Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
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William Makepeace Thackeray >> Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
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Another facetious anecdote, the last of those I had from a well-
informed gentleman residing at Cairo, whose name (as many copies of
this book that is to be will be in the circulating libraries there)
I cannot, for obvious reasons, mention. The revenues of the
country come into the august treasury through the means of farmers,
to whom the districts are let out, and who are personally
answerable for their quota of the taxation. This practice involves
an intolerable deal of tyranny and extortion on the part of those
engaged to levy the taxes, and creates a corresponding duplicity
among the fellahs, who are not only wretchedly poor among
themselves, but whose object is to appear still more poor, and
guard their money from their rapacious overseers. Thus the Orient
is much maligned; but everybody cheats there: that is a melancholy
fact. The Pasha robs and cheats the merchants; knows that the
overseer robs him, and bides his time, until he makes him disgorge
by the application of the tremendous bastinado; the overseer robs
and squeezes the labourer; and the poverty-stricken devil cheats
and robs in return; and so the government moves in a happy cycle of
roguery.
Deputations from the fellahs and peasants come perpetually before
the august presence, to complain of the cruelty and exactions of
the chiefs set over them: but, as it is known that the Arab never
will pay without the bastinado, their complaints, for the most
part, meet with but little attention. His Highness's treasury must
be filled, and his officers supported in their authority.
However, there was one village, of which the complaints were so
pathetic, and the inhabitants so supremely wretched, that the Royal
indignation was moved at their story, and the chief of the village,
Skinflint Beg, was called to give an account of himself at Cairo.
When he came before the presence, Mehemet Ali reproached him with
his horrible cruelty and exactions; asked him how he dared to treat
his faithful and beloved subjects in this way, and threatened him
with disgrace, and the utter confiscation of his property, for thus
having reduced a district to ruin.
"Your Highness says I have reduced these fellahs to ruin," said
Skinflint Beg: "what is the best way to confound my enemies, and
to show you the falsehood of their accusations that I have ruined
them?--To bring more money from them. If I bring you five hundred
purses from my village, will you acknowledge that my people are not
ruined yet?"
The heart of the Pasha was touched: "I will have no more
bastinadoing, O Skinflint Beg; you have tortured these poor people
so much, and have got so little from them, that my Royal heart
relents for the present, and I will have them suffer no farther."
"Give me free leave--give me your Highness's gracious pardon, and I
will bring the five hundred purses as surely as my name is
Skinflint Beg. I demand only the time to go home, the time to
return, and a few days to stay, and I will come back as honestly as
Regulus Pasha did to the Carthaginians,--I will come back and make
my face white before your Highness."
Skinflint Beg's prayer for a reprieve was granted, and he returned
to his village, where he forthwith called the elders together. "O
friends," he said, "complaints of our poverty and misery have
reached the Royal throne, and the benevolent heart of the Sovereign
has been melted by the words that have been poured into his ears.
'My heart yearns towards my people of El Muddee,' he says; 'I have
thought how to relieve their miseries. Near them lies the fruitful
land of El Guanee. It is rich in maize and cotton, in sesame and
barley; it is worth a thousand purses; but I will let it to my
children for seven hundred, and I will give over the rest of the
profit to them, as an alleviation for their affliction.'"
The elders of El Muddee knew the great value and fertility of the
lands of Guanee, but they doubted the sincerity of their governor,
who, however, dispelled their fears, and adroitly quickened their
eagerness to close with the proffered bargain. "I will myself
advance two hundred and fifty purses," he said; "do you take
counsel among yourselves, and subscribe the other five hundred; and
when the sum is ready, a deputation of you shall carry it to Cairo,
and I will come with my share; and we will lay the whole at the
feet of His Highness." So the grey-bearded ones of the village
advised with one another; and those who had been inaccessible to
bastinadoes, somehow found money at the calling of interest; and
the Sheikh, and they, and the five hundred purses, set off on the
road to the capital.
When they arrived, Skinflint Beg and the elders of El Muddee sought
admission to the Royal throne, and there laid down their purses.
"Here is your humble servant's contribution," said Skinflint,
producing his share; "and here is the offering of your loyal
village of El Muddee. Did I not before say that enemies and
deceivers had maligned me before the august presence, pretending
that not a piastre was left in my village, and that my extortion
had entirely denuded the peasantry? See! here is proof that there
is plenty of money still in El Muddee: in twelve hours the elders
have subscribed five hundred purses, and lay them at the feet of
their lord."
