Warner Charles Dudley
My Winter on the Nile
CHAPTER XXXIII.—THE KHEDIVE
WHAT excitement there is in adjacency to a great city! To hear its inarticulate hum, to feel the thrill of its myriads, the magnetism of a vast society! How the pulse quickens at the mere sight of multitudes of buildings, and the overhanging haze of smoke and dust that covers a little from the sight of the angels the great human struggle and folly. How impatient one is to dive into the ocean of his fellows.
The stir of life has multiplied every hour in the past two days. The river swarms with boats, the banks are vocal with labor, traffic, merriment. This morning early we are dropping down past huge casernes full of soldiers—the bank is lined with them, thousands of them, bathing and washing their clothes, their gabble filling the air. We see again the lofty mosque of Mohamed Ali, the citadel of Salàdin, the forest of minarets above the brown roofs of the town. We pass the isle of Rhoda and the ample palaces of the Queen-Mother. We moor at Gezereh amid a great shoal of dahabeëhs, returned from High Egypt, deserted of their passengers, flags down, blinds closed—a spectacle to fill one with melancholy that so much pleasure is over.
The dahabeëhs usually discharge their passengers at Gezereh, above the bridge. If the boat goes below with baggage it is subject to a port-duty, as if it were a traveler,—besides the tax for passing the draw-bridge. We decide to remain some days on our boat, because it is comfortable, and because we want to postpone the dreaded breaking up of housekeeping, packing up our scattered effects, and moving. Having obtained permission to moor at the government dock below Kasr-el-Nil, we drop down there.
The first person to greet us there is Aboo Yusef, the owner. Behind him comes Habib Bagdadli, the little Jew partner. There is always that in his mien which says, “I was really born in Bagdad, but I know you still think I am a Jew from Algiers. No, gentlemens, you wrong a man to whom reputation is everything.” But he is glad to see his boat safe; he expresses as much pleasure as one can throw from an eye with a cast in it. Aboo Yusef is radiant. He is attired gorgeously, in a new suit, from fresh turban to red slippers, on the profits of the voyage. His robe is silk, his sash is cashmere. He overflows with complimentary speech.
“Allah be praised, I see you safe.”
“We have reason to be grateful.”
“And that you had a good journey.”
“A perfect journey.”
“We have been made desolate by your absence; thank God, you have enjoyed the winter.”
“I suppose you are glad to see the boat back safe also?”
“That is nothing, not to mention it, I not think of it; the return of the boat safe, that is nothing. I only think that you are safe. But it is a good boat. You will say it is the first-class of boats? And she goes up the cataract all right. Did I not say she go up the cataract? Abd-el-Atti he bear me witness.”
“You did. You said so. Habib said so also. Was there any report here in Cairo that we could not go up.”
“Mashallah. Such news. The boat was lost in the cataract; the reïs was drowned. For the loss of the boat I did not care; only if you were safe.”
“Did you hear that the cataract reises objected to take us up?”
“What rascals! They always make the traveler some trouble. But, Allah forgive us all, the head reïs is dead. Not so, Abd-el-Atti?”
“What, the old reïs that we said good-bye to only a little while ago at Assouan?”
“Him dead,” says Abd-el-Atti. “I have this morning some conversation with a tradin’ boat from the Cataract. Him dead shortly after we leave.”
It was the first time it had ever occurred to me that one of these tough old Bedaween could die in the ordinary manner.
But alas his spirit was too powerful for his frame. We have not in this case the consolation of feeling that his loss is our gain; for there are plenty more like him at the First Cataract. He took money from Aboo Yusef for not taking us up the Cataract, and he took money from us for taking us up. His account is balanced. He was an impartial man. Peace to his colored ashes.
Aboo Yusef and the little Jew took leave with increased demonstrations of affection, and repeated again and again their joy that we had ascended the Cataract and returned safe. The Jew, as I said, had a furtive look, but Aboo is open as the day. He is an Arab you would trust. I can scarcely believe that it was he and his partner who sent the bribe to the reïs of the Cataract to prevent our going up.
