. He tells me he has just bought two black slave women, mother and daughter, from a copped, for about thirty-five pounds the two. The mother is a good cook, and the daughter is for his bed, as his wife does not like to leave Cairo and her boys at school there. It does give one a sort of start to hear a most respectable magistrate tell one such a domestic arrangement. He added that it would not interfere with the citel Kabir, the great lady, the black girl being only a slave, and these people never think they have children enough. Moreover, he said he could not get on with his small pay without having women to keep house, which is quite true here, and women are not respectable in a man's house on other terms. Salim has a high reputation, and is said not to eat the people. He is a hot muscleman, and held forth very much as a very superficial Unitarian might do, evidently feeling considerable contempt for the absurdities as he thinks him of the cops. He was too civil to say Christians, but no hatred, and he is known to show no partiality, only he can't understand how people can believe such nonsense. He is a good specimen of the good, honest, steady-going man of the world Muslim, a strong contrast to the tender piety of dear Sheikh Yusuf, who has all the feelings which we call Christian charity in the highest degree, and whose face is like that of the beloved disciple, but has no inclination for doctrinal harangues like worthy Salim. There is a very general idea among the Arabs that Christians hate the Muslims. They attribute to us the old crusading spirit. It is only lately that Omar has let us see him at prayer for fear of being ridiculed, but now he is sure that is not so. I often find him praying in the room where Sally sits at work, which is a clean, quiet place. Yusuf went and joined him there yesterday evening and prayed with him and gave him some religious instruction quite undisturbed by Sally and her needlework, and I am continually complimented on not hating the Muslims. Yusuf promises me letters to some Alim and Cairo when I go there again, that I might be shown the Asar, the great college. Omar had told him that I refused to go with a Janissary from the consul for fear of giving offense to any very strict Muslims, which astonished him much. He says his friends shall dress me in their women's clothes and take me in. I asked whether, as a concealment of my religion, and he said no, only there were thousands of young men, and it would be more delicate that they should not stare and talk about my face. Salim told me a very pretty grammatical quibble about son and prophet, apropos of Christ, on a verse in the Gospel, depending on the reduplicative sign, Shedda, over one letter. He was just as put out when I reminded him that it was written in Greek, as our amateur theologians are if you say the Bible was not originally composed in English. However, I told him that many Christians in England, Germany, and America did not believe that Said Naesa was God, but only the greatest of prophets and teachers, and that I myself was of that opinion. He at once declared that that was sufficient, and that all such had received guidance and were not among the rejected. How could they be, since Christians only believed the teachings of Aesa, which was true, and not the falsifications of the priests and bishops? The bishops always catch it, as schoolboys say. I was curious to hear whether on the strength of this he would let out any further intolerance against the cops, but he said far less, and far less bitterly, than I have heard from Unitarians, and debited the usual, most commonplace, common-sense kind of arguments on the subject. I fancy it would not be very palatable to many Unitarians to be claimed mere knicks dur knicks as followers of El Islam, but if people really wished to convert in the sense of improving, that door is open and no other. Monday the 7th. The steamers come down already, and will, I suppose, go on to-morrow, so I must finish this letter to go buy it. I have not received any letter for some time, and am anxiously expecting the post. We have now settled into quite warm weather ways, no more going out at midday. It is now broiling, and I have been watching, eight tall fine blacks swimming and capering about, their skins shining like otters fur when wet. They belong to a Galab, a slave-dealer's boat. The beautiful thing is to see the men and boys at work among the green corn, the men half-naked and the boys wholly so. In the sun their brown skins look just like dark clouded amber, semi-transparent, so fine are they. I rejoice to say that on Wednesday is Biram, and to-morrow Ramadan dies. Omar is very thin and yellow and head-a-key, and every one is cross. How I wish I were going, instead of my letter, to see you all, but it is evident that this heat is the thing that does me good, if anything will. And of Letter Thirty-Four, read by Cibela Denton, all LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Thirty-Five of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Luxor, March 7, 1864 Dearest Alec, The real hot weather, speaking after the manner of the English, has begun, and the fine sun and clear air are delicious and reviving. My cough fades away, and my strength increases slowly. One can no longer go out in the middle of the day, and I mount my donkey early and late, with little ock-met trotting beside me. In the evenings comes my dear Sheikh Yusuf, and I blunder through an hour's dictation, and reading of the story of the barber's fifth brother, he with the basket of glass. I presume that Yusuf likes me, too, for I am constantly greeted with immense cordiality by graceful men in green turbines, belonging, like him, to the holy family of Sheikh Abu El-Hajjaj. They inquire tenderly after my health, and pray for me, and hope I am going to stay among them. You would be much struck here with the resemblance to Spain, I think. Cosas de España is exactly the Shogal el Arab, and Don Fulano is the Arabic word fulan, such a one, as ojala is inshallah. Plays God. The music and dancing here, too, are Spanish, only more so, and much more. March 10, 1864 Yesterday was Biram, and on Tuesday evening everybody who possessed a gun or a pistol banged away. Every drum and tarabuka was thumped, and all the children hollered, Ramadan mat, Ramadan mat, Ramadan's dead, about the streets. At daybreak Omar went to the early prayer, a special ceremony of the day. There were crowds of people, so as it was useless to pray and preach in the mosque, Sheikh Yusuf went out upon a hillock in the burying-ground, where they all prayed and he preached. Omar reported the sermon to me, as follows, it is all extempore. Yusuf pointed to the graves, where are all those people, and to the ancient temples, where are those who built them? Do not strangers from a far country take away their corpses to wonder at? What did their splendor avail them, et cetera, et cetera? What then, O Muslims, will avail that you may be happy when that comes which will come for all? Truly, God is just and will defraud no man, and he will reward you if you do what is right, and that is, to wrong no man, either in person, nor in his family, nor in his possessions. Cease then to cheat one another, O men, and to be greedy, and do not think that you can make amends by afterwards giving alms, or praying, or fasting, or giving gifts to the servants of the mosques. Benefits come from God, it is enough for you if you do no injury to any man, and above all to any woman or little one. Of course it was much longer, but this was the substance, Omar tells me. Pretty sound morality, too, methinks, and might be preached with one advantage to a meeting of philanthropists in Exeter Hall. There is no predestination in Islam, and every man will be judged upon his actions. Even unbelievers God will not defraud, says the Quran. Of course a belief in meritorious work leads to the same sort of superstition as among Catholics, the endeavor to make one's soul by alms, fastings, endowments, et cetera. For use of stress upon doing no evil seems to me very remarkable, and really profound. After the sermon all the company assembled rushed on him to kiss his head, and his hands and his feet, and mobbed him so fearfully that he had to lay about him with the wooden sword which is carried by the officiating alim. He came to wish me the customary good wishes soon after, and looked very hot and tumbled, and laughed heartily about the awful kissing he had undergone. All the men embrace on meeting on the festival of Baram. The kitchen is full of cakes, ring-shaped, which my friends have sent me, just as we see offered to the gods in the temples and tombs. I went to call on the Ma'un in the evening and found a lot of people dressed in their best. Half were cops, among them a very pleasing young priest who carried on a religious discussion with Salim Effendi, strange to say, with perfect good humor on both sides. A cop came up with his farm-laborer who had been beaten and in the field robbed. The cop stated the case in ten words, and the Ma'un sent off his cavasse with him to apprehend the accused persons who were to be tried at sunrise and beaten, if found guilty, and forced to make good the damage. General Hay called yesterday a fine old blue-eyed