Instead of the bastinado, Skinflint Beg was instantly rewarded with
the Royal favour, and the former mark of attention was bestowed
upon the fellahs who had maligned him; Skinflint Beg was promoted
to the rank of Skinflint Bey; and his manner of extracting money
from his people may be studied with admiration in a part of the
United Kingdom. {3}
At the time of the Syrian quarrel, and when, apprehending some
general rupture with England, the Pasha wished to raise the spirit
of the fellahs, and relever la morale nationale, he actually made
one of the astonished Arabs a colonel. He degraded him three days
after peace was concluded. The young Egyptian colonel, who told me
this, laughed and enjoyed the joke with the utmost gusto. "Is it
not a shame," he said, "to make me a colonel at three-and-twenty;
I, who have no particular merit, and have never seen any service?"
Death has since stopped the modest and good-natured young fellow's
further promotion. The death of--Bey was announced in the French
papers a few weeks back.
My above kind-hearted and agreeable young informant used to
discourse, in our evenings in the Lazaretto at Malta, very
eloquently about the beauty of his wife, whom he had left behind
him at Cairo--her brown hair, her brilliant complexion, and her
blue eyes. It is this Circassian blood, I suppose, to which the
Turkish aristocracy that governs Egypt must be indebted for the
fairness of their skin. Ibrahim Pasha, riding by in his barouche,
looked like a bluff jolly-faced English dragoon officer, with a
grey moustache and red cheeks, such as you might see on a field-day
at Maidstone. All the numerous officials riding through the town
were quite as fair as Europeans. We made acquaintance with one
dignitary, a very jovial and fat Pasha, the proprietor of the inn,
I believe, who was continually lounging about the Ezbekieh garden,
and who, but for a slight Jewish cast of countenance, might have
passed any day for a Frenchman. The ladies whom we saw were
equally fair; that is, the very slight particles of the persons of
ladies which our lucky eyes were permitted to gaze on. These
lovely creatures go through the town by parties of three or four,
mounted on donkeys, and attended by slaves holding on at the
crupper, to receive the lovely riders lest they should fall, and
shouting out shrill cries of "Schmaalek," "Ameenek" (or however
else these words may be pronounced), and flogging off the people
right and left with the buffalo-thong. But the dear creatures are
even more closely disguised than at Constantinople: their bodies
are enveloped with a large black silk hood, like a cab-head; the
fashion seemed to be to spread their arms out, and give this
covering all the amplitude of which it was capable, as they leered
and ogled you from under their black masks with their big rolling
eyes.
Everybody has big rolling eyes here (unless, to be sure, they lose
one of ophthalmia). The Arab women are some of the noblest figures
I have ever seen. The habit of carrying jars on the head always
gives the figure grace and motion; and the dress the women wear
certainly displays it to full advantage. I have brought a complete
one home with me, at the service of any lady for a masqued ball.
It consists of a coarse blue dress of calico, open in front, and
fastened with a horn button. Three yards of blue stuff for a veil;
on the top of the veil a jar to be balanced on the head; and a
little black strip of silk to fall over the nose, and leave the
beautiful eyes full liberty to roll and roam. But such a costume,
not aided by any stays or any other article of dress whatever, can
be worn only by a very good figure. I suspect it won't be borrowed
for many balls next season.
The men, a tall, handsome, noble race, are treated like dogs. I
shall never forget riding through the crowded bazaars, my
interpreter, or laquais-de-place, ahead of me to clear the way--
when he took his whip, and struck it over the shoulders of a man
who could not or would not make way!
The man turned round--an old, venerable, handsome face, with
awfully sad eyes, and a beard long and quite grey. He did not make
the least complaint, but slunk out of the way, piteously shaking
his shoulder. The sight of that indignity gave me a sickening
feeling of disgust. I shouted out to the cursed lackey to hold his
hand, and forbade him ever in my presence to strike old or young
more; but everybody is doing it. The whip is in everybody's hands:
the Pasha's running footman, as he goes bustling through the
bazaar; the doctor's attendant, as he soberly threads the crowd on
his mare; the negro slave, who is riding by himself, the most
insolent of all, strikes and slashes about without mercy, and you
never hear a single complaint.