As we ride to town through the new part, the city looks exceedingly bright and attractive; the streets are very broad; the handsome square houses—ornamented villas, with balconies, pillared piazzas, painted with lively figures and in bizarre patterns—stand behind walls overgrown with the convolvulus, and in the midst of gardens; plats in the center of open spaces and at the angles of streets are gay with flowers in bloom—chiefly scarlet geraniums. The town wears a spring aspect, and would be altogether bright but for the dust which overlays everything, houses, streets, foliage. No amount of irrigation can brighten the dust-powdered trees.
When we came to Cairo last fall, fresh from European cities, it seemed very shabby. Now that we come from Upper Egypt, with our eyes trained to eight hundred miles of mud-hovels, Cairo is magnificent. But it is Cairo. There are just as many people squatting in the dust of the highways as when we last saw them, and they have the air of not having moved in three months. We ride to Shepherd’s Hotel; there are twenty dragomans for every tourist who wants to go to Syria, there is the usual hurry of arrival and departure, and no one to be found; we call at the consul’s: it is not his hour; we ride through the blindest ways to the bankers, in the Rosetti Gardens (don’t imagine there is any garden there), they do no business from twelve to three. It is impossible to accomplish anything in Cairo without calm delay. And, falling into the mode, we find ourselves sauntering through one of the most picturesque quarters, the bazaar of Khan Khaléel, feasting the eye on the Oriental splendors of silks, embroidered stuffs, stiff with gold and silver, sown with pearls, antique Persian brasses, old arms of the followers of Saladin. How cool, how quiet it is. All the noises are soft. Noises enough there are, a babel of traffic, jostling, pushing, clamoring; and yet we have a sense of quiet in it all. There is no rudeness, no angularity, no glare of sun. At times you feel an underflow of silence. I know no place so convenient for meditation as the recesses of these intricate bazaars. Their unlikeness to the streets of other cities is mainly in the absence of any hard pavement. From the moment you come into the Mooskee, you strike a silent way, no noise of wheels or hoofs, nor footfalls of the crowd. It is this absence of footfall-patter which is always heard in our streets, that gives us the impression here of the underflow of silence.
Returning through the Ezbekeëh Park and through the new streets, we are glad we are not to judge the manhood of Egypt by the Young Egypt we meet here, nor the future of Egypt by the dissolute idlers of Cairo and Alexandria. From Cairo to Wady Halfeh we have seen men physically well developed, fine specimens of their race, and better in Nubia than in Egypt Proper; but these youths are feeble, and of unclean appearance, even in their smart European dress. They are not unlike the effeminate and gilded youth of Italy that one sees in the cities, or Parisians of the same class. Egypt, which needed a different importation, has added most of the vices of Europe to its own; it is noticeable that the Italians, who emigrate elsewhere little, come here in great numbers, and men and women alike take kindly to this loose feebleness. French as well as Italians adapt themselves easily to Eastern dissoluteness. The French have never shown in any part of the globe any prejudice against a mingling of races. The mixture here of the youths of the Latin races and the worn-out Orientals, who are a little polished by a lacquer of European vice, is not a good omen for Egypt. Happily such youths are feeble and, I trust, not to be found outside the two large cities.
The great question in Egypt, among foreigners and observers (there is no great question among the common people), is about the Khedive, Ismail Pasha, his policy and his real intentions with regard to the country. You will hear three distinct opinions; one from devout Moslems, another from the English, and a third from the Americans. The strict and conservative Moslems like none of the changes and innovations, and express not too much confidence in the Khedive’s religion. He has bought pictures and statues for his palaces, he has marble images of himself, he has set up an equestrian statue in the street; all this is contrary to the religion. He introduces European manners and costumes, every government employé is obliged to wear European dress, except the tarboosh. What does he want with such a great army; why are the taxes so high, and growing higher every day?
