My Winter on the Nile

The instruments are as African as the music. There is the darabooka, a drum made of an earthen or wooden cylinder with a flaring head, over which is stretched a parchment; the tar, a kind of tambourine; kemengeh, a viol of two strings, with a cocoa-nut sounding-body; the kanoon, an instrument of strings held on the knees, and played with the fingers; the ’.od, a sort of guitar with seven double strings; played with a plectrum, a slip of vultures’ feather held between the thumb and finger; and the nay, a reed-flute blown at the end.

In the midst of the thumbing and scraping, a rakish youth at the end, is liable, at any moment, to throw back his head and break out in a soft womanish voice, which may go no farther than a nasal yah, ah, m-a-r-r, that appears to satisfy his yearnings; or it may expand into a droning song, “Ya benat Iskendereeyeh,” like that which Mr. Lane renders:—

“O ye damsels of Alexandria!Your walk over the furniture is alluring:Ye wear the Kashmeer shawl with embroidered work,And your lips are sweet as sugar.”

Below the divan sit some idlers or supernumeraries, who, as inclination moves them, mark the rhythm by striking the palms of the hands together, or cry out a prolonged ah-yah, but always in a forgetful, uninterested manner, and then subside into silence, while the picking and throbbing of the demoralized tune goes on. It is the “devilish iteration” of it, I think, that steals away the senses; this, and some occult immorality in the debased tune, that blots virtue out of the world. Yet there is something comic in these blinking owls of the night, giving sentimental tongue to the poetic imagery of the Eastern love-song—“for a solitary gazelle has taken away my soul”:—

“The beloved came to me with a vacillating gait;And her eyelids were the cause of my intoxication.I extended my hand to take the cup;And was intoxicated by her eyes.O thou in the rose-colored dress!O thou in the rose-colored dress!Beloved of my heart! remain with me.”

Or he pipes to the “dark-complexioned, and with two white roses”:—

“O damsel! thy silk shirt is worn out, and thine arms have become visible,And I fear for thee, on account of the blackness of thine eyes.I desire to intoxicate myself, and kiss thy cheeks,And do deeds that Antar did not.”

To all of which the irresponsible chorus, swaying its head, responds O! y-a-a-a-h! And the motley audience sips and smokes; the veiled daughters of sin flash invitation from their kohl-stained eyes; and the cool night comes after the flaring heat of the day; and all things are as they have been for thousands of years. It is time to take you to something religious.

The Howling Derweeshes are the most active religionists in the East; I think they spend more force in devotion than the Whirling Derweeshes, though they are probably not more meritorious. They exceed our own western “Jumpers,” and by contrast make the worship of our dancing Shakers tame and worldly. Of all the physical manifestations of religious feeling there is none more warming than the zikr of these devotees. The derweeshes are not all wanderers, beggars, saints in patched garments and filthy skin; perhaps the most of those who belong to one of the orders pursue some regular occupation; they are fishermen, laborers in the fields, artisans, and water-carriers, and only occasionally join in the ceremonies, processions and zikrs of their faith. I have seen a laborer drop into the ring, take his turn at a zikr, and drop out again, very much as the western man happens in and takes a hand in a “free fight,” and then retires.

This mosque at which the Howling Derweeshes perform is circular, and large enough to admit a considerable number of spectators, who sit, or stand against the wall. Since the exercise is one of the sights of the metropolis, and strangers are expected, it has a little the air of a dress-parade, and I could not but fear that the devotion lost somewhat of its singleness of purpose. When we enter, about forty men stand in an oblong ring facing each other; the ring is open towards the mehhrab, or niche which marks the direction of Mecca. In the opening stands the Sheykh, to direct the performance; and at his left are seated the musicians.

