Letters from Egypt by Lucy Duff Gordon (management books to read .txt) 📕

night I went to tea in Lord Hopetoun's boat and their sailors gave a grand _fantasia_ excessively like a Christmas pantomime. One danced like a woman, and there was a regular pantaloon only 'more so,' and a sort of clown in sheepskin and a pink mask who was duly tumbled about, and who distributed _claques_ freely with a huge wooden spoon. It was very good fun indeed, though it was quite as well that the ladies did not understand the dialogue, or that part of the dance which made the Maohn roar with laughter. The Hopetouns had two handsome boats and were living like in May Fair. I am so used now to our poor shabby life that it makes quite a strange impression on me to see all that splendour--splendour which a year or two ago I should not even have remarked--and thus out of 'my inward consciousness' (as Germans say), many of the peculiarities and faults of the people of Egypt are explained to me and accounted for.

_April_ 2.--It is so dreadfully hot and dusty that I shall rather hasten my departure if I can. The winds seem to have begun, and as all the land which last year was green is now desert and dry the dust is four times as bad. If I hear that Ross has bought and sent up a dahabieh I will wait for that, if not I will go in three weeks if I can.


April 3, 1865: Mrs. Austin

_To Mrs. Austin_.

LUXOR,
_April_ 3, 1865.

DEAREST MUTTER,

I have just finished a letter to Alick to go by a steamer to-day. You will see it, so I will go on with the stories about the riots. Here is a thing happening within a few weeks and within sixty miles, and already the events assume a legendary character. Achmet et-Tayib is not dead and where the bullets hit him he shows little marks like burns. The affair began thus: A certain Copt had a Muslim slave-girl who could read the Koran and who served him. He wanted her to be his Hareem and she refused and went to Achmet et-Tayib who offered money for her to her master. He refused it and insisted on his rights, backed by the Government, and thereupon Achmet proclaimed a revolt and the people, tired of taxes and oppressions, said 'we will go with thee.' This is the only bit of religious legend connected with the business. But Achmet et-Tayib still sits in the Island, invisible to the Turkish soldiers who are still there.

Now for a little fact. The man who told me fourteen hundred had been beheaded was Hassan Sheykh of the Abab'deh who went to Gau to bring up the prisoners. The boat stopped a mile above Luxor, and my Mohammed, a most quiet respectable man and not at all a romancer went up in her to El-Moutaneh. I rode with him along the Island. When we came near the boat she went on as far as the point of the Island, and I turned back after only looking at her from the bank and smelling the smell of a slave-ship. It never occurred to me, I own, that the Bey on board had fled before a solitary woman on a donkey, but so it was. He told the Abab'deh Sheykh on board not to speak to me or to let me on board, and told the Captain to go a mile or two further. Mohammed heard all this. He found on board 'one hundred prisoners less two' (ninety-eight). Among them the Moudir of Souhaj, a Turk, in chains and wooden handcuffs like the rest. Mohammed took him some coffee and was civil to him. He says the poor creatures are dreadfully ill-used by the Abab'deh and the Nubians (Berberi) who guard them.

It is more curious than you can conceive to hear all the people say. It is just like going back four or five centuries at least, but with the heterogeneous element of steamers, electric telegraphs and the Bey's dread of the English lady's pen--at least Mohammed attributed his flight to fear of that weapon. It was quite clear that European eyes were dreaded, as the boat stopped three miles above Luxor and its dahabiehs, and had all its things carried that distance.

Yussuf and his uncle want to take me next year to Mecca, the good folks in Mecca would hardly look for a heretical face under the green veil of a _Shereefateh_ of Abu-l-Hajjaj. The Hajjees (pilgrims) have just started from here to Cosseir with camels and donkeys, but most are on foot. They are in great numbers this year. The women chanted and drummed all night on the river bank, and it was fine to see fifty or sixty men in a line praying after their Imam with the red glow of the sunset behind them. The prayer in common is quite a drill and very stately to see. There are always quite as many women as men; one wonders how they stand the march and the hardships.