soldier. He found a lot of fellowheans sitting with me enjoying coffee and pipes hugely, and they were much gratified at our pressing them not to move or disturb themselves when they all started up in dismay at the entrance of such a grand-looking Englishman and got off the carpet. So we told them that in our country the business of a farmer was looked upon as very respectable, and that the general would ask his farmers to sit and drink wine with him. Mush'ala Tayyib Khatir. It is the will of God and most excellent, said old Omar, my fellow friend, and kissed his hand to General Hay quite affectionately. We English are certainly liked here. Salim said yesterday evening that he had often to do business with them and found them always dogry, straight men, of one word and of no circumlocations, and so unlike all the other Europeans and especially the French. The fact is, that few but decent English come here, I fancy our scamps go to the colonies, whereas Egypt is the sink for all iniquity in the south of Europe. A worthy copter here, one Todoris, took a piece of paper for twenty pounds for antiquities sold to an Englishman, and after the Englishman was gone, brought it to me to ask what sort of paper it was, and how he could get it changed, or was he perhaps to keep it till the gentlemen sent him the money? It was a circular note, which I had difficulty in explaining, but I offered to send it to Cairo to Briggs's and get it cashed, as to when he would get the money I could not say, as they must wait for a safe hand to send gold by. I told him to put his name on the back of the note, and Todoris thought I wanted it as a receipt for the money which was yet to come, and was going cheerfully to write me a receipt for the twenty pounds he was entrusting to me. Now, a cop is not at all green where his pocket is concerned, but they will take anything from the English. I do hope no swindler will find it out. Mr. Close told me that when his boat sank in the cataract, and he remained half-dressed on the rock, without a farthing, four men came and offered to lend him anything. While I was in England last year, an Englishman to whom Omar acted as La Croix de Plus went away owing him seven pounds for things bought. Omar had money enough to pay all the tradespeople, and kept it secret for fear any of the other Europeans should say, shame for the English, and did not even tell his family. Only the man sent the money by the next mail from Malta, and the shake of the dregomans proclaimed it, and so Omar got it, but he would never have mentioned it else. This concealing of evil is considered very meritorious, and where women are concerned positively a religious duty. Le scandale assi qui fait l'enfance is very much the notion in Egypt, and I believe that very forgiving husbands are commoner here than elsewhere. The whole idea is found on the verse of the Qur'an, incessantly quoted, The woman is made for the man, but the man is made for the woman. Ergo, the obligations to chastity are equal. Ergo, as the men find it difficult, they argue that the women do the same. I have never heard a woman's misconduct spoken of without a hundred excuses. Perhaps her husband had slave girls, perhaps he was old or sick, or she didn't like him, or she couldn't help it. But love comes by the visitation of God, as our juries say, the man or woman must satisfy it or die. A poor young fellow is now in the Miraston, the madhouse of Cairo, owing to the beauty and sweet tongue of an English lady whose servant he was. How could he help it? God sent the calamity. I often hear of Lady Ellenborough, who is married to the Sheik el Arab of Palmyra, and lives at Damascus. The Arabs think it inhuman of English ladies to avoid her. Perhaps she has repented. At all events she is married and lives with her husband. I ask Domar if he would tell his brother if he saw his wife do anything wrong, and be he can't endure her. Certainly not. I must cover her with my cloak. I am told also that among the Arabs of the desert, the real Arabs, when a traveler, tired and way-worn, seeks their tents, it is the duty of his host, generally the Sheik, to send him into the harem and leave him there three days, with full permission to do as he will after the women have bathed and rubbed and refreshed him. But he must never speak of that harem, they are to him as his own, to be reverenced. If he spoke, the husband would kill him, but the Arab would never do it for a European, because all Europeans are so hard upon women, and do not fear God and conceal their offenses. If a dancing girl were pence, the most respectable man may and does marry her, and no one blames or laughs at him. I believe all this leads to a good deal of irregularity, but certainly the feeling is amiable. It is impossible to conceive how startling it is to a Christian to hear the rules of morality applied with perfect impartiality to both sexes, and to hear Arabs who know our manners talk of the English as being jealous and hard upon their women. Any unchastity is wrong and haram, unlawful, but equally so in men and women. Salim Effendi talked in this strain, and seemed to incline to greater indulgence to women on the score of their ignorance and weakness. Remember I only speak of Arabs. I believe the Turkish ideas are different, as is their whole harem system, and Egypt is not the rule for all Muslims. Saturday the Twelfth. I dined last night with Mustafa, who again had the dancing girls for some Englishmen to see. Salim Effendi got the doctor, who was of the party, to prescribe for him, and asked me to translate to him all about his old stomach as coolly as possible. He as usual sat by me on the divan, and during the pause in the dancing called El Magrebiyah the best dancer to come and talk. She kissed my hand, sat on her heels before us, and at once laid aside the professional Galear dyes of manner, and talked very nicely in very good Arabic, and with perfect propriety, more like a man than a woman. She seemed very intelligent. What a thing we should think it for a worshipful magistrate to call up a girl of that character to talk to a lady! Yesterday we had a strange and unpleasant day's business. The evening before I had my pocket picked in Karnak by two men who hung about me, one to sell a bird, the other of the regular loafers who hang about the ruins to beg, and sell water or curiosities, and who are all a lazy bad lot, of course. I went to Salim who wrote at once to the Sheikh El-Beled of Karnak to say that we should go over next morning at eight o'clock to investigate the affair, and desire him to apprehend the men. Next morning Salim fetched me, and Mustafa came to represent English interests, and as we wrote out of Luxor the Sheikh El-Arabda joined us, with four of his tribe with their long guns, and a lot more with lances. He was a volunteer and furious at the idea of a lady and a stranger being robbed. It is the first time it has happened here, and the desire to beat was so strong that I went to act as consul for the prisoner. Everyone was peculiarly savage that it should have happened to me, a person well known to be so friendly to El-Musulmin. When we arrived we went into a square enclosure with a sort of cloister on one side, spread with carpets where we sat, and the wretched fellows were brought in chains. To my horror I found that they had been beaten already. I remonstrated, what if you had beaten the wrong men? Malaysh, never mind, we will beat the whole village until your purse is found. I said to Mustafa, this won't do, you must stop this. So Mustafa ordained, with the concurrence of the Ma'un, that the Sheikh El-Beled and the Gafiya, the keeper of the ruins, should pay me the value of the purse. As the people of Karnak are very troublesome in begging and worrying I thought this would be a good lesson to the said Sheikh to keep better order, and I consented to receive the money, promising to return it and to give a Napoleon if ever the purse comes back with his contents, three-and-a-half Napoleons. The Sheikh El-Arabda harangued the people on their ill behavior to Harimat, called them Harami, rascals, and was very high and mighty to the Sheikh El-Beled. Hereupon I went away to visit a Turkish lady in the village, leaving Mustafa to settle. After I was gone they beat eight or ten of the boys who had mobbed me and begged with the two men. Mustafa, who does not like the stick, stayed to see that they were not hurt, and so far it will be a good lesson to them. He also had the two men sent over to the prison here, for fear the Sheikh El-Beled should beat them again and will keep them here for a time. So far so good, but my fear now is that the innocent people will be squeezed to make up the money, if the men do not give up the purse. I have told Sheikh Yusuf to keep watch on how things go, and if the men persist in the theft and don't return the purse I shall give the money to those whom the Sheikh El-Beled will assuredly squeeze, or else to the mosque of Karnak. I cannot pocket it, though I thought it quite right to exact the fine as a warning to the Karnak Möbey Suje. As we went home the Sheikh El-Arabda, such a fine fellow he looks, came up and rode beside me and said, I know you are a person of kindness, do not tell this story in this country. If Effendina