The derweeshes have divested themselves of turbans, fezes, outer gowns and slippers, which lie in a heap in the middle of the circle, an indistinguishable mass of old clothes, from which when the owners come to draw they cannot fail to get as good as they deposited. The ceremony begins with a little uneasiness on the part of the musical instruments; the sheykh bows his head and brings the palms of his hands together; and the derweeshes, standing close together, with their hands straight at their sides, begin slowly to bow and to sway to the right in a compound motion which is each time extended. The daraboo-ka is beaten softly and the ’.od is picked to a slow measure. As the worshippers sway, they chant, La ilaha illa-llah (“There is no deity but God”) in endless repetition, and imperceptibly quickening the enunciation as they bow more rapidly. The music gets faster, and now and again one of the roguish boys who is thumping the drum breaks out into vocal expression of his piety or of his hilarity. The circle is now under full swing, the bowings are lower and much more rapid, and the ejaculation has become merely Allah, Allah, Allah, with a strong stress on the final syllable.

The peculiarities of the individual performers begin to come out. Some only bow and swing in a perfunctory manner; others throw their strength into the performance, and their excitement is evinced by the working of the face and the rolling of the eyes. Many of them have long hair, which has evidently known neither scissors nor comb for years, and is matted and twisted in a hopeless tangle. One of the most conspicuous and the least clad, a hairy man of the desert, is, exactly in apparel and features, like the conventional John the Baptist. His enormous shock of faded brown hair is two feet long and its ends are dyed yellow with henna. When he bends forward his hair sweeps the floor, and when he throws his head back the mass whips over with a swish through the air. The most devout person, however, is a negro, who puts all the fervor of the tropics into his exercise. His ejaculations are rolled out with extraordinary volume, and his black skin shines with moisture; there is, too, in his swaying and bowing, an abandon, a laxity of muscles, and a sort of jerk that belong only to his sympathetic race.

The exercise is every moment growing more rapid, but in regular increments, as the music hastens—five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes—until there is a very high pressure on, the revolutions of the cylinder are almost one in two seconds, and the piston moves quicker and quicker. The music, however, is not louder, only more intense, and now and then the reed-flute executes a little obligato, a plaintive strain, that steals into the frenzy like the note of a lost bird, sweet as love and sad as death. The performers are now going so rapidly that they can only ejaculate one syllable, ’.ah, ‘lah, ‘lah, which is aspirated in a hoarse voice every time the head is flung forward to the floor. The hands are now at liberty, and swing with the body, or are held palm to palm before the face. The negro cannot longer contain himself but breaks occasionally into a shrill “hoo!” He and two or three others have “the power,” and are not far from an epileptic fit.

There is a limit, however, to the endurance of the body; the swaying has become so rapid that it is difficult to distinguish faces, and it is impossible for the performers to repeat even a syllable of the name of Allah, all they can do is to push out from the depths of the lungs a vast hoarse aspiration of la-a-h, which becomes finally a gush exactly like the cut-off of a steam engine, short and quick.

The end has nearly come; in vain the cymbals clang, in vain the drum is beaten harder, and the horn calls to quicker work. The limit is reached, and while the reed expresses its plaintive fear, the speed slackens, the steam puffs are slower, and with an irregular hoo! from the colored brother, the circle stands still.

You expect to see them sink down exhausted. Not a bit of it. One or two having had enough of it, take their clothes and withdraw, and their places are filled by others and by some very sensible-looking men, trades-people evidently. After a short rest they go through the same or a similar performance, and so on for an hour and a half, the variations being mainly in the chanting. At the end, each derweesh affectionately embraces the Sheykh, kisses his hand without servility, resumes his garments and quietly withdraws. They seem to have enjoyed the exercise, and certainly they had plenty of it. I should like to know what they think of us, the infidel spectators, who go to look at their religious devotions as if they were a play.

That derweesh beggar in a green turban is by that token a shereef, or descendant of the Prophet. No one but a shereef is allowed to wear the green turban. The shereefs are in all ranks of society, many of them wretched paupers and in the most menial occupations; the title is inherited from either parent and the representatives of the race have become common. Some who are entitled to the green turban wear the white instead, and prefer to be called Sevd (master or lord) instead of Shereef. Such a man is Seyd Sadat, the most conspicous representative of the family of the Prophet in Cairo. His ancestors for a long period were the trustees of the funds of all the great mosques of Cairo, and consequently handled an enormous revenue and enjoyed great power. These millions of income from the property of the mosques the Khedive has diverted to his own purposes by the simple process of making himself their trustee. Thus the secular power interferes every few centuries, in all countries, with the accumulation of property in religious houses. The strict Moslems think with the devout Catholics, that it is an impious interference.

