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

say I, 'take the money, and see, oh man, that the paint is of the best, or thy backsheesh will be bad also.' Well, he begins and then rushes in to say: 'Come oh Bey, oh Pasha! and behold the brilliancy of the white paint, like milk, like glass, like the full moon.' I go and say, 'Mashallah! but now be so good as to work fast, for my son will be here in a few days, and nothing is ready.' Fatal remark. 'Mashallah! Bismillah! may the Lord spare him, may God prolong thy days, let me advise thee how to keep the eye from him, for doubtless thy son is beautiful as a memlook of 1,000 purses. Remember to spit in his face when he comes on board, and revile him aloud that all the people may hear thee, and compel him to wear torn and dirty clothes when he goes out:--and how many children hast thou, and our master, thy master, and is he well?' etc. etc. '_Shukr Allah_! all is well with us,' say I; 'but, by the Prophet, paint, oh _Ma-alim_ (exactly the German _Meister_) and do not break my head any more.' But I was forced to take refuge at a distance from Hajj' Alee's tongue. Read the story of the Barber, and you will know exactly what Ma-alim Hajj' Alee is. Also just as I got out of my boat and he had begun, the painter whom I had last year and with whom I was dissatisfied, went to the Sheykh of the painters and persuaded him to put my man in prison for working too cheap--that was at daybreak. So I sent up my Reis to the Sheykh to inform him that if my man did not return by next day at daybreak, I would send for an European painter and force the Sheykh to pay the bill. Of course my man came.

My steersman Hassan, and a good man, Hoseyn, who can wash and is generally nice and pleasant, arrived from el-Bastowee a few days ago, and are waiting here till I want them. Poor little ugly black Hassan has had his house burnt down in his village, and lost all the clothes which he had bought with his wages; they were very good clothes, some of them, and a heavy loss. He is my Reis's brother, and a good man, clean and careful and quiet, better than my Reis even--they are a respectable family. Big stout Hazazin owes me 200 piastres which he is to work out, so I have still five men and a boy to get. I hope a nice boy, called Hederbee (the lizard), will come. They don't take pay till the day before we sail, except the Reis and Abdul Sadig, who are permanent. But Hassan and Hoseyn are working away as merrily as if they were paid. People growl at the backsheesh, but they should also remember what a quantity of service one gets for nothing here, and for which, oddly enough, no one dreams of asking backsheesh. Once a week we shift the anchors, for fear of their silting over, and six or eight men work for an hour; then the mast is lowered--twelve or fourteen men work at this--and nobody gets a farthing.

The other day Omar met in the market an 'agreeable merchant,' an Abyssinian fresh from his own country, which he had left because of the tyranny of Kassa, alias Todoros, the Sultan. The merchant had brought his wife and concubines to live here. His account is that the mass of the people are delighted to hear that the English are coming to conquer them, as they hope, and that everyone hates the King except two or three hundred scamps who form his bodyguard. He had seen the English prisoners, who, he says, are not ill-treated, but certainly in danger, as the King is with difficulty restrained from killing them by the said scamps, who fear the revenge of the English; also that there is one woman imprisoned with the native female prisoners. Hassan the donkeyboy, when he was a _marmiton_ in Cairo, knew the Sultan Todoros, he was the only man who could be found to interpret between the then King of Abyssinia and Mohammed Ali Pasha, whom Todoros had come to visit. The merchant also expressed a great contempt for the Patriarch, and for their _Matraam_ or Metropolitan, whom the English papers call the _Abuna_. _Abuna_ is Arabic for 'our father.' The man is a Cairene Copt and was a hanger-on of two English missionaries (they were really Germans) here, and he is more than commonly a rascal and a hypocrite. I know a respectable Jew whom he had robbed of all his merchandise, only Ras Alee forced the _Matraam_ to disgorge. Pray what was all that nonsense about the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem writing to Todoros? what could he have to do with it? The Coptic Patriarch, whose place is Cairo, could do it if he were forced.

At last my boat is finished, so to-morrow Omar will clean the windows, and on Saturday move in the cushions, etc. and me, and on Sunday go to Alexandria. I hear the dreadful voice of Hajj' Alee, the painter, outside, and will retire before he gets to the cabin door, for fear he should want to bore me again. I do hope Maurice will enjoy his journey; everyone is anxious to please him. The Sheykh of the Hawara sent his brother to remind me to stop at his 'palace' near Girgeh, that he might make a fantasia for my son. So Maurice will see real Arab riding, and jereed, and sheep roasted whole and all the rest of it. The Sheykh is the last of the great Arab chieftains of Egypt, and has thousands of fellaheen and a large income. He did it for Lord Spencer and for the Duke of Rutland and I shall get as good a fantasia, I have no doubt. Perhaps at Keneh Maurice had better not see the dancing, for Zeyneb and Latefeeh are terribly fascinating, they are such pleasant jolly girls as well as pretty and graceful, but old Oum ez-Zeyn (mother of beauty), so-called on account of his hideousness, will want us to eat his good dinner.