Ismail Pasha comes to here, he may take a broom and sweep away the village. I exclaimed in horror, and Mustafa joined at once in the request and said, do not tell anyone in Egypt. The Sheikh El-Arabda is quite true, it may cost many lives. The whole thing distressed me horribly. If I had not been there they would have beaten right and left, and if I had shown any desire to have anyone punished evidently they would have half killed the two men. Mustafa behaved extremely well. He showed sense, decision, and more feelings of humanity than I at all expected of him. Pray do as I begged you, try to get him paid. Some of the consuls in Cairo are barely civil, and old Mustafa has all the bother and work of the whole of the Nile boats, eighty-five this winter, and he is boundlessly kind and useful to the English, and a real protection against cheating, etc. End of Letter Thirty-Five, read by Subella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Thirty-Six of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Mr. Tom Taylor, March 16, 1864 Dear Tom, I cannot tell you how delighted I was to hear that all had gone well with Laura and your little daughter. Masha'Allah, God bless her. When I told Omar that a friend like my brother, as Arabs say, had got a baby, he proposed to illuminate our house and fire off all the pistols in the premises. Pray give my kind love and best wishes to Laura. I am living here a very quiet, dreamy sort of life in hot thieves, visiting a little among my neighbors and learning a little Arabic from a most sweet, gentle young shake who preaches on Fridays in the Mosque of Luxor. I wish I could draw his soft, brown face and graceful, brown-draped figure, but if I could he is too devout, I believe, to permit it. The police magistrate, Al-Mu'an Salim Afendi, is also a great friend of mine, and the Qadi is civil but a little scornful to heretical Harim, I think. It is already very hot, and the few remaining travelers dahabiyas are now here on their way down the river. After that I shall not see a white face for many months except Sally's. Shake Yousuf laughed so heartily over a print in an illustrated paper from a picture of Hilton's of Rebecca at the Well with the old Vakil of C. D. Ibrahim, Abraham's chief servant, kneeling before the girl he was sent to fetch like an old fool without his turban, and Rebecca and the other girls in queer fancy dresses and the camels with snouts like pigs. If the painter could not go to Esham, Syria, to see how the Arab Bedouin really looked, said Shake Yousuf, why did he not paint a well in England with girls like English peasants? At least it would have looked natural to English people, and the Vakil would not seem so like a Majnun, a madman, if he had taken off a hat. I cordially agreed with Yousuf's art criticism. Fancy pictures of eastern things are hopelessly absurd and fancy poems, too. I have got hold of a stray copy of Victor Hugo's Orientales, and I think I never laughed more in my life. The corn is now full-sized here, but still green. In twenty days we'll be harvest, and I am to go to the harvest-home of a fellow friend of mine in a village a mile or two off. The crop is said to be unusually fine. Old Nile always pays back the damage he does when he rises so very high. The real disaster is the cattle disease, which still goes on I hear lower down. It has not at present spread above Minia, but the destruction has been fearful. I more and more feel the difficulty of quite understanding of people so unlike ourselves. The more I know them, I mean. One thing strikes me, that like children they are not conscious of the great gulf which divides educated Europeans from themselves. At least I believe it is so. We do not attempt to explain our ideas to them, but I cannot discover any such reticence in them. I wonder whether this has struck people who can talk fluently and know them better than I do. I find they appeal to my sympathy and trouble quite comfortably, and talk of religious and other feelings apparently as freely to each other. In many respects they are more unprejudiced than we are, and very intelligent and very good in many ways, and yet they seem so strangely childish, and I fancy I detect that impression in even Lane's book, though he does not say so. If you write to me, dear Tom, please address me care of Briggs and company Cairo. I shall be so glad to hear of you and yours. Janet is going to England. I wish I were going too, but it is useless to keep trying a hopeless experiment. At present I am very comfortable in health as long as I do nothing and the weather is warm. I suffer little pain, only I feel weak and weary. I have extensive practice in the doctoring line, bad eyes, of course, abound. My love to Watts and give greetings to any other of my friends, I grieve over Thackeray much and more over his girls' lonely sort of position. I think you would enjoy, as I do, the peculiar sort of social equality which prevails here. It is the exact contrary of French égalité. There are the great and powerful people, much honored, outwardly at all events, but nobody has inferior's. A man comes in and kisses my hand and sits down off the carpet out of respect. But he smokes his pipe, drinks his coffee, laughs, talks, and asks questions as freely as if he were an offender or I were a fella. He is not my inferior, he is my poor brother. The servants in my friend's house receive me with profound demonstrations of respect and wait at dinner reverently, but they mix freely in the conversation and take part in all amusements, music, dancing girls, or reading of the Quran. Even the dancing girl is not an outcast. She is free to talk to me, and it is highly irreligious to show any contempt or aversion. The rules of politeness are the same for all. The passerby greets the one sitting still, or the one who comes into a room, those who are already there, without distinction of rank. When I have greeted the men they always rise, but if I pass without they take no notice of me. All this is very pleasant and graceful, though it is connected with much that is evil. The fact that any man may be a Bey or a Pasha tomorrow is not a good fact, for the promotion is more likely to fall on a bad slave than on a good or intelligent free man. Thus the only honorable class are those who have nothing to hope from the great. I won't say anything to fear, for all have cause for that. Hence the high respectability and gentility of the merchants, who are the most independent of the government. The English would be a little surprised at Arab judgments of them. They admire our veracity and honesty and like us on the whole, but they blame the men for their conduct to women. They are shocked at the way Englishmen talk about harem among themselves and think the English hard and unkind to their wives and to women in general. English haremat is generally highly approved, and an Arab thinks himself happy if he can marry an English girl. I have had an offer for Sally from the chief man here for his son, proposing to allow her a free exercise of her religion and customs as a matter of course. I think the influence of foreigners is much more real and much more useful on the Arabs than on the Turks, though the latter show it more in dress, etc. But all the engineers and physicians are Arabs and very good ones, too. What a Turk has learnt anything practical, and the Dregomans and servants employed by the English have learnt a strong appreciation of the value of a character for honesty, deserve it or no, but many do deserve it. Compared to the couriers and laquice de pus of Europe, these men stand very high. Omar has just run in to say a boat is going, so good-bye and God bless you. End of letter 36 Read by Subella Denton. All Libravox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit Libravox.org. Letter 37 Of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for Libravox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon, Luxor, March 22, 1864. Dearest Alec, I am glad my letters amuse you. Sometimes I think they must breathe the unutterable dullness of Eastern life, not that it is dull to me, a curious spectator, but how the men with nothing to do can endure it is a wonder. I went yesterday to call on a Turk at Karnak. He is a gentlemanly man, the son of a former mutter, who was murdered, I believe, for his cruelty and extortion. He has one thousand fettins, acres, or a little more, of land, and lives in a mud-house, larger but no better than any fellas, with two wives and the brother of one of them. He leaves the farm to his fellow heen altogether, I fancy. There was one book, a Turkish one, I could not read the title page, and he did not tell me what it was. In short, there was no means of killing time but the Nargile, no horse, no gun, nothing, and yet they did not seem bored. The two women are always clamorous for my visits, and very noisy, and school-girlish, but apparently excellent friends and very good natured. The gentleman gave me a kufya, thick-head kerchief for the woman, so I took the ladies a bit of silk I happened to have. You never heard anything like his raptures over Maurice's portrait. Masha'la, masha'la, wahali ze ilwar. It is the will of God, and by God he is like a rose. But I can't cotton to the Turks. I always feel