With the Americans in Cairo, as a rule, the Khedive is popular; they sympathize with his ambition, and think that he has the good of Egypt at heart; almost uniformly they defend him. The English, generally, distrust the Khedive and criticise his every movement. Scarcely ever have I heard Englishmen speak well of the Khedive and his policy. They express a want of confidence in the sincerity of his efforts to suppress the slave-trade, for one thing. How much the fact that American officers are preferred in the Khedive’s service has to do with the English and the American estimate, I do not know; the Americans are naturally preferred over all others, for in case of a European complication over Egypt they would have no entangling alliances.
The Americans point to what has actually been accomplished by the present Viceroy, the radical improvements in the direction of a better civilization, improvements which already change the aspect of Egypt to the most casual observer. There are the railroads, which intersect the Delta in all directions, and extend over two hundred and fifty miles up the Nile, and the adventurous iron track which is now following the line of the telegraph to distant Kartoom. There are the canals, the Sweet-Water that runs from Cairo and makes life on the Isthmus possible, and the network of irrigating canals and system of ditches, which have not only transformed the Delta, but have changed its climate, increasing enormously the rainfall. No one who has not seen it can have any conception of the magnitude of this irrigation by canals which all draw water from the Nile, nor of the immense number of laborers necessary to keep the canals in repair. Talk of the old Pharaohs, and their magnificent canals, projected or constructed, and their vaunted expeditions of conquest into Central Africa! Their achievements, take them all together, are not comparable to the marvels the Khedive is producing under our own eyes, in spite of a people ignorant, superstitious, reluctant. He does not simply make raids into Africa: he occupies vast territories, he has absolutely stopped the Nile slave-trade, he has converted the great slave-traders into his allies, by making it more their interest to develope legitimate commerce than to deal in flesh and blood; he has permanently opened a region twice as large as Egypt to commercial intercourse; he sends explorers and scientific expeditions into the heart of Africa. It is true that he wastes money, that he is robbed and cheated by his servants, but he perseveres, and behold the results. Egypt is waking out of its sleep, it is annexing territory, and population by millions, it is becoming a power. And Ismail Pasha is the center and spring of the whole movement.
Look at Cairo! Since the introduction of gas, the opening of broad streets, the tearing down of some of the worst rookeries, the admission of sun and air, Cairo is exempt from the old epidemics, the general health is improved, and even that scourge, ophthalmia, has diminished. You know his decree forbidding early marriages; you know he has established and encourages schools for girls; you see what General Stone is doing in the education of the common soldiers, and in his training of those who show any aptitude in engineering, draughting, and the scientific accomplishments of the military profession.
Thus the warmest admirers of the Khedive speak. His despotism, which is now the most absolute in the world, perhaps, and least disputed, is referred to as a “personal government.” And it is difficult to see how under present circumstances it could be anything else. There is absolutely in Egypt no material for anything else. The Khedive has annually summoned for several years, a sort of parliament of the chief men of Egypt, for information and consultation. At first it was difficult to induce the members to say a word, to give any information or utter an opinion. It is a new thing in a despotic government, the shadow even of a parliament.
An English gentleman in Cairo, and a very intelligent man, gives the Khedive credit for nothing but a selfish desire to enrich himself, to establish his own family, and to enjoy the traditional pleasures of the Orient.
“But he is suppressing the slave-trade.”
“He is trying to make England believe so. Slaves still come to Cairo; not so many down the Nile, but by the desert. I found a slave-den in some desert tombs once over the other side the river; horrible treatment of women and children; a caravan came from Darfour by way of Assiout.”
“But that route is cut off by the capture of Darfour.”
“Well, you’ll see; slaves will come if they are wanted. Why, look at the Khedive’s harem!”
“He hasn’t so many wives as Solomon, who had seven hundred; the Khedive has only four.”