Seyd Sadat lives in the house that his family have occupied for over eight centuries! It is perhaps the best and richest specimen of Saracenic domestic architecture now standing in the East. This house, or collection of houses and disconnected rooms opening upon courts and gardens, is in some portions of it in utter decay; a part, whose elegant arches and marvelous carvings in stone, with elaborate hanging balconies and painted recesses, are still studies of beauty, is used as a stable. The inhabited rooms of the house are tiled two-thirds of the way to the lofty ceilings; the floors are of variegated marbles, and the ceilings are a mass of wood in the most intricate arabesque carving, and painted in colors as softly blended as the hues of an ancient camels’ hair shawl. In one of these gorgeous apartments, the furniture of which is not at all in keeping with the decorations (an incongruity which one sees constantly in the East—shabbiness and splendor are indissolubly married), we are received by the Descendant with all the ceremony of Eastern hospitality. Seated upon the divan raised above the fountain at one end of the apartment, we begin one of those encounters of compliments through an interpreter, out of which the traveler always comes beaten out of sight. The Seyd is a handsome intelligent man of thirty-five, sleek with good living and repose, and a master of Oriental courtesy. His attire is all of silk, the blue color predominating; his only ornament is a heavy gold chain about the neck. We frame long speeches to the Seyd, and he appears to reply with equal verboseness, but what he says or what is said to him we never know. The Eastern dragoman is not averse to talking, but he always interprets in a sort of short-hand that is fatal to conversation. I think the dragomans at such interviews usually translate you into what they think you ought to say, and give you such a reply as they think will be good for you.

“Say to his lordship that we thank him for the honor of being permitted to pay our respects to a person so distinguished.”

“His excellency (who has been talking two minutes) say you do him too much honor.”

“We were unwilling to leave Cairo without seeing the residence of so celebrated a family.”

“His excellency (who has now got fairly going) feels in deep the visit of strangers so distinguish.”

“It is a great pleasure also to us to see an Arab house so old and magnificent.”

“His excellency (who might have been reciting two chapters of the Koran in the interval) say not to mention it; him sorry it is not more worth you to see.”

The attendants bring sherbet in large and costly cups, and chibooks elegantly mounted, and the conversation flounders along. The ladies visit the harem above, and we look about the garden and are shown into room after room, decorated in endless variety and with a festivity of invention and harmony of color which the moderns have lost. The harem turns out to be, like all ordinary harems, I think, only mysterious on the outside. We withdraw with profuse thanks, frittered away through our dragoman, and “His excellency say he hope you have pleasant voyage and come safe to your family and your country.” About the outer court, and the door where we mount our donkeys, are many idlers in the sun, half beggars, half attendants, all of whom want backsheesh, besides the regular servants who expect a fee in proportion to the “distinguish” of the visitor. They are probably not unlike the clients of an ancient Roman house, or the retainers of a baronial lord of the middle ages.

If the visitor, however, really desires to see the antiquities of the Christian era, he will ride out to Old Cairo, and mouse about among the immense rubbish heaps that have been piled there since Fostat (as the ancient city was called) was reduced to ashes, more than seven hundred years ago, by a fire which raged nearly two months. There is the ruined mosque of Amer, and there are the quaint old Coptic convents and churches, built about with mud walls, and hidden away amid mounds of rubbish. To these dust-filled lanes and into these mouldering edifices the antiquarian will gladly go. These churches are the land of the flea and the home of the Copt. Anything dingier, darker, dirtier, doesn’t exist. To one of them, the Sitt Miriam, Church of Our Lady, we had the greatest difficulty in getting admission. It is up-stairs in one of the towers of the old Roman gateway of Babylon. It is a small church, but it has five aisles and some very rich wood-carving and stone-mosaics. It was cleaner than the others because it was torn to pieces in the process of renovation. In these churches are hung ostrich eggs, as in the mosques, and in many of them are colored marbles, and exquisite mosaics of marble, mother-of-pearl, and glass. Aboo Sirgeh, the one most visited, has a subterranean chapel which is the seat of an historical transaction that may interest some minds. There are two niches in the wall, and in one of them, at the time of the Flight into Egypt, the Virgin Mary rested with the Child, and in the other St. Joseph reposed. That is all.