that they secretly dislike us European women, though they profess huge admiration and pay personal compliments, which in Arab very seldom attempts. I heard Salim Effendi and Omar discussing English ladies one day lately while I was inside the curtain with Salim's slave-girl, and they did not know I heard them. Omar described Janet and was of the opinion that a man who was married to her could want nothing more. By my soul she rides like a bedouin, she shoots with the gun and pistol, and rose the boat. She speaks many languages, works with the needle like an effrite, and to see her hands run over the teeth of the music-bots, keys of piano amazes the mind, while her singing glads the soul. How then should her husband ever desire the coffee-shop? Wahali, she can always amuse him at home. And as to my lady, the thing is not that she does not know. When I feel my stomach tightened I go to the divan and say to her, Do you want anything, a pipe or sherbet or so-and-so? And I talk till she lays down her book and talks to me, and I question her and amuse my mind. And by God, if I were a rich man and could marry one English harem like that, I would stand before her and serve her like a mem-look. You see, I am only this lady's servant, and I have not once sat in the coffee-shop because of the sweetness of her tongue. Is it not therefore true that the man who can marry such harem is rich more than with money? Salim seemed disposed to think a little more of looks, though he quite agreed with all Omar's enthusiasm, and asked if Janet were beautiful. Omar answered with decorous vagueness that she was a moon, but declined mentioning her hair, eyes, etc. It is a liberty to describe a woman minutely. I nearly laughed out at hearing Omar relate his maneuvers to make me amuse his mind. It seems I am in no danger of being discharged for being dull. The weather has set in so hot that I have shifted my quarters out of my fine-room to the south-west, into one with only three sides, looking over a lovely green view to the northeast, with a huge short of solid veranda, as large as the room itself, on the open side. Thus I live in the open air altogether. The bats and the swallows are quite sociable, I hope the serpents and scorpions will be more reserved. El Khamasin, the Fifty, has begun, and the wind is enough to mix up heaven and earth, but it is not distressing like the Cape Southeaster, and, though hot, not choking like the Khamasin in Cairo and Alexandria. They brought me a handful of the new wheat just now. Think of harvest in March and April. These winds are as good for the crops here as a nice steady rain did in England. It is not necessary to water so much when the wind blows strong. As I rode through the green fields along the dike, a little boy sang as he turned round on the musically creaking saquilla, the waterwheel turned by an ox, the one eternal saquilla tune. The words are ad libidima, and my little friend chanted, turn osakia to the right and turn to the left, who will take care of me if my father dies. Turn osakia, etc., poor water for the figs and the grass and for the watermelons. Turn osakia, nothing is so pathetic as that sakia song. I passed the house of the sheikh El Ababda, who called out to me to take coffee. The moon was splendid and the scene was lovely. The handsome black-brown sheikh in dark robes and white turban, Omar in a graceful white gown and red turban, and the wild Ababda in all manner of dingy white rags, and with every kind of uncouth weapon, spears, match-locks, etc., in every kind of wild and graceful attitude, with their long black ringlets and bare heads, a few little brown black children quite naked and shaped like cupids. And there we sat, and looked so romantic and talked quite like ladies and gentlemen about the merits of sakna and almas, the two great rival women-singers of Cairo. I think the sheikh wished to display his experiences of fashionable life. The cops are now fasting and cross. They fast fifty-five days for lent, no meat, fish, eggs, or milk, no exception for Sundays, no food till after twelve at noon, and no intercourse with the hareen. The only comfort is lots of Iraq, and what a cop can carry decently is an unknown quantity. One seldom sees them drunk, but they imbibe awful quantities. They offer me wine and a rock, always, and can't think why I don't drink it. I believe they suspect my Christianity and consequence of my preference for Nile water. As to that, though, they scorn all heretics, i.e., all Christians but themselves and the Abyssinians, more than they do the Muslims, and dislike them more. The procession of the Holy Ghost question divides us all with the gulf of Jehanem. The gardener of this house is a copped, such a nice fellow, and he and Omar chafe one another about religion with the utmost good humor. Indeed, they are seldom touchy with the Muslims. There is a pretty little man called Mikael, a copped, vaquil to Monsieur Mounier. I wish I could draw him to show a perfect specimen of the ancient Egyptian race. His blood must be quite unmixed. He came here yesterday to speak to Ali Bey, the mutter of Kenna, who was visiting me, a splendid, handsome Turk he is, so little Mikael crept in to mention his business under my protection, and a few more followed, till Ali Bey got tired of holding a derbar in my devan and went away to his boat. You see, the people think the Karbash is not quite so handy with an English spectator. The other day Mustafa Agha got Ali Bey to do a little job for him, to let the people in Ghazira, the island, which is Mustafa's property, work at a canal there instead of at the canal higher up for the Pasha. Very well, but down comes the Nazir, the Moudir's sub, and Karbash's the whole Ghazira, not Mustafa, of course, but the poor fellow heen who were doing his corvée instead of the Pashas by the Moudir's order. I went to the Ghazira and thought that Moses was at work again, and had killed a first-born in every house by the crying and wailing, when up came two fellows and showed me their bloody feet, which their wives were crying over like for a death. Shurgel el-Misr, things of Egypt, like Kossas de Spanya. Last night I boredshake Yusuf with Antara and Abu Zaid, maintaining the greater valor of Antara, who slew ten thousand for the love of Iblah. You know Antara. Yusuf looks down on such profanities and replied, What are Antara and Abu Zaid compared to the combats of our Lord Moses with Agh and other infidels of might? And what is the love of Antara for Iblah compared to that of our Lord Solomon for Balkees, Queen of Sheba, or their beauty and attractiveness to that of our Lord Joseph? And then he relayed the combat of Said Namusa with Agh, and I thought, Hear, O ye Puritans, and give ear, O ye Methodists, and learn how religion and romance are one to those whose manners and ideas are the manners and ideas of the Bible, and how Moses was not at all a crop-eared Puritan but a gallant warrior. There is the Homeric element in the religion here. The prophet is a hero like Achilles, and like him directed by God, Allah instead of Athena. He fights, prays, teaches, makes love, and is truly a man, not an abstraction, and as to wonderful events, instead of telling one to gulp them down without looking, as children are told with the nasty dose, and as we are told about Genesis, etc., they believe them and delight in them, and tell them to amuse people. Such a piece of deep-disguised skepticism as creed-o-quia impossibla would find no favor here. What is impossible to God settles everything. In short, Muhammad has somehow left the stamp of romance on the religion, or else it is in the blood of people, though the Quran is prosy and commonsensical compared to the Old Testament. I used to think the Arabs intensely prosaic till I could understand a little of their language, but now I can trace the genealogy of Don Coyote straight up to some Sheikh el-Arab. A fine, handsome woman with a lovely baby came to me the other day. I played with the baby and gave it a cotton handkerchief for its head. The woman came again yesterday to bring me a little milk and some salad as a present, and to tell my fortune with date-stones. I laughed, and so she contented herself with telling Omar about his family, which he believed implicitly. She is a clever woman, evidently, and a great sable here. No doubt she has faith in her own predictions. She told Madame Mounier, who is eleven-teen, that she would never have a child and was forbidden the house accordingly, and the prophecy has come true. Superstition is wonderfully infectious here. The fact is that the Arabs are so intensely impressionable and so cowardly about inspiring any ill-will that if a man looks a-scans at them, it is enough to make them ill, and as calamities are not infrequent, there is always some mishap ready to be laid to the charge of somebody's eye. Omar would feign have had me say nothing about the theft of my purse, for fear the Karnak people should hate me and give me the eye. A part of the boasting about property, etc., is politeness, so that one may not be supposed to be envious of one's neighbor's nice things. My Saka, water-carrier, admired my bracelet yesterday, as he was watering the veranda floor, and instantly told me of all the gold necklaces and earrings