My little Achmet grows more pressing with me to take him. I will take him to Alexandria, I think, and leave him in Janet's house to learn more house service. He is a dear little boy and very useful. I don't suppose his brother will object and he has no parents. Achmet ibn-Mustapha also coaxes me to take him with me to Alexandria, and to try again to persuade his father to send him to England to Mr. Fowler. I wish most heartily I could. He is an uncommon child in every way, full of ardour to learn and do something, and yet childish and winning and full of fun. His pretty brown face is quite a pleasure to me. His remarks on the New Testament teach me as many things as I can teach him. The boy is pious and not at all ill taught, he is much pleased to find so little difference between the teaching of the Koran and the _Aangeel_. He wanted me, in case Omar did not go with me, to take him to serve me. Here there is no idea of its being derogatory for a gentleman's son to wait on one who teaches him, it is positively incumbent. He does all 'menial offices' for his mother, hands coffee, waits at table or helps Omar in anything if I have company, nor will he eat or smoke before me, or sit till I tell him--it is like service in the middle ages.


April 3, 1865: Mrs. Ross

_To Mrs. Ross_.

LUXOR,
_April_ 3, 1865.

DEAREST JANET,

The weather has set in so horrid, as to dust, that I shall be glad to get away as soon as I can. If you have bought a dahabieh for me of course I will await its arrival. If not I will have two small boats from Keneh, whereby I shall avoid sticking in this very low water. Sheykh Hassan goes down in his boat in twenty days and urges me to travel under his escort, as of course the poor devils who are 'out on their keeping' after the Gau business have no means of living left but robbery, and Sheykh Hassan's party is good for seven or eight guns. You will laugh at my listening to such a cowardly proposition (on my part) but my friends here are rather bent upon it, and Hassan is a capital fellow. If therefore the dahabieh is _in rerum naturae_ and can start at once, well and good.

_April_ 14.--The dahabieh sounds an excellent bargain to me and good for you also to get your people to Assouan first. Many thanks for the arrangement.

Your version of our massacre is quite curious to us here. I know very intimately the Sheykh-el-Arab who helped to catch the poor people and also a young Turk who stood by while Fadil Pasha had the men laid down by ten at a time and chopped with pioneers' axes. My Turkish friend (a very good-humoured young fellow) quite admired the affair and expressed a desire to do likewise to all the fellaheen in Egypt. I have seen with my own eyes a second boatload of prisoners. I wish to God the Pasha knew the deep exasperation which his subordinates are causing. I do not like to say all I hear. As to the Ulema, Kadees, Muftis, etc., I know many from towns and villages, and all say 'We are Muslims, but we should thank God to send Europeans to govern us,' the feeling is against the Government and the Turks up here--not against Christians. A Coptic friend of mine has lost all his uncle's family at Gau, all were shot down--Copt and Christian alike. As to Hajjee Sultan, who lies in chains at Keneh and his family up at Esneh, a better man never lived, nor one more liberal to Christians. Copts ate of his bread as freely as Muslims. He lies there because he is distantly related by marriage to Achmet et-Tayib, the real reason is because he is wealthy and some enemy covets his goods.

Ask M. Mounier what he knows. Perhaps I know even more of the feeling as I am almost adopted by the Abu-l-Hajjajeeah, and sit every evening with some party or another of decent men. I assure you I am in despair at all I see--and if the soldiers do come it will be worse than the cattle disease. Are not the cawasses bad enough? Do they not buy in the market at their own prices and beat the sakkas in sole payment for the skins of water? Who denies it here? Cairo is like Paris, things are kept sweet there, but up here--! Of course Effendina hears the 'smooth prophecies' of the tyrants whom he sends up river. When I wrote before I knew nothing certain but now I have eye-witnesses' testimony, and I say that the Pasha deceives or is deceived--I hope the latter. An order from him did stop the slaughter of women and children which Fadil Pasha was about to effect.

To turn to less wretched matters. I will come right down Alexandria with the boat, I shall rejoice to see you again.

Possibly the Abab'deh may come with me and I hope Sheykh Yussuf, 'my chaplain' as Arthur Taylor called him. We shall be quite a little fleet.


April, 1865: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

_April_, 1865.

DEAREST ALEXANDER,

Yesterday was the Bairam I rejoice to say and I have lots of physic to make up, for all the stomachs damaged by Ramadan.

I have persuaded Mr. Fowler the engineer who was with Lord Dudley to take my dear little pupil Achmet son of Ibn Mustapha to learn the business at Leeds instead of idling in his father's house here. I will give the child a letter to you in case he should go to London. He has been reading the gospels with me at his own desire. I refused till I had asked his father's consent, and Sheykh Yussuf who heard me begged me by all means to make him read it carefully so as to guard him against the heretical inventions he might be beset with among the English 'of the vulgar sort.' What a poser for