How to describe the beauty of the streets to you!--the fantastic
splendour; the variety of the houses, and archways, and hanging
roofs, and balconies, and porches; the delightful accidents of
light and shade which chequer them: the noise, the bustle, the
brilliancy of the crowd; the interminable vast bazaars with their
barbaric splendour. There is a fortune to be made for painters in
Cairo, and materials for a whole Academy of them. I never saw such
a variety of architecture, of life, of picturesqueness, of
brilliant colour, and light and shade. There is a picture in every
street, and at every bazaar stall. Some of these our celebrated
water-colour painter, Mr. Lewis, has produced with admirable truth
and exceeding minuteness and beauty; but there is room for a
hundred to follow him; and should any artist (by some rare
occurrence) read this, who has leisure, and wants to break new
ground, let him take heart, and try a winter in Cairo, where there
is the finest climate and the best subjects for his pencil.
A series of studies of negroes alone would form a picturebook,
delightfully grotesque. Mounting my donkey to-day, I took a ride
to the desolate noble old buildings outside the city, known as the
Tombs of the Caliphs. Every one of these edifices, with their
domes, and courts, and minarets, is strange and beautiful. In one
of them there was an encampment of negro slaves newly arrived:
some scores of them were huddled against the sunny wall; two or
three of their masters lounged about the court, or lay smoking upon
carpets. There was one of these fellows, a straight-nosed ebony-
faced Abyssinian, with an expression of such sinister good-humour
in his handsome face as would form a perfect type of villany. He
sat leering at me, over his carpet, as I endeavoured to get a
sketch of that incarnate rascality. "Give me some money," said the
fellow. "I know what you are about. You will sell my picture for
money when you get back to Europe; let me have some of it now!"
But the very rude and humble designer was quite unable to depict
such a consummation and perfection of roguery; so flung him a
cigar, which he began to smoke, grinning at the giver. I requested
the interpreter to inform him, by way of assurance of my
disinterestedness, that his face was a great deal too ugly to be
popular in Europe, and that was the particular reason why I had
selected it.
Then one of his companions got up and showed us his black cattle.
The male slaves were chiefly lads, and the women young, well
formed, and abominably hideous. The dealer pulled her blanket off
one of them, and bade her stand up, which she did with a great deal
of shuddering modesty. She was coal black, her lips were the size
of sausages, her eyes large and good-humoured; the hair or wool on
this young person's head was curled and greased into a thousand
filthy little ringlets. She was evidently the beauty of the flock.
They are not unhappy: they look to being bought, as many a
spinster looks to an establishment in England; once in a family
they are kindly treated and well clothed, and fatten, and are the
merriest people of the whole community. These were of a much more
savage sort than the slaves I had seen in the horrible market at
Constantinople, where I recollect the following young creature--{2}
(indeed it is a very fair likeness of her) whilst I was looking at
her and forming pathetic conjectures regarding her fate--smiling
very good-humouredly, and bidding the interpreter ask me to buy her
for twenty pounds.
From these Tombs of the Caliphs the Desert is before you. It comes
up to the walls of the city, and stops at some gardens which spring
up all of a sudden at its edge. You can see the first Station-
house on the Suez Road; and so from distance-point to point, could
ride thither alone without a guide.
Asinus trotted gallantly into this desert for the space of a
quarter of an hour. There we were (taking care to keep our back to
the city walls), in the real actual desert: mounds upon mounds of
sand, stretching away as far as the eye can see, until the dreary
prospect fades away in the yellow horizon! I had formed a finer
idea of it out of "Eothen." Perhaps in a simoom it may look more
awful. The only adventure that befell in this romantic place was
that Asinus's legs went deep into a hole: whereupon his rider went
over his head, and bit the sand, and measured his length there; and
upon this hint rose up, and rode home again. No doubt one should
have gone out for a couple of days' march--as it was, the desert
did not seem to me sublime, only UNCOMFORTABLE.
Very soon after this perilous adventure the sun likewise dipped
into the sand (but not to rise therefrom so quickly as I had done);
and I saw this daily phenomenon of sunset with pleasure, for I was
engaged at that hour to dine with our old friend J-, who has
established himself here in the most complete Oriental fashion.
You remember J-, and what a dandy he was, the faultlessness of his
boots and cravats, the brilliancy of his waistcoats and kid-gloves;
we have seen his splendour in Regent Street, in the Tuileries, or
on the Toledo. My first object on arriving here was to find out
his house, which he has taken far away from the haunts of European
civilisation, in the Arab quarter. It is situated in a cool,
shady, narrow alley; so narrow, that it was with great difficulty--
His Highness Ibrahim Pasha happening to pass at the same moment--
that my little procession of two donkeys, mounted by self and
valet-de-place, with the two donkey-boys our attendants, could
range ourselves along the wall, and leave room for the august
cavalcade. His Highness having rushed on (with an affable and
good-humoured salute to our imposing party), we made J.'s quarters;
and, in the first place, entered a broad covered court or porch,
where a swarthy tawny attendant, dressed in blue, with white
turban, keeps a perpetual watch. Servants in the East lie about
all the doors, it appears; and you clap your hands, as they do in
the dear old "Arabian Nights," to summon them.
