A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

To eat gracefully with one’s fingers is a fine art; to carve with them skillfully is a science. None of us, I think, will soon forget the wonderful way in which our host attacked and vanquished the turkey—a solid colossus weighing twenty pounds, and roasted to perfection. Half rising, he turned back his cuff, poised his wrist, and driving his forefinger and thumb deep into the breast, brought out a long, stringy smoking fragment, which he deposited on the plate of the writer. Thus begun, the turkey went round the table amid peals of laughter and was punished by each in turn. The pilaff which followed is always the last dish served at an Egyptian or Turkish dinner. After this our spoons were changed and the sweets were put upon the table. The drinks throughout were plain water, rice-water and lemonade. Some native musicians played in the ante-room during dinner; and when we rose from the table we washed our hands as before.

We now returned to the large hall, and, not being accomplished in the art and mystery of sitting crossed-legged, curled ourselves up on the divans as best we could. The writer was conducted by Mustapha Aga to the corner seat at the upper end of the room, where he said the Princess of Wales had sat when their royal highnesses dined with him the year before. We were then served with pipes and coffee. The gentlemen smoked chibouques and cigarettes, while for us there were gorgeous rose-water narghilehs with long flexible tubes and amber mouthpieces. L—— had the princess’ pipe and smoked it very cleverly all the evening.

By and by came the governor, the Kadî of Luxor, the Prussian consul and his son and some three or four grave-looking merchants in rich silk robes and ample turbans. Meanwhile the band—two fiddles, a tambourine and a darabukkeh—played at intervals at the lower end of the hall; pipes, coffee and lemonade went continually round; and the entertainment wound up, as native entertainments always do wind up at Luxor, with a performance of Ghawâzi.

We had already seen these dancers at two previous fantasias and we admired them no more the third time than the first. They wore baggy Turkish trousers, loose gowns of gaudy pattern and a profusion of jewelry. The première danseuse was a fine woman and rather handsome; but in the “belle” of the company, a thick-lipped Nubian, we could discover no charm whatever. The performances of the Ghawâzi—which are very ungraceful and almost wholly pantomimic—have been too often described to need description here. Only once, indeed, did we see them perform an actual dance; and then they swam lightly to and fro, clattering their castanets, crossing and re-crossing and bounding every now and then down the whole length of the room. This dance, we were told, was of unknown antiquity. They sang occasionally; but their voices were harsh and their melodies inharmonious.

There was present, however, one native performer whom we had already heard many times and of whose skill we never tired. This was the leader of the little band—an old man who played the kemengeh,[245] or cocoanut fiddle. A more unpromising instrument than the kemengeh it would be difficult to conceive; yet our old Arab contrived to make it discourse most eloquent music. His solos consisted of plaintive airs and extemporized variations, embroidered with difficult and sometimes extravagant cadenzas. He always began sedately, but warmed to his work as he went on; seeming at last to forget everything but his own delight in his own music. At such times one could see that he was weaving some romance in his thoughts and translating it into sounds. As the strings throbbed under his fingers, the whole man became inspired; and more than once when, in shower after shower of keen, despairing notes, he had described the wildest anguish of passion, I have observed his color change and his hand tremble.

Although we heard him repeatedly, and engaged him more than once when we had friends to dinner, I am sorry to say that I forget the name of this really great artist. He is, however, celebrated throughout the Thebaid, and is constantly summoned to Erment, Esneh, Keneh, Girgeh, and other large towns, to perform at private entertainments.

While at Luxor, we went one Sunday morning to the Coptic church—a large building at the northern extremity of the village. Church, schools, and bishop’s house, are here grouped under one roof and inclosed in a court-yard; for Luxor is the center of one of the twelve sees into which Coptic Egypt is divided.

The church, which has been rebuilt of late years, is constructed of sun-dried brick, having a small apse toward the east, and at the lower or western end a screened atrium for the women. The center aisle is perhaps thirty feet in width; the side-aisles, if aisles they can be called, being thickly planted with stone pillars supporting round arches. These pillars came from Karnak, and were the gift of the khedive. They have lotus-bud capitals, and measure about fifteen feet high in the shaft. At the upper end of the nave, some eighteen or twenty feet in advance of the apse, there stands a very beautiful screen inlaid in the old Coptic style with cedar, ebony, rosewood, ivory and mother-of-pearl. This screen is the pride of the church. Through the opening in the center one looks straight into the little wagon-roofed apse, which contains a small table and a suspended lamp, and is as dark as the sanctuary of an Egyptian temple. The reading-desk, like a rickety office stool, faces the congregation; and just inside the screen stands the bishop’s chair. Upon this plan, which closely resembles the plan of the first cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, most Coptic churches are built. They vary chiefly in the number of apses, some having as many as five. The atrium generally contains a large tank, called the Epiphany tank, into which, in memory of the baptism of our Lord, the men plunge at their festivals of El Ghitâs.

Young Todroos, the son of the Prussian consul, conducted us to the church. We went in at about eleven o’clock and witnessed the end of the service, which had then been going on since daybreak. The atrium was crowded with women and children, and the side-aisles with men of the poorer sort. A few groups of better dressed Copts were gathered near the screen listening to a black-robed deacon, who stood reading at the reading desk with a lighted taper in his left hand. A priest in a white vestment embroidered on the breast and hood with a red Maltese cross, was squatting on his heels at the entrance to the adytum. The bishop, all in black, with a black turban, sat with his back to the congregation.

Every face was turned upon us when we came in. The reader paused. The white-robed priest got up. Even the bishop looked round. Presently a couple of acolytes, each carrying two cane-bottomed chairs, came bustling down the nave; and, unceremoniously driving away all who were standing near, placed us in a row across the middle of the church. This interruption over, the reading was resumed.