“Yes, but he has more concubines; Solomon kept only three hundred, the Khedive has four hundred and fifty, and perhaps nearer five hundred. Some of them are beautiful Circassians for whom it is said he paid as much as £2000 and even £3000 sterling.”
“I suppose that is an outside price.”
“Of course, but think of the cost of keeping them. Then, each of his four wives has her separate palace and establishment. Rather an expensive family.”
“Almost as costly as the royal family of England.”
“That’s another affair; to say nothing of the difference of income. The five hundred, more or less, concubines are under the charge of the Queen-mother, but they have carte blanche in indulgence in jewels, dress, and all that. They wear the most costly Paris modes. They spend enormous sums in pearls and diamonds. They have their palaces refurnished whenever the whim seizes them, re-decorated in European style. Where does the money come from? You can see that Egypt is taxed to death. I heard to-day that the Khedive was paying seventeen per cent, for money, money borrowed to pay the interest on his private debts. What does he do with the money he raises?”
“Spends a good deal of it on his improvements, canals, railroads, on his army.”
“I think he runs in debt for his improvements. Look again at his family. He has something like forty palaces, costing from one half-million to a million dollars each; some of them, which he built, he has never occupied, many of them are empty, many of those of his predecessors, which would lodge a thousand people, are going to decay; and yet he is building new ones all the time. There are two or three in process of erection on the road to the pyramids.”
“Perhaps they are for his sons or for his high officers? Victor Emanuel, whose treasury is in somewhat the condition of the Khedive’s, has a palace in every city of Italy, and yet he builds more.”
“If the Khedive is building for his children, I give it up. He has somewhere between twenty and thirty acknowledged children. But he does give away palaces and houses. When he has done with a pretty slave, he may give her, with a palace or a fine house here in town, to a favorite officer. I can show you houses here that were taken away from their owners, at a price fixed by the Khedive and not by the owner, because the Viceroy wanted them to give away with one or another of his concubines.”
“I suppose that is Oriental custom.”
“I thought you Americans defended the Khedive on account of his progressive spirit.”
“He is a man who is accomplishing wonders, trammelled as he is by usages thousands of years old, which appear monstrous to us, but are to him as natural as any other Oriental condition. Yet I confess that he stands in very contradictory lights. If he knew it, he could do the greatest service to Egypt by abolishing his harem of concubines, converting it into—I don’t know what—a convent, or a boarding-school, or a milliner’s shop, or an establishment for canning fruit—and then set the example of living, openly, with one wife.”
“Wait till he does. And you talk about the condition of Egypt! Every palm-tree, and every sakiya is taxed, and the tax has doubled within a few years. The taxes are now from one pound and a half to three pounds an acre on all lands not owned by him.”
“In many cases, I know this is not a high tax (compared with taxes elsewhere) considering the yield of the land, and the enormous cost of the irrigating canals.”
“It is high for such managers as the fellahs. But they will not have to complain long. The Khedive is getting into his own hands all the lands of Egypt. He owns I think a third of it now, and probably half of it is in his family; and this is much the better land.”
“History repeats itself in Egypt. He is following the example of Joseph who, you know, taking advantage of the famine, wrung all the land, except that in possession of the priests, from the people, and made it over to Pharaoh; by Joseph’s management the king owned, before the famine was over, not only all the land, but all the money, all the cattle, and all the people of Egypt. And he let the land to them for a fifth of its increase.”
“I don’t know that it is any better because Egypt is used to it. Joseph was a Jew. The Khedive pretends to be influenced by the highest motives, the elevation of the condition of the people, the regeneration of Egypt.”
“I think he is sincerely trying to improve Egypt and the Egyptians. Of course a despot, reared in Oriental prejudices, is slow to see that you can’t make a nation except by making men; that you can’t make a rich nation unless individuals have free scope to accumulate property. I confess that the chief complaint I heard up the river was, that no one dared to show that he had any money, or to engage in extensive business, for fear he would be ‘squeezed.’.rdquo;
“So he would be. The Khedive has some sixteen sugar-factories, worked by forced labor, very poorly paid. They ought to be very profitable.”