This servant disappeared through a narrow wicket, which he closed
after him; and went into the inner chambers, to ask if his lord
would receive us. He came back presently, and rising up from my
donkey, I confided him to his attendant (lads more sharp, arch, and
wicked than these donkey-boys don't walk the pave of Paris or
London), and passed the mysterious outer door.
First we came into a broad open court, with a covered gallery
running along one side of it. A camel was reclining on the grass
there; near him was a gazelle, to glad J- with his dark blue eye;
and a numerous brood of hens and chickens, who furnish his liberal
table. On the opposite side of the covered gallery rose up the
walls of his long, queer, many-windowed, many-galleried house.
There were wooden lattices to those arched windows, through the
diamonds of one of which I saw two of the most beautiful, enormous,
ogling black eyes in the world, looking down upon the interesting
stranger. Pigeons were flapping, and hopping, and fluttering, and
cooing about. Happy pigeons, you are, no doubt, fed with crumbs
from the henne-tipped fingers of Zuleika! All this court, cheerful
in the sunshine, cheerful with the astonishing brilliancy of the
eyes peering out from the lattice-bars, was as mouldy, ancient, and
ruinous--as any gentleman's house in Ireland, let us say. The
paint was peeling off the rickety old carved galleries; the
arabesques over the windows were chipped and worn;--the ancientness
of the place rendered it doubly picturesque. I have detained you a
long time in the outer court. Why the deuce was Zuleika there,
with the beautiful black eyes?
Hence we passed into a large apartment, where there was a fountain;
and another domestic made his appearance, taking me in charge, and
relieving the tawny porter of the gate. This fellow was clad in
blue too, with a red sash and a grey beard. He conducted me into a
great hall, where there was a great, large Saracenic oriel window.
He seated me on a divan; and stalking off, for a moment, returned
with a long pipe and a brass chafing-dish: he blew the coal for
the pipe, which he motioned me to smoke, and left me there with a
respectful bow. This delay, this mystery of servants, that outer
court with the camels, gazelles, and other beautiful-eyed things,
affected me prodigiously all the time he was staying away; and
while I was examining the strange apartment and its contents, my
respect and awe for the owner increased vastly.
As you will be glad to know how an Oriental nobleman (such as J--
undoubtedly is) is lodged and garnished, let me describe the
contents of this hall of audience. It is about forty feet long,
and eighteen or twenty high. All the ceiling is carved, gilt,
painted and embroidered with arabesques, and choice sentences of
Eastern writing. Some Mameluke Aga, or Bey, whom Mehemet Ali
invited to breakfast and massacred, was the proprietor of this
mansion once: it has grown dingier, but, perhaps, handsomer, since
his time. Opposite the divan is a great bay-window, with a divan
likewise round the niche. It looks out upon a garden about the
size of Fountain Court, Temple; surrounded by the tall houses of
the quarter. The garden is full of green. A great palm-tree
springs up in the midst, with plentiful shrubberies, and a talking
fountain. The room beside the divan is furnished with one deal
table, value five shillings; four wooden chairs, value six
shillings; and a couple of mats and carpets. The table and chairs
are luxuries imported from Europe. The regular Oriental dinner is
put upon copper trays, which are laid upon low stools. Hence J-
Effendi's house may be said to be much more sumptuously furnished
than those of the Beys and Agas his neighbours.
When these things had been examined at leisure, J- appeared. Could
it be the exquisite of the "Europa" and the "Trois Freres"? A man-
-in a long yellow gown, with a long beard somewhat tinged with
grey, with his head shaved, and wearing on it, first, a white
wadded cotton nightcap; second, a red tarboosh--made his appearance
and welcomed me cordially. It was some time, as the Americans say,
before I could "realise" the semillant J- of old times.
He shuffled off his outer slippers before he curled up on the divan
beside me. He clapped his hands, and languidly called "Mustapha."
Mustapha came with more lights, pipes, and coffee; and then we fell
to talking about London, and I gave him the last news of the
comrades in that dear city. As we talked, his Oriental coolness
and languor gave way to British cordiality; he was the most amusing
companion of the club once more.