October 21, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

_URANIA_, BOULAK,
_October_ 21, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

So many thanks for the boxes and their contents. My slaves are enchanted with all that the 'great master' has sent. Darfour hugged the horsecloth in ecstasy that he should never again be cold at night. The waistcoats of printed stuff, and the red flannel shirts are gone to be made up, so my boys will be like Pashas this winter, as they told the Reis. He is awfully perturbed about the evil eye. 'Thy boat, _Mashallah_, is such as to cause envy from all beholders; and now when they see a son with thee, _Bismillah_! _Mashallah_! like a flower, verily. I fear, I fear greatly from the eye of the people.' We have bought a tambourine and a tarabouka, and are on the look-out for a man who can sing well, so as to have fantasia on board.

_October_ 22.--I hear to-day that the Pasha sent a telegram _hochst eigenhandig_ to Koos, in consequence whereof one Stefanos, an old Copt of high character, many years in Government employ, was put in chains and hurried off within twenty minutes to Fazoghlou with two of his friends, for no other crime than having turned Presbyterian. This is quite a new idea in Egypt, and we all wonder why the Pasha is so anxious to 'brush the coat' of the Copt Patriarch. We also hear that the people up in the Saaed are running away by wholesale, utterly unable to pay the new taxes and to do the work exacted. Even here the beating is fearful. My Reis has had to send all his month's wages to save his aunt and his sister-in-law, both widows, from the courbash. He did not think so much of the blows, but of the 'shame'; 'those are women, lone women, from whence can they get the money?'


November 3, 1867: Mrs. Ross

_To Mrs. Ross_.

BOULAK,
_November_ 3, 1867.

DEAREST JANET,

Maurice arrived on Friday week, and is as happy as can be, he says he never felt so well and never had such good snipe shooting. Little Darfour's amusement at Maurice is boundless; he grins at him all the time he waits at table, he marvels at his dirty boots, at his bathing, at his much walking out shooting, at his knowing no Arabic. The dyke burst the other day up at Bahr Yussuf, and we were nearly all swept away by the furious rush of water. My little boat was upset while three men in her were securing the anchor, and two of them were nearly drowned, though they swim like fish; all the dahabiehs were rattled and pounded awfully; and in the middle of the _fracas_, at noonday, a steamer ran into us quite deliberately. I was rather frightened when the steamer bumped us, and carried away the iron supports of the awning; and they cursed our fathers into the bargain, which I thought needless. The English have fallen into such contempt here that one no longer gets decent civility from anything in the _Miri_ (Government).

Olagnier has lent us a lovely little skiff, and I have had her repaired and painted, so Maurice is set up for shooting and boating. Darfour calls him the 'son of a crocodile' because he loves the water, and generally delights in him hugely, and all my men are enchanted with him.


December 20, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

LUXOR,
_December_ 20, 1867.

DEAREST ALICK,

We arrived here all safe three days ago. I think of starting for Nubia directly after Christmas Day, which we must keep here. We have lovely weather. Maurice is going with a friend of my friends, a Bedawee, to shoot, I hope among the Abab'deh he will get some gazelle shooting. I shall stop at Syaleh to visit the Sheykh's mother, and with them Maurice could go for some days into the desert. As to crocodiles, Inshallah, we will eat their hearts, and not they ours. You may rely on it that Maurice is 'on the head and in the eye' of all my crew, and will not be allowed to bathe in 'unclean places.' Reis Mohammed stopped him at Gebel Abu'l Foda. You would be delighted to see how different he looks; all his clothes are too tight now. He says he is thoroughly happy, and that he was never more amused than when with me, which I think very flattering.

Half of the old house at Luxor fell down into the temple beneath six days before I arrived; so there is an end of the _Maison de France_, I suppose. It might be made very nice again at a small expense, but I suppose the Consul will not do it, and certainly I shall not unless I want it again. Nothing now remains solid but the three small front rooms and the big hall with two rooms off it. All the part I lived in is gone, and the steps, so one cannot get in. Luckily Yussuf had told Mohammed to move my