“They are not.”
“Well, he wants more money, at any rate. I have just heard that he is resorting to a forced loan, in the form of bonds. A land-owner is required to buy them in the proportion of one dollar and a half for each acre he owns; and he is to receive seven per cent, interest on the bonds. In Cairo a person is required to take these bonds in a certain proportion on his personal property. And it is said that the bonds are not transferable, and that they will be worthless to the heirs. I heard of this new dodge from a Copt.”
“I suppose the Khedive’s friends would say that he is trying to change Egypt in a day, whereas it is the work of generations.”
When we returned to the dahabeëh we had a specimen of “personal government.” Abd-el-Atti was standing on the deck, slipping his beads, and looking down.
“What has happened?”
“Ahman, been took him.”
“Who took him?”
“Police, been grab him first time he go ‘shore, and lock him up.”
“What had he been doing?”
“Nothing he been done; I send him uptown of errand; police catch him right out there.”
“What for?”
“Take him down to Soudan to work; the vice-royal he issue an order for the police to catch all the black fellows in Cairo, and take ‘em to the Soudan, down to Gondokora for what I know, to work the land there.”
“But Ahman is our servant; he can’t be seized.”
“Oh, I know, Ahman belong to me, he was my slave till I give him liberty; I go to get him out directly. These people know me, I get him off.”
“But if you had no influence with the police, Ahman would be dragged off to Soudan to work in a cotton or rice field?”
“Lots of black fellows like him sent off. But I get him back, don’t you have worry. What the vice-royal to do with my servant—I don’t care if he Kin’ of Constantinople!”
Sure enough, early in the evening the handsome Abyssinian boy came back, none the worse, except for a thorough scare, eyes and teeth shining, and bursting into his usual hearty laugh upon allusion to his capture.
“Police tyeb?”
“Moosh-tyeb” (“bad”), with an explosion of merriment.
The boy hadn’t given himself much uneasiness, for he regards his master as his Providence.
We are moored at the dock and below the lock of the Sweet-Water Canal which runs to Ismailia. A dredge-boat lies in the entrance, and we have an opportunity of seeing how government labor is performed; we can understand why it is that so many laborers are needed, and that the great present want of Egypt is stout and willing arms.
In the entrance of the canal and in front of the lock is a flat-boat upon which are fifteen men. They have two iron scoops, which would hold about a gallon each; to each is attached a long pole and a rope. Two men jab the pole down and hold the pot on the bottom, while half a dozen pull leisurely on the rope, with a “yah-sah” or other chorus, and haul in the load; when it comes up, a man scrapes out the mud with his hand, sometimes not getting more than two quarts. It is very restful to watch their unexhausting toil. It takes several minutes to capture a pot of sand. There are fifteen men at this spoon-work, but one scoop is only kept going at a time. After it is emptied, the men stop and look about, converse a little, and get ready for another effort, standing meantime in liquid mud, ankle deep. When they have rested, over goes the scoop again, and the men stand to the rope, and pull feebly, but only at intervals, that is when they sing the response to the line of the leader. The programme of singing and pulling is something like this:
Salee ah nadd (voice of the leader).
Yalee, halee (chorus, pull altogether).
Salee ah nadd.
Yalee, halee (pull).
Salee ah nadd.
Yalee, halee (pull).
And the outcome of three or four minutes of hauling and noise enough to raise a ton, is about a quart of mud!