A little further on, by the river bank, opposite the southern end of the island of Rhoda, the Moslems show you the spot where little Moses lay in his little basket, when the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe (for Pharaoh hadn’t a bath-tub in his house) and espied him. The women of the Nile do to-day exactly what Pharaoh’s daughter and her maidens did, but there are no bulrushes at this place now, and no lad of the promise of Moses is afloat.

One can never have done with an exploration of Cairo, with digging down into the strata of overlying civilizations, or studying the shifting surface of its Oriental life. Here, in this Old Cairo, was an ancient Egyptian town no doubt; the Romans constructed here massive walls and towers; the followers of St. Mark erected churches; the friends of Mohammed built mosques; and here the mongrel subjects of the Khedive, a mixture of ancient Egyptian, conquering Arabian, subject Nubian, enslaved Soudan, inheritors of all civilizations and appropriators of none, kennel amid these historic ash-heaps, caring neither for their past nor their future. But it is drawing towards the middle of December; there are signs that warn us to be off to the south. It may rain. There are symptoms of chill in the air, especially at night, and the hotel, unwarmed, is cheerless as a barn, when the sun does not shine. Indeed, give Cairo the climate of London in November and everybody would perish in a week. Our preparations drift along. It is always “tomorrow.” It requires a week to get the new name of the boat printed on a tin. The first day the bargain for it is made; the work is to be finished bookra, tomorrow. Next day the letters are studied. The next the tin is prepared. The next day is Friday or Wednesday or some other day in which repose is required. And the next the workman comes to know what letters the howadji desires to have upon the tin, and how big a sign is required.

Two other necessary articles remain to be procured; rockets and other fire-works to illuminate benighted Egypt, and medicines. As we were not taking along a physician and should find none of those experimenting people on the Nile, I did not see the use of carrying drugs. Besides we were going into the one really salubrious region of the globe. But everybody takes medicines; you must carry medicines. The guide-book gives you a list of absolutely essential, nasty drugs and compounds, more than you would need if you were staying at home in an artificial society, with nothing to do but take them, and a physician in every street.

I bought chunks of drugs, bottles of poisons, bundles of foul smells and bitter tastes. And then they told me that I needed balances to weigh them in. This was too much. I was willing to take along an apothecary’s shop on this pleasure excursion; I was not willing to become an apothecary. No, I said, if I am to feed out these nauseous things on the Nile, I will do it generously, according to taste, and like a physician, never stinting the quantity. I would never be mean about giving medicine to other people. And it is not difficult to get up a reputation for generosity on epsom salts, rhubarb and castor oil.

We carried all these drugs on the entreaty of friends and the druggist, who said it would be very unsafe to venture so far without them. But I am glad we had them with us. The knowledge that we had them was a great comfort. To be sure we never experienced a day’s illness, and brought them all back, except some doses that I was able to work off upon the crew. There was a gentle black boy, who had been stolen young out of Soudan, to whom it was a pleasure to give the most disagreeable mixtures; he absorbed enormous doses as a lily drinks dew, and they never seemed to harm him. The aboriginal man, whose constitution is not weakened by civilization, can stand a great amount of doctor’s stuff. The Nile voyager is earnestly advised to carry a load of drugs with him; but I think we rather overdid the business in castor-oil; for the fact is that the people in Nubia fairly swim in it, and you can cut the cane and suck it whenever you feel like it.

By all means, go drugged on your pleasure voyage. It is such a cheerful prelude to it, to read that you will need blue-pills, calomel, rhubarb, Dover’s powder, James’s powder, carbolic acid, laudanum, quinine, sulphuric acid, sulphate of zinc, nitrate of silver, ipecacuanha, and blistering plaster. A few simple directions go with these. If you feel a little unwell, take a few blue pills, only about as many as you can hold in your hand; follow these with a little Dover’s powder, and then repeat, if you feel worse, as you probably will; when you rally, take a few swallows of castor-oil, and drop into your throat some laudanum; and then, if you are alive, drink a dram of sulphuric acid. The consulting friends then generally add a little rice-water and a teaspoonful of brandy.