He has adapted himself outwardly, however, to the Oriental life.
When he goes abroad he rides a grey horse with red housings, and
has two servants to walk beside him. He wears a very handsome
grave costume of dark blue, consisting of an embroidered jacket and
gaiters, and a pair of trousers, which would make a set of dresses
for an English family. His beard curls nobly over his chest, his
Damascus scimitar on his thigh. His red cap gives him a venerable
and Bey-like appearance. There is no gewgaw or parade about him,
as in some of your dandified young Agas. I should say that he is a
Major-General of Engineers, or a grave officer of State. We and
the Turkified European, who found us at dinner, sat smoking in
solemn divan.
His dinners were excellent; they were cooked by a regular Egyptian
female cook. We had delicate cucumbers stuffed with forced-meats;
yellow smoking pilaffs, the pride of the Oriental cuisine; kid and
fowls a l'Aboukir and a la Pyramide: a number of little savoury
plates of legumes of the vegetable-marrow sort: kibobs with an
excellent sauce of plums and piquant herbs. We ended the repast
with ruby pomegranates, pulled to pieces, deliciously cool and
pleasant. For the meats, we certainly ate them with the Infidel
knife and fork; but for the fruit, we put our hands into the dish
and flicked them into our mouths in what cannot but be the true
Oriental manner. I asked for lamb and pistachio-nuts, and cream-
tarts au poivre; but J.'s cook did not furnish us with either of
those historic dishes. And for drink, we had water freshened in
the porous little pots of grey clay, at whose spout every traveller
in the East has sucked delighted. Also, it must be confessed, we
drank certain sherbets, prepared by the two great rivals, Hadji
Hodson and Bass Bey--the bitterest and most delicious of draughts!
O divine Hodson! a camel's load of thy beer came from Beyrout to
Jerusalem while we were there. How shall I ever forget the joy
inspired by one of those foaming cool flasks?
We don't know the luxury of thirst in English climes. Sedentary
men in cities at least have seldom ascertained it; but when they
travel, our countrymen guard against it well. The road between
Cairo and Suez is jonche with soda-water corks. Tom Thumb and his
brothers might track their way across the desert by those
landmarks.
Cairo is magnificently picturesque: it is fine to have palm-trees
in your gardens, and ride about on a camel; but, after all, I was
anxious to know what were the particular excitements of Eastern
life, which detained J-, who is a town-bred man, from his natural
pleasures and occupations in London; where his family don't hear
from him, where his room is still kept ready at home, and his name
is on the list of his club; and where his neglected sisters tremble
to think that their Frederick is going about with a great beard and
a crooked sword, dressed up like an odious Turk. In a "lark" such
a costume may be very well; but home, London, a razor, your sister
to make tea, a pair of moderate Christian breeches in lieu of those
enormous Turkish shulwars, are vastly more convenient in the long
run. What was it that kept him away from these decent and
accustomed delights?
It couldn't be the black eyes in the balcony--upon his honour she
was only the black cook, who has done the pilaff, and stuffed the
cucumbers. No, it was an indulgence of laziness such as Europeans,
Englishmen, at least, don't know how to enjoy. Here he lives like
a languid Lotus-eater--a dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life. He
was away from evening parties, he said: he needn't wear white kid
gloves, or starched neckcloths, or read a newspaper. And even this
life at Cairo was too civilised for him: Englishmen passed
through; old acquaintances would call: the great pleasure of
pleasures was life in the desert,--under the tents, with still more
nothing to do than in Cairo; now smoking, now cantering on Arabs,
and no crowd to jostle you; solemn contemplations of the stars at
night, as the camels were picketed, and the fires and the pipes
were lighted.
The night-scene in the city is very striking for its vastness and
loneliness. Everybody has gone to rest long before ten o'clock.
There are no lights in the enormous buildings; only the stars
blazing above, with their astonishing brilliancy, in the blue
peaceful sky. Your guides carry a couple of little lanterns which
redouble the darkness in the solitary echoing street. Mysterious
people are curled up and sleeping in the porches. A patrol of
soldiers passes, and hails you. There is a light yet in one
mosque, where some devotees are at prayers all night; and you hear
the queerest nasal music proceeding from those pious believers. As
you pass the madhouse, there is one poor fellow still talking to
the moon--no sleep for him. He howls and sings there all the
night--quite cheerfully, however. He has not lost his vanity with
his reason: he is a Prince in spite of the bars and the straw.
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