he had bought for his wife and daughters, that I might not be uneasy and fear his envious eye. He is such a good fellow. For two shillings a month he brings up eight or ten huge skins of water from the river a day, and never begs or complains, always merry and civil. I shall enlarge his back-sheesh. There are a lot of camels who sleep in the yard under my veranda. They are pretty and smell nice, but they growl and swear at night abominably. I wish I could draw you an Egyptian farm-yard, men, women, and cattle, but what no one can draw is the amber light, so brilliant and so soft, not like the caped diamond sunshine at all, but equally beautiful, hotter, and less dazzling. There is no glare in Egypt like the south of France, and I suppose in Italy. Thursday. I went yesterday afternoon to the island again to see the crops, and show Sally my friend farmer Omar's house and Mustafa's village. Of course we had to eat, and did not come home till the moon had long risen. Mustafa's brother, Abdul-Rakman, walked about with us, such a noble-looking man, tall, spare, dignified and active, gray-bearded and hard-featured, but as lithe and bright-eyed as a boy, scorning any conveyance but his own feet, and quite dry while we ran down. He was like Boaz, the wealthy gentleman peasant, nothing except the biblical characters give any idea of the rich fella. We sat and drank new milk in a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, the lodge is a neat hut of palm branches, and saw the moon rise over the mountains and light up everything like a softer sun. Here you see all colors as well by moonlight as by day, hence it does not look as brilliant as the Kate Moon, or even as I have seen in Paris, where it throws sharp black shadows and white light. The night here is a tender, subdued, dreamy, sort of enchanted looking day. My Turkish acquaintance from Karnak has just been here, he boasted of his house in Damascus, and invited me to go with him after the harvest here, also of his beautiful wife in Syria, and then begged me not to mention her to his wives here. It is very hot now, what will it be in June? It is now eighty-six degrees in my shady room at noon. It will be hotter at two or three. But the mornings and evenings are delicious. I am shedding my clothes by degrees, stockings are unbearable. Meanwhile my cough is almost gone, and the pain is quite gone. I feel much stronger, too, the horrible feeling of exhaustion has left me. I suppose I must have salamander blood in my body to be made lively by such heat. Sally is quite well. She does not seem at all the worse at present. Saturday. This will go to-morrow by some travellers, the last winter swallows. We went together yesterday to the tombs of the kings on the opposite bank. The mountains were red-hot, and the sun went down into a mentee all on fire. We met Mr. Dumitian, the German, who was living in the temple of Dyer el-Bari, translating inscriptions, and went down Belzoni's tomb. Mr. Dumitian translated a great many things for us which were very curious, and I think I was more struck with the beauty of the drawing of the figures than last year. The face of the goddess of the western shore, a mentee, Athor or Hecate, is ravishing as she welcomes the king to her regions. Death was never painted so lovely. The road is a long and most wild one, truly through the valley of the shadow of death, not an insect nor a bird. Our moonlight ride home was beyond belief beautiful. The Arabs who followed us were immensely amused at hearing me interpret between German and English, and at my speaking Arabic, they asked if I was Dregoman of all the languages in the world. One of them had droll theories about Amalika, America, as they pronounce it always. Was the king very powerful that the country was called Al-Melaka, the kings? I said, No, all our kings there. You would be a king like the rest. My friend disapproved utterly. If all our kings, then must be taking away every man the other's money, a delightful idea of the kingly vocation. When we landed on the opposite shore, I told Little Ahmed to go back in the ferry-boat in which he had brought me over my donkey, a quarter of an hour after I saw him by my side. The guide asked why he had not gone as I told him. Who would take care of the lady? The monkey is rainy size. Of course he got tired, and on the way home I told him to jump up behind me and croupé after the fellow-fashion. I thought the Arabs would never have done laughing in saying Wala and Mashallah. Sheikh Yusuf talked about the excavations, and is shocked at the way the mummies are kicked about. One boy told him they were not Muslims as an excuse, and he rebuked him severely and told him it was haram, a cursed, to do so to the children of Adam. He says they have learned it very much of Mariette Baye, but I suspect it was always so with the fellow-heen. May a tremendous wind is blowing, excellent for the corn. At Mustapha's farm they are preparing for the harvest, baking bread and selecting a young bull to be killed for the reapers. It is not hot today, only eighty-four degrees in a cool room. The dust is horrid with this high wind. Everything is gritty and it obscures the sun. I am desired to eat a raw onion every day during the com-scene for health and prosperity. This too must be a remnant of ancient Egypt. How I do long to see you and the children. Sometimes I feel rather down-hearted, but it is no good to say all that, and I am much better and stronger. I stood a long ride and some scrambling quite well last evening. End of LETTER XXXVII. Read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. LETTER XXXVIII. Of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon. Luxor. April 6, 1864. Dearest Alec. I received yours of March 10th two days ago, one also from Hecchion Bay, much advising me to stay here the summer and get my disease evaporated. Since I last wrote The Great Heat Abated, and now we have seventy-six to eighty degrees, with strong north breezes of the river, glorious weather, neither too hot nor chilly at any time. Last evening I went out to the threshing floor to see the stately oxen treading out the corn, and sucked there with Abdul Rahman on roasted corn, sour cream, and eggs, and saw the reapers take their wages, each a bundle of wheat according to the work he had done, the most lovely sight. The graceful half-naked brown figures loaded with sheaves, some had earned so much that their mothers or wives had to help carry it, and little fawn-like, stark-naked boys trudged off, so proud of their little bundles of wheat, or of hummus, sort of vetch, much eaten both green and roasted. The sacca, water-carrier, who has brought water for the men, gets a handful from each, and drives home his donkey with empty water-skins and a heavy load of wheat, and the barber, who has shaved all these brown heads on credit this year, gets his past pay, and everyone is cheerful and happy in their gentle, quiet way. Here is no beer to make men sweaty and noisy and vulgar. The harvest is the most exquisite pastoral you can conceive. The men work seven hours in the day, i.e. eight, with half-hours to rest and eat, and seven more during the night. They go home at sunset to dinner, and sleep a bit, and then to work again, these lazy Arabs. The man who drives the oxen on the threshing floor gets a measure and a half for his day and night's work of thresh corn, I mean. As soon as the wheat, barley, adas, lentils, and hummus are cut, we shall sow dura of two kinds, common maize and Egyptian, and plant sugarcane and later cotton. The people work very hard, but here they eat well, and being paid in corn they get the advantage of the high price of corn this year. I told you how my purse had been stolen and the proceedings therein't. Well, Mustafa asked me several times what I wished to be done with a thief, who spent twenty-one days here in Irons. With my absurd English ideas of justice I refused to interfere at all, and Omar and I had quite a tiff because he wished me to say, oh, poor man, let him go, I leave the affair to God. I thought Omar observed, but it was I who was wrong. The authorities concluded that it would oblige me very much if the poor devil were punished with a rigor beyond the law, and had not shake use of come and explained the nature of the proceedings. The man would have been sent up to the mines in Fazaglo for life, out of civility to me, by the mutter of Kenna, Ali Bey. There was no alternative between my forgiving him for the love of God or sending him to a certain death by a climate insupportable to these people. Mustafa and company tried hard to prevent shake use of from speaking to me, for fear I should be angry and complain at Cairo if my vengeance were not wreaked on the thief, but he said he knew me better and brought the process verbal to show me. Finally my dismay, I went to Salim Effendi and to the Qadi with shake use of, and begged the man might be let go, and not sent to Kenna at all. Having settled this, I said that I had thought it right that the people of Karnak should pay the money I had lost, as a fine for their bad conduct to strangers, but that I did not require it for the sake of the money, which I would accordingly give to the poor of Luxor in the mosque and in the church. Great applause