IN WHICH I GET ANOTHER SERVANT AND HUNT FOR A CROCODILE; ALSO A CONTINUATION OF THE STORY OF PRINCESS ZOHRA
I FOUND a man, who was used to attending artists on their rounds, sooner than I had hoped for. He was a rougher type of man than my last one, but one to whom I took much more readily. He spoke no English, which was in his favour, for though this might sometimes be inconvenient, it suited my purpose better to practise my Arabic than to have him airing his English on me.
Mahmood Hanafy is his name. I give it with pleasure, and in hopes that possibly these lines may be read by some one who might be glad of his services. No two men of the same nationality could have been a greater contrast than this Mahmood and the disgraced Mansoor. The more traps Mahmood had to carry, the more he seemed to like it; when I suggested taking a cab, he would say the place was no distance, and cabs were very dear—he had evidently been well trained by former brother-brushes. Mansoor, on the other hand, always had a cab near the hotel when we started, and would place my sketching things on the box in hopes I would take it. Distances were always enormous with him, and when I took a cab, he would declare that the doubled68 fare asked was none too much. The extra squeeze he could then get out of the cabby harmonised with his natural laziness. Mahmood was a plucky fellow, and ready to clear a street of people if he thought they were in my way; while Mansoor’s bravery never went further than slapping a child if the parents were not present, whereas, if some hooligans promised to be a nuisance, he generally slipped away.
Mahmood had one drawback which his predecessor had not, and that was a loud voice. Now, as no pillow was ever thick enough to prevent my hearing my watch ticking, a huge volume of sound was not necessary when he answered my questions. If he thought I did not understand him, he evidently took it for hardness of hearing, and his answers would be loud enough to startle the street. I could not correct him of this, though he tried to mend. Trained as a donkey-boy, this voice had doubtless been of use both in directing his beast and in the altercations which often end a ride. Possibly the deafest donkeys were placed in his care. He was now the owner of many donkeys, he told me, and he let them out by the month instead of running after one himself. He was always ready, however, to run after one if I should require it. His dress was more humble than that of Mansoor, but he never pleaded poverty to try and get something over his wage. He told me he had all he wanted, and should I not wish to use him for a few days, he would willingly rest till his services would be required.
The other man, though smartly dressed, had always some tale of poverty handy when I gave him his wage,69 and always begged for an advance on his future pay. Had he not a number of people dependent on him? and the cost of food, had it not risen so much? I found out afterwards that he had no dependants, and that he sponged on his sisters when he was out of work. He had the appearance of one addicted to hashsheesh, and probably only smoked this of an evening, for I could never detect the smell.
This drug is happily now forbidden to enter the country, and strong measures are taken to prevent its use. A certain amount does, however, get smuggled in, and the ?ashshash or victim to the drug can still procure it if he can pay for its enhanced price. The smell of its fumes was much more familiar formerly in the humbler coffee-shops; but it is not quite absent now. It is often mixed with tumbák, a kind of Persian tobacco, and is smoked in the gózeh, a pipe made of a cocoanut-shell, which has a long cane stem. One who indulges slightly in the habit would not be termed a ?ashshash any more than a moderate drinker in England would be termed a drunkard. The opprobrium attached to the term is much increased through its association with the ?ashshashseyn of the time of the Crusades, whom we know as the Assassins—the subjects of the ‘Sultan of the Castles and Fortresses,’ more commonly called ‘the old man of the mountain.’ They were said to indulge freely in hashsheesh when sent on some murderous errand by their chief. Rowdy or riotous people are often termed ‘Hashshasheen’ whether they be addicted to the drug or not.
Seeing an excitable crowd quite recently, in one of70 the principal squares of Cairo, I approached to see what was the matter. A brutal-looking man was struggling with a couple of policemen who were taking him off to jail, while others were placing on a stretcher a youth who was terribly hacked about his face and head. On inquiry I heard that the man in charge of the police was employed at the public slaughter-house, that he was given to hashsheesh, and that in a fit of madness he had just assaulted with his butcher’s knife the wounded youth. The term hashshash, which was freely used by the crowd, had a particularly gruesome sound on that occasion.
Loud and furious were the comments of Mahmood, and had he not been carrying my materials he would have joined in the struggle with the butcher.
As this took place just within the limits of the European quarter, it was fully reported in the foreign Cairo papers. The youth succumbed to his wounds, and the hashshash paid the death penalty.
I was on my way to the Khaleeg to look for a subject which had attracted me on a former visit, and before this canal had been filled in by the tramway company. A change for the better, possibly, from a hygienic point of view, and also as a means of communication; but a sad loss to the picturesque. Many historic buildings which backed on to the canal have been pulled down, and commonplace frontages will soon blot out all remembrance of them.
The tramway having come to stay, it is as well to make the best of it, and to use its cars along the couple of miles which bisect the city from north to south.71 From this route many a peep into some old courtyard, or the back of a mosque or palm-shaded shrine, may induce a descent from the cars and a tramp along the dusty road.
Just beyond the present governorat was an angle of the enclosure known as the ‘guarded city.’ This formed more or less of a square of rather more than half a mile each way, and its western wall stood on the east side of the present filled-in canal. The building of this enclosure marks such an important date in the medi?val history of Egypt that a few words here may not be amiss.
Stanley Lane Poole tells us, in the Story of Cairo, how in 959 Gawhar, the victorious general of el-Mo’izz (the first Khalif of the Fatimid dynasty), entered Masr, as the capital of Egypt was then called, and still is by its native inhabitants. Plague and famine had so reduced the population, that scarcely any resistance was offered to the troops which Gawhar had led from Tunis into the valley of the Nile. His first thought was to build a fortified place away from the plague-stricken city, and yet near enough to keep it in subjection. Beyond its northern extremity he pitched his camp on a sandy waste, unobstructed by any buildings save an old convent. The prevailing winds being from the north, hygienic reasons were also in favour of this site.
When the boundaries of the enclosure were marked out, astrologers were consulted as to an auspicious hour in which to start digging the foundations. From poles stuck in the ground ropes were stretched, from which bells were hung, and thousands of men stood ready72 with shovel and pick to dig out the trenches as soon as the astrologers shook the poles, and by the tinkling of the bells announced the auspicious moment. The intentions of the astrologers were, however, forestalled by a raven who, alighting on a rope, set the bells aringing, and every spade was instantly stuck into the soil. It was during the hour when the planet Mars (el-Káhir) was in the ascendant—an evil omen for the future peace of the place. ‘Masr el-Káhira’ thus became the name, not only of the fortified enclosure, but also of the adjacent city. ‘El-Káhira,’ or the Martial, is that from which we get our Cairo. The omen was turned to good account by the astrologers. Messengers were sent to Mo’izz to announce that the foundations of a triumphant Masr had been laid; the name of the last of the Abbasid Khalifs was no more heard in the prayers which were offered up in the mosque of Amr, and Mo’izz was proclaimed the ruler of Egypt. His conquests now extended from the Atlantic to the Arabian desert, and for two centuries t............