The river panorama is always varied and entertaining, and we are of a divided mind between a lazy inclination to sit here and watch the busy idleness of the population, or address ourselves to the much that still remains to be seen in Cairo. I ought to speak, however, of an American sensation on the river. This is a little steam-yacht—fifty feet long by seven and a half broad—which we saw up the Nile, where it attracted more attention along the banks than anything else this season. I call it American, because it carries the American flag and is owned by a New-York art student, Mr. Anderson, and an English-American, Mr. Medler; but the yacht was built in London, and shipped on a large steamboat to Alexandria. It is the first steam-vessel, I believe, carrying anything except Egyptian (or Turkish) colors that has ever been permitted to ascend the Nile. We took a trip on it one fine morning up to Helwân, and enjoyed the animation of its saucy speed. When put to its best, it makes eighteen miles an hour; but life would not be as long on it as it is on a dahabeëh. At Helwân are some hot sulphur-springs, famous and much resorted to in the days of the Pharaohs, and just now becoming fashionable again.
Our days pass we can hardly say how, while we wait for the proper season for Syria, and regard the invincible obstacles that debar us from the longed-for desert journey to Sinai and Arabia Petra. The bazaars are always a refuge from the heat, a never-failing entertainment. We spend hours in lounging through them. We lunch at the shops of the sweatmeat makers, on bread, pistachio-nuts, conserve of roses, I know not what, and Nile-water, with fingans of coffee fetched hot and creamy from the shop near by. We give a copper to an occasional beggar: for beggars are few in the street, and these are either blind or very poor, or derweeshes; and to all these, being regarded as Allah’s poor, the Moslems give cheerfully, for charity is a part of their religion. We like also to stand at the doors of the artisans. There is a street where all the workmen are still making the old flint-lock guns and pistols, and the firearms with the flaring blunderbuss muzzles, as if the object was to scatter the charge, and hit a great many people but to kill none. I think the peace society would do well to encourage this kind of gun. There are shops also where a man sits before a heap of flint-chalk, chipping the stone with a flat iron mallet, and forming the flints for the antiquated locks.
We happen to come often in our wanderings, the distinction being a matter of luck, upon a very interesting old city-gate of one of the quarters. The gate itself is a wooden one of two leaves, crossed with iron bands fastened with heavy spikes, and not remarkable except as an illustration of one of the popular superstitions of the Arabs. The wood is driven full of nails, bits of rags flutter on it, and human teeth are crowded under the iron bands. It is believed that if a person afflicted with headache will drive a nail into this door he will never have the headache again. Other ills are relieved by other offerings, bits of rag, teeth, etc. It would seem to be a pretty sure cure for toothache to leave the tooth in this gate. The Arabs are called the most superstitious of peoples, they wear charms against the evil-eye (“charm from the eye of girl, sharper than a spike; charm from the eye of boy, more painful than a whip”), and they have a thousand absurd practices. Yet we can match most of them in Christian communities.
How patiently all the people work, and wait. Complaints are rare. The only reproof I ever received was from a donkey-boy, whom I had kept waiting late one evening at the Hotel Nil. When I roused him from his sleep on the ground, he asked, with an accent of weariness, “how much clock you got?”
By the twenty-third day of March it is getting warm; the thermometer is 81°. It is not simply the heat, but the Khâmaseen, the south wind, the smoky air, the dust in the city, the languor. To-day it rained a few drops, and looked threatening, just as it does in a hot summer day at home. The outskirts of Cairo are enveloped in dust, and the heat begins to simmer over the palaces and gardens. The travelers are leaving. The sharp traders, Jews from Bagdad, Syrians, Jews from Constantinople, Greeks, Armenians from Damascus, all sorts, are packing up their goods, in order to meet the traveler and fleece him again in Jerusalem, in Beyrout, in Damascus, in Smyrna, on the Golden Horn. In the outskirts, especially on the open grounds by the canal, are the coffee-booths and dance-shanties—rows of the disreputable. The life, always out of doors even in the winter, is now more flamboyantly displayed in these open and verandahed dwellings; there is a yielding to the relaxation of summer. We hear at night, as we sit on the deck of our dahabeëh, the throbbing of the darabookah-drum and the monotonous song of the dissolute ones.