from the crowd. I asked how many were Muslim and how many Nazrini in order to divide the three Napoleons in a half according to the numbers. Shake use of awarded one Napoleon to the church, two to the mosque, and the half to the water-drinking place, the Sebel, which was also applauded. I then said, Shall we send the money to the bishop? But a respectable elderly cop said, Malkish, never mind, better give it all to shake use of, he will send the bread to the church. And the coddy made me a fine speech, and said I had behaved like a great Amira, and one that feared God, and Shake use of said that he knew the English had mercy in their stomachs, and that I especially had Muslim feeling, as we say Christian charity. Did you ever hear of such a state of administration of justice? Of course sympathy here, as in Ireland, is mostly with the poor man in prison, in trouble, as we say. I find that accordingly a vast number of disputes are settled by private arbitration, and use of is constantly sent for to decide between contending parties, who abide by his decision rather than go to law, or else five or six respectable men are called upon to form a sort of amateur jury, and to settle the matter. In a criminal case, if the prosecutor is powerful, he has it all his own way. If the prisoner can bribe high, he is apt to get off. All the appealing to my compassion was quite unregale. Another trait of Egypt. The other day we found all our water jars empty and our house unsprinkled. On inquiry it turned out that the Sakkas had all run away, carrying with them their families and goods, and were gone no one knew whither, in consequence of some persons having authority, one, a Turkish Kawas, policeman, having forced them to fetch water for building purposes, at so low a price that they could not bear it. My poor Saka is gone without a home-month's pay, two shillings, the highest pay by far given in Luxor. I am interested in another story. I hear that a plucky woman here has been to Kenna and threatened the mutter that she will go to Cairo and complain to Effendina himself of the unfair drafting for soldiers, her only son taken while others have bribed off. She'll walk in this heat all the way unless she succeeds in frightening the mutter, which, as she is of the more spirited sex in this country, she may possibly do. You see, these Saides are a bit less patient than lower Egyptians. The Sakkas can strike, and a woman can face a mutter. You would be amused at the bazaar here. There is a barber, and on Tuesdays some beads, calico, and tobacco are sold. The only artisan is a jeweler. We spin and weave our own brown woolen garments and have no other wands, but gold necklaces and nose and earrings are indispensable. It is the safest way of hoarding and happily combines saving with ostentation. Can you imagine a house without beds, chairs, tables, cups, glasses, knives, in short, with nothing but an oven, a few pipkins and water jars, and a couple of wooden spoons and some mats to sleep on? And yet people are happy and quite civilized who live so. An Arab cook with his fingers and one cooking-pot will serve you an excellent dinner quite miraculously. The simplification of life possible in such a climate is not conceivable unless one has seen it. The Turkish ladies, whom I visit at Karnak, have very little more. They are very fond of me, and always want me to stay and sleep. But how could I sleep in my clothes on a mat-devan, poor-spoiled European that I am? But they pity and wonder far more at the absence of my master. I made a bad slip of the tongue and said my husband before Abul Rafia, the master of the house. The ladies laughed and blushed tremendously, and I felt very awkward, but they turned the tables on me in a few minutes by some questions they had asked quite coolly. I hardly know what I shall have to do, if the heat does not turn overpowering I shall stay here. If I cannot bear it I must go down the river. I asked Omar if he could bear a summer here, so dull for such a young man fond of a little coffee-shop and gossip, for that if he could not he might go down for a time and join me again, as I could manage with some man here. He absolutely cried, kissed my hands, and declared he was never so happy as with me, and he could not rest if he thought I had not all I wanted. I am your mem-look, not your servant, your mem-look. I really believe that these people sometimes love their English masters better than their own people. Omar certainly has shown the greatest fondness for me on all occasions. End of Letter XXXVIII. Read by Cibela Denton. All Libravox files are in the public domain. For more information, please visit Libravox.org. Letter XXXIX of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for Libravox.org into the public domain. To Mrs. Ross Luxor, April 7th, 1864. Dearest Janet, I have continued very fairly well. We had great heat ten days ago, now it is quite cool. Harvesting is going on, and I never did see in any dream so lovely a sight as the whole process. And the quaintance of mine, one Abdu-Rachman, is Boaz, and as I sat with him on the threshing floor and ate roasted corn, I felt quite puzzled as to whether I were really alive or only existing in an imagination in the Book of Ruth. It is such a Kiev that one enjoys under the palm trees, with such a scene. The harvest is magnificent here, I never saw such crops. There is no cattle disease, but a good deal of sickness among the people. I have to practice very extensively, and often feel very anxious, as I cannot refuse to go to the poor souls and give them medicine, with sore misgivings all the while. Fancy that Hecchie and Bay can't get me an Arabic dictionary in Cairo. I'm a centelundan, I suppose, which seems hardly worthwhile. I wish you could see my teacher, Sheikh Yusuf. I never before saw a pious person amiable and good like him. He is intensely devout and not at all bigoted, a difficult combination, and moreover he is lovely to behold and has the prettiest and merriest laugh possible. It is quite curious to see the mixture of a sort of learning with utter ignorance and great superstition and such perfect high-breeding and beauty of character. It is exactly like associating with St. John. I want dreadfully to be able to draw or to photograph. The group at the sheikh El Ababdaz last night was ravishing, all but my ugly hat and self. The black ringlets and dirty white drapery and obsolete weapons, the graceful, splendid sheikh, black but beautiful like the shellomite, I thought of Antar and Abu Zayed. Give my salam to Madame Tastu, and ask her whether I may stay on here, or if I go downstream during the heat, whether I may return next winter, in which case I might leave some of my goods. Hekekian strongly advises me to remain here, and thinks the heat will be good. I will try. Eighty-eight degrees seem to agree with me wonderfully. My cough is better. End of Letter Thirty-Nine, read by Cibela Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Letter Forty of Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucy Duff Gordon. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon Luxor, April Fourteenth, 1864 Dearest Alec, I have but this moment received your letter of the Eighteenth March, which went after Janet, who was hunting at Tel Elkebir. We have had a tremendous comsine wind, and now strong north wind, quite fresh and cool. The thermometer was ninety-two degrees during the comsine, but it did me no harm. Unfortunately I am very well, for I am worked hard, as a strange epidemic has broken out, and I am the Hakimah, doctoress of Luxor. The Hakim Pasha from Cairo came up and frightened the people, telling them it was catching, and Yusuf forgot his religion so far as to beg me not to be all day in the people's huts. But Omar and I despised the danger, I feeling sure it was not infectious, and Omar saying Min Allah. The people get stoppage of the bowels, and die in eight days unless they are physical. All who have sent for me in time have recovered. Alhamdulillah that I can help the poor souls. It is harvest, and the hard work, and the spell of intense heat, and the green corn, beans, etc., which they eat, brings on the sickness. Then the cops are fasting from all animal food, and full of green beans and salad, and green corn. Yusufah tried to persuade me not to give physic, for fear those who died should pass for being poisoned, but Omar and I are sure it is only to excuse his own selfishness. Omar is an excellent assistant. The bishop tried to make money by hinting that if I forbade my patients to fast, I might pay for their indulgence. One poor, peevish little man refused the chicken broth, and told me that we Europeans had our heaven in this world. Omar let out Kelb, dog, but I stopped him and said, Oh my brother, God has made the Christians of England, unlike those of Egypt, and surely will condemn neither of us on that account. May us thou find a better heaven hereafter than I now enjoy here. Omar threw his arms round me and said, Oh, thou good one, surely our Lord will reward thee for acting thus with the meekness of a Muslimah, and kissing the hand of him who strikes thy face. See how each religion claims humility? Suleiman was not pleased at his fellow Christians' display of charity. It does seem strange