Queer Things About Egypt | Page 9

night. Push boldly through it. Step to the end of the alley and knock at a feudal doorway. This is the palace of Sultan Beybars. The major-domo of the courteous sheikh will come out and conduct you through a leafy court, with the grandest screen of meshrebiya in all Cairo, resting on the garden hall at the end, into the throne-room of Sultan Beybars, who died six hundred years ago. The carved wood throne, from which he administered justice, stands where it stood. Behind that is the hall of the f?ates of the harem, like a mosque of Kait Bey, as high as it is long, with mellow-painted ceiling and graceful moresco arches to separate the da?��ses from the sunken floor, tessellated with rare marbles, under the cupola. But here this floor has an added gracea���an exquisite Moorish fountain in its centre, and the da?��ses are spread with the rich carpets and soft divans, which betoken that its medi?|val splendour does not form a museum, but the home in which a Cairo notable of to-day leads his luxurious life.

PART I ANECDOTES ILLUSTRATING THE EGYPTIAN CHARACTER
CHAPTER I
English as She is Wrote in Egypt
SUHAG (KISM) [UPP. EGYPT]. "At the First of April 1900. 1 "Messrs. TROLLOPE, SONS & CO., Bristol. "Gentlemen,
1 This story under different names is also told against a grocer in North Wales. But surely the Egyptian version must be the original.
"Wherefore have you not send me that sope--I am order from you. His it because you think my money is not so good as nobody else.
"Damn you Trollup, Sons & Co., wherefore have you not send me the sopea���sent it at once and oblige.
"Your humble servant, "HASSAN, HASSAN EL KAMEL.
"After I write this my wife have found the sope under the counter."
1 Killed by a serpent while it was trying to commit suicide. 2
2 Most of the irresistibly humorous incidents of Egyptian life which appear in this volume were related to me by Mr. or Mrs. Cromwell Rhodes, who were long resident in the land of the Ph?��nix.
When Cromwell Rhodes had returned to England a Nekla correspondent sent him the following account of what he aptly termed a "strange event":
"While a native from Kafr Awana, which is half a mile from Nekla, Behera, was fast asleep in the middle of the day under the shade of a tree in the field, some days ago, a serpent suddenly entered his mouth. The fellah got up at once, but, alas, everything was already in. He then kept it in mind day and night for a few days, during which he grew pale and ill and at last died, a murder of the would-be-killed reptile."
Egyptians have a habit of sleeping with their mouths open. Under an arch by the Beit-el-Kadi at Cairo, I came upon a seller of magenta-coloured celluloid bracelets sleeping, with her head thrown back over the stone designed to prevent carriages from going too near the wall. Her mouth was like a black tunnela���you could not see a particle of red on tongue or palate, gums or liningsa���they were so thickly coated with crawling flies. It was large enough to take in a short snake like Cleopatra's asp, quite comfortably.
Mr. S. Awny is a specimen of the educated Egyptian, whom the Nationalist Press in Egypt considers ripe to govern the countrya���rather a good specimen, for his heart is in the right place. He wrote this:
"Serious Indictment. "To the Editor "Of the Egyptian Morning News.
"SIR,
"Have they pitied the Poor, "Nay Nay.
"Now gently, gently! Thou our reverned Ministry of Public Instruction! Again, slowly! slowly! Thou our good honourable Ministry.
"Be patient and hurry not in publishing thy recent syllabus of the coming year: have the kindness as to look notionally and attentively at thy poor needed subject whom I supposed thou tyrannized and oppressed over. Oh, Mine tremulous hand just stop shaking, I pray, and firmly hold the glow-worm to pen all what thou could for defending about the duties of the poor whom I believe are always downhearted and were to be frequently seen shedding their hot tears from their sweet eyes for being unlucked enough.
"Conveniently thou mine jealous pen arise! Awake! Arise! I did not count you but for such states, and times, weep loudly, cry openly, shout in the vales of the columns of the daily newspapersa���despair not of finding what you call a wakeful assistant who may candidly join his cry with your's: dare and fear not any bit of critical ideas, but reality and trutha���do favour please and be a good vociferous to public, care not whether they call you an agitator or not, simply you have nothing to lean on, but your duties against your lovely country-home. Stop mockery, I say, you reprehensible criticiser who wants as it appears to me to test for some time