In the opinion of our dragoman it is scarcely reputable to go up the Nile without a store of rockets and other pyrotechnics. Abd-el-Atti should have been born in America. He would enjoy a life that was a continual Fourth of July. He would like his pathway to be illuminated with lights, blue, red, and green, and to blaze with rockets. The supreme moment of his life is when he feels the rocket-stick tearing out of his hand. The common fire-works in the Mooskee he despised; nothing would do but the government-made, which are very good. The passion of some of the Egyptians for fire-arms and gunpowder is partially due to the prohibition. The government strictly forbids the use of guns and pistols and interdicts the importation or selling of powder. On the river a little powder and shot are more valued than money.

We had obtained permission to order some rockets manufactured at the government works, and in due time we went with Abd-el-Atti to the bureau at the citadel to pay for them. The process was attended with all that deliberation which renders life so long and valuable in the East.

We climbed some littered and dusty steps, to a roof terrace upon which opened several apartments, brick and stucco chambers with cement floors, the walls whitewashed, but yellow with time and streaked with dirt. These were government offices, but office furniture was scarce. Men and boys in dilapidated gowns were sitting about on their heels smoking. One of them got up and led the way, and pulling aside a soiled curtain showed us into the presence of a bey, a handsomely dressed Turk, with two gold chains about his neck, squatting on a ragged old divan at one end of the little room; and this divan was absolutely all the furniture that this cheerless closet, which had one window obscured with dust, contained. Two or three officers were waiting to get the bey’s signature to papers, and a heap of documents lay beside him, with an inkhorn, on the cushions. Half-clad attendants or petitioners shuffled in and out of the presence of this head of the bureau. Abd-el-Atti produced his papers, but they were not satisfactory, and we were sent elsewhere.

Passing through one shabby room after another, we came into one dimmer, more stained and littered than the others. About the sides of the room upon low divans sat, cross-legged, the clerks. Before each was a shabby wooden desk which served no purpose, however, but to hold piles of equally shabby account books. The windows were thick with dust, the floor was dirty, the desks, books, and clerks were dirty. But the clerks were evidently good fellows, just like those in all government offices—nothing to do and not pay enough to make them uneasy to be rich. They rolled cigarettes and smoked continually; one or two of them were casting up columns of figures, holding the sheet of paper in the left hand and calling each figure in a loud voice (as if a little doubtful whether the figure would respond to that name); and some of them wrote a little, by way of variety. When they wrote the thin sheet of paper was held in the left hand and the writing done upon the palm (as the Arabs always write); the pen used was a blunt reed and the ink about as thick as tar. The writing resulting from these unfavorable conditions is generally handsome.

Our entry and papers were an event in that office, and the documents became the subject of a general conversation. Other public business (except the cigarettes) was suspended, and nearly every clerk gave his opinion on the question, whatever it was. I was given a seat on a rickety divan, coffee was brought in, the clerks rolled cigarettes for me and the business began to open; not that anybody showed any special interest in it, however. On the floor sat two or three boys, eating their dinner of green bean leaves and some harmless mixture of grease and flour; and a cloud of flies settled on them undisturbed. What service the ragged boys rendered to the government I could not determine. Abd-el-Atti was bandying jocularities with the clerks, and directing the conversation now and then upon the rockets.

In course of time a clerk found a scrap of paper, daubed one side of it with Arabic characters, and armed with this we went to another office and got a signature to it. This, with the other documents, we carried to another room much like the first, where the business appeared to take a fresh start; that is, we sat down and talked; and gradually induced one official after another to add a suggestion or a figure or two. Considering that we were merely trying to pay for some rockets that were ready to be delivered to us, it did seem to me that almost a whole day was too much to devote to the affair. But I was mistaken. The afternoon was waning when we went again to the Bey. He was still in his little “cubby,” and made room for me on the divan. A servant brought coffee. We lighted cigarettes, and, without haste, the bey inked the seal that hung to his gold chain, wet the paper and impressed his name in the proper corner. We were now in a condition to go to the treasury office and pay.