that the cops of the lower class will not give us the blessing or thank God for our health like the Muslims. Most of my patients are Christians, and some are very nice people indeed. The people here have named me city, lady, nor ala noor. A poor woman whose only child, a young man, I was happy enough to cure when dreadfully ill, kissed my feet, and asked by what name to pray for me. I told her my name meant noor, light luxe, but as that was one of the names of God I could not use it. Thy name is noor ala noor, said a man who was in the room. That means something like God is upon thy mind, or light from the light, and noor ala noor it remains, a combination of one of the names of God is quite proper, like Abdullah, Abdur-Aqman, etc. I begged some medicines from a countess, Braniski, who went down the other day. When all is gone I don't know what I shall do. I am going to try to make castor oil. I don't know how, but I shall try, and Omar fancies he can manage it. The cattle disease has also broken out desperately up in Esna, and we see the dead beasts float down all day. Of course we shall soon have it here. Sunday, April 17. The epidemic seems to be over, but there is still a great deal of gastric fever, etc., about. The haqeem from Kenna has just been here, such a pleasing, clever young man, speaking Italian perfectly, and French extremely well. He is the son of some fellow of Lower Egypt, sent to study at Pisa, and has not lost the Arab gentility and elegance by a frangy education. We fraternized greatly, and the young haqeem was delighted at my love for his people, and my high opinion of their intelligence. He has gone now to inspect the sick, and is to see me again and give me directions. He was very unhappy that he could not supply me with medicines. None are to be bought above Cairo, except from the hospital doctors, who sell the medicines of the government as the Italian at Siou did. But Ali Effendi is too honest for that. The old bishop paid me a visit of three-and-a-half hours yesterday, and poor Metire um Carrot he sent me a loaf of sugar, so I must send a present for the church to be consumed in Raqi. The old party was not very sober and asked for wine. I coolly told him it was haram forbidden to us to drink during the day, only with our dinner. I will never give the Christians drink here, and now they have left off pressing me to drink spirits at their houses. The bishop offered to alter the hour of prayer for me, and to let me into the heck-hill where women must not go on Good Friday, which will be eighteen days hence. All of which I refused, and said I would go on the roof of the church and look down through the windows with the other haramot. Omar kissed the bishop's hand, and I said, What, do you kiss his hand like a copte? Oh, yes, he is an old man and a servant of my God, but dreadful of dirty, added Omar, and it was too true. His presence diffused a fearful, monastic odor of sanctity. A bishop must be a monk, as priests are married. Monday. Today Ali Effendi el-Hakim came to tell me how he had been to try to see my patience and failed. All the families declared they were all well and would not let him in. Such is the deep distrust of everything to do with the government. They all waited till he was gone away, and then came again to see me with their ailments. I scolded, and they all said, Wala, Ya Sid, Ya Emira, that is the Hakim Pasha, and he would send us off to hospital at Kenna, and then they would poison us. By thy eyes do not be angry with us, or leave off from having compassion on us on this account. I said, Ali Effendi is an Arab and a Muslim and an Amir, gentlemen, and he gave me good advice, and would have given more, etc. No use at all. He is the government doctor, and they had rather die, and will swallow anything from El City nor Al Anor. Here is a pretty state of things. I gave Sheikh Yusuf four pounds for three months' daily lessons last night, and had quite a contest to force it upon him. It is not for money, old lady, and he colored crimson. He had been about with Ali Effendi, but could not get the people to see him. The cops I find have a religious prejudice against him, and indeed against all heretics. They consider themselves and the Abyssinians as the only true believers. If they acknowledge us as brethren, it is for money. I speak only of the low class and of the priests. Of course the educated merchants are very different. I had a priest and two deacons, and the mother of one, here to-day, for physics for the woman. She was very pretty and pleasing, miserably reduced and weak from the long fast. I told her she must eat meat and drink a little wine and take cold baths, and gave her quinine. She will take the wine and the quinine, but neither eat nor wash. The bishop tells them they will die if they break the fast, and half the Christians are ill from it. One of the priests spoke a little English. He fabricates false antiques very cleverly, and is tolerably sharp. But, oh, mon Dieu, it is enough to make one turn Muslim to compare these greasy robes with such high-minded, charitable Sharifa, noblemen, as Abid El-Waris and Sheikh Yusuf. A sweet little copty boy who is very ill will be killed by the stupid bigotry about the fast. My friend Suleyman is much put out, and bats my exhortations to the sick to break it. He is a capital fellow and very intelligent, and he and Omar are like brothers. It is the priests who do all they can to keep alive religious prejudice. Alhamdulillah they are only partially successful. Muhammad has just heard that seventy-five head of cattle are dead at Al-Mantana. Here only a few have died as yet, and Ali Effendi thinks the disease less virulent than in lower Egypt. I hope he is right, but dead beasts float down the river all day long. To turn to something more amusing, but please don't tell it, such a joke against my gray hairs. I have had a proposal, or at least an attempt at one. A very handsome Sheikh el-Arab, Bedouin, was here for a bit, and asked Omar whether I were a widow or divorced, as in either case he would send a Delilah marriage-brokress to me. Omar told him that I would never do. I had a husband in England. Besides, I was not young, had a married daughter, my hair was gray, et cetera. The sheikh swore he didn't care I could dye my hair and get a divorce, that I was not like stupid modern women but an ancient Arab emirah, and worthy of Antar, or Abu Zaid, a woman for whom men killed each other or themselves, and he would pay all he could afford as my dowry. Omar came in in fits of laughter at the idea, and the difficulty he had in stopping the Delilah's visit. He told the sheikh I should certainly beat her I should be so offended. The disregard of differences of age here on marriage is very strange. My adorer was not more than thirty, I am sure. To tell people, my dear Alec, it is so very absurd, I should be ashamed before the people. Saturday, April 23. Alhamdulillah, the sickness is going off. I have just heard Suleiman's report as follows. Hassan Abu Ahmed kisses the emirah's feet, and the bullets have cleaned his stomach six times, and he has said the fatah for the lady. The two little girls who had diarrhea are well. The Christian dire has vomited his powder in once another. The mother of the Christian cook who married the priest's sister has got dysentery. The harem of Mustafa Abu Abed has two children with bad eyes. The bishop had a quarrel and scolded and fell down and cannot speak or move. I must go to him. The young deacons jaundice is better. The slave girl of Khashid Agha is sick, and Khashid is sitting at her head in tears. The women say I must go to her, too. She is a fine young Turk, and very good to his haremat. That is all. Suleiman has got nothing on earth to do and brings me a daily report. He likes the gossip and the importance. The ra'is of a cargo-boat brought me up your lafontein and some papers and books from Hekeke and Bay. Sheikh Yusuf is going down to Cairo to try to get back some of the lands which Muhammad Ali took away from the masjid and the yulema without compensation. He asked me whether Ras would speak for him to Effendina. What are the muslims coming to? As soon as I can read enough he offers to read in the Quran with me. A most unusual proceeding, as the noble Quran is not generally put into the hands of heretics. But my charity to the people in sickness is looked upon by Abid El-Waris, the Imam, and by Yusuf as a proof that I have received direction, and I am one of those Christians of whom Syedna Muhammad, upon whose name be peace, has said that they have no pride, that they rival each other in good works, and that God will increase their reward. There is no acclair-pensée of conversation that they think hopeless, but charity covers all sins with muslims. Next Friday is the Jima al-Qaibr, Good Friday with the cops, and the prayers are in the daytime, so I shall go to the church. First moon is the great Biram, el-Eid al-Qaibr, the great festival with the muslims, the commemoration of the sacrifice of Isaac or Ishmael, commentators are uncertain which, and Omar will kill a sheet for the poor for the benefit of his baby, according to custom. I have at length compassed the destruction of my enemy, though he has not written a book. A fanatical Christian