We ran into Pont de Koubbeh station, a few miles outside Cairo, about ten o'clock that night, and disembarked straight away. A number of staff officers were on the platform, so we were fallen-in for a hasty inspection; and it was really marvellous, considering the amount of liquid refreshment that had been consumed, how steady a line was kept. It might certainly have been improved, but any little shortcomings in the way of dressing, et cetera, were put down by our officers to the fatiguing day we had had, plus the heat