Queer Things About Egypt | Page 9

Mak'ad in Cairo. Was it not the palace of the Grand Cadi,
and of the Caliphs of El-Kahira before him?
Turning our backs on this, we are soon in the Gamaliya, the stronghold
of Cairo mediævalism, the street which delights the heart of the Arab.
At its entrance, look where you will, you see noble old Mameluke
palaces overshadowing the street, with their ranges of harem oriels
screened with the old brown pierced woodwork of their meshrebiya.
Here is a ruined mosque; there is a stately fountain; there one of the
ancient gates for closing the ends of streets at 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 fêtes 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 daïses from the
sunken floor, tessellated with rare marbles, under the cupola. But here
this floor has an added grace—an exquisite Moorish fountain in its
centre, and the daïses are spread with the rich carpets and soft divans,
which betoken that its mediæval 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
sope—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 Phœnix.
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 tunnel—you could not see a
particle of red on tongue or palate, gums or linings—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
country—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