dog, Quaterped, belonging to the Coptic family who live on the opposite side of the yard, hated me with such virulent intensity that, not content with barking at me all day, he howled at me all night, even after I had put out the lantern and he could not see me in bed. Sentence of death has been recorded against him, as he could not be beaten into toleration. Mikael, his master's son, has come down from El-Montana, where he is vaquille to Monsieur Mounier. He gives a fearful account of the sickness there among men in cattle, eight and ten deaths a day. Here we have had only four a day, at the worst, in a population of, I guess, some two thousand. The Mouniers have put themselves in quarantine, and allow no one to approach their house, as Mustafa wanted me to do. One hundred and fifty head of cattle have died at El-Montana, here only a few calves are dead, but as yet no full-grown beasts, and the people are healthy again. I really think I did some service by not showing any fear, and Omar behaved manfully. By the by, will you find out whether a Paso Parto, as they call it, a paper granting British protection, can be granted in England? It is the object of Omar's highest ambition to belong as much as possible to the English, and feel safe from being forced to serve a Turk. If it can be done by any coaxing and jobbling, pray, do it, for Omar deserves any service I can render him in return for all his devotion and fidelity. Someone tried to put it into his head that it was haram to be too fond of us heretics and be faithful, but he consulted Sheikh Yusuf, who promised him a reward hereafter for good conduct to me, and who told me of it as a good joke, adding that he was Raghil Amin, the highest praise for fidelity, the subrequette of the Prophet. Do not be surprised at my lack of conscious and desiring to benefit my own follower in Calconk Modo. Justice is not of Eastern growth, and Europeo is your only wear, and here it is only base not to stick by one's friends. Omar kisses the hands of the C. D. Elkeber, the great master, and desires his best salam to the little master and the little lady whose servant he is. He asks if I, too, do not kiss Eskender Bey's hand in my letter, as I ought to do as his harem, or whether I make myself big before my master, like some French ladies he has seen. I tell him I will do so if Eskender Bey will get him his Suaraq, paper, whereupon he picks up the hem of my gown and kisses that, and I civilly expostulate on such condescension to a woman. Yusuf is quite puzzled about European women, and a little shocked at the want of respect to their husbands they display. I told him that the outward respect shown to us by our men was our veil, and explained how superficial the difference was. He fancied that the law gave us the upper hand. In our reports yesterday's sermon on toleration, it appears, Yusuf took the text of Thou shalt love thy brother as thyself, and never act towards him but as thou wouldst, he would act towards thee. I forget chapter and verse, but it seems he took the bull by the horns and declared all men to be brothers, not Muslim men only, and desired his congregation to look at the good deeds of others and not at their erroneous faith, for God is all-knowing, i.e. He only knows the heart, and if they saw ought amiss to remember that the best man needs say, Astaghfir Allah, I beg pardon of God seven times a day. I wish the English could know how unpleasant and mischievous their manner of talking to their servants about religion is. Omar confided to me how bad it felt to be questioned, and then to see the Englishman laugh or put up his lip and say nothing. I don't want to talk about his religion at all, but if he talks about mine he ought to speak of his own, too. You, my lady, say, when I tell you things, that is the same with us, or that is different, or good, or not good in your mind, and that is the proper way not to look like thinking all nonsense. Esna, Saturday, April 30. On Thursday evening, as I was dreamily sitting on my devan, who should walk in but Arthur Taylor, on his way, all alone in a big dahabiya to Edfu. So I offered to go to, whereupon he said he would go to Aswan and see Filay as he had company, and we went off to Mustafa to make a bargain with his raiz for it. Thus then here we are at Esna. I embarked on Wednesday evening, and we have been two days all root. Yesterday we had the thermometer at one hundred and ten. I was the only person awake all day in the boat. Omar, after cooking, lay panting at my feet on the deck. Omar went fairly to bed in the cabin, ditto, sally. All the crew slept on the deck. Omar cooked amphibiously, bathing between every meal. The silence of noon with the white heat glowing on the river which flowed like liquid tin, and the silent Nubian rough boats floating down without a ripple was magnificent and really awful. Not a breath of wind as we lay under the lofty bank. The Nile is not quite so low, and I see a very different scene from last year. People think us crazy to go up to Aswan in May. But I do enjoy it, and I really wanted to forget all the sickness and sorrow in which I have taken part. When I went to Mustapha's he said Shake Yousuf was ill, and I said then I won't go. But Yousuf came in with a sick headache only. Mustapha repeated my words to him, and I never did see such a lovely expression in a human face as that with which Yousuf said, Aya, sit! Mustapha laughed, and told him to thank me, and Yousuf turned to me and said, in a low voice, My sister does not need thanks, save from God. Fancy a Sharif, one of the Ulima, calling a Frangea sister. His pretty little girl came in and played with me, and he offered her to me for Maurice. I cured Khashid's Abyssinian slave girl. You would have laughed to see him obeying my directions and wiping his eyes on his golden broidered sleeve. And then the Coptic priest came to me for his wife who was ill. He was in a great quandary, because if she died he as a priest could never marry again, as he loudly lamented before her, but he was truly grieved, and I was very happy to leave her convalescent. Barely we are sorely visited. The dead cattle float down by thousands. Monsieur Mounier buried a thousand at El Montana alone, and lost forty men. I would not have left Luxor, but there were no new cases for four days before, and the worst had been over for full ten days. Newer three poor people brought me new bread and vegetables to the boat when they saw me going, and Yusuf came down and sat with us all evening and looked quite sad. Omar asked him why, and he said it made him think how it would seem when, in shala, should be well, and should leave my place empty at Luxor, and go back with the blessing of God to my own place and to my own people, whereupon Omar grew quite sentimental too, and nearly cried. I don't know how Arthur would have managed without us, before he had come with two Frenchmen who had proper servants and who left the boat at Girga, and he has a wretched, little dirty idiotic Coptic tailor as a servant who can't even sew on a button. It is becoming quite a calamity about servants here. Arthur tells me that men not fit to light Omar's pipe, asked him ten pounds a month in Cairo and would not take less, and he gives his copped four pounds. I really feel as if I were cheating Omar to let him stay on for three pounds, but if I say anything he kisses my hand and tells me not to be cross. I have letters from Yusuf to people at Aswan. If I want anything I am to call in the Qadi. We have a very excellent boat and a good crew and are very comfortable. When the Luxor folk heard the son of my uncle was come, they thought it must be my husband. I was diverted at Omar's propriety. He pointed out to Mustafa and Yusuf how he was to sleep in the cabin between Arthur's and mine, which was considered quite satisfactorily, apparently, and was looked upon as very proper of Omar to have arranged it so, as he had been sent to put the boat in order. Arthur has been all along the Suez Canal and seen a great many curious things. The delta must be very unlike Upper Egypt from all he tells me. The little troop of pilgrims from Mecca lucked Luxor about ten days ago. It was a pretty and touching sight. Three camels, five donkeys, and about thirty men and women, several with babies on their shoulders, all uttering the Zagareeth cry of joy. They were to walk to Cozer, eight days' journey with good camels, babies and all. It is the happiest day of their lives, they say, when they have scraped together money enough to make the hajj. This minute a poor man is weeping beside our boat over a pretty heifer decked with many hagubs, amulets, which have not availed her against the sickness. It is heart-rending to see the poor beasts and their unfortunate owners. Some dancing girls came to the boat just now for cigars, which Arthur had promised them, and to ask after their friend El Magravia, the good dancer at Luxor, whom they said was very ill. Omar did not know at all about her, and the girls seemed very much distressed. They were both very pretty, one and Abyssinian. I must leave off to send this to the post. It will cost a fortune, but she won't grudge it. And of Letter 40, read by Cibella Denton. All LibriVox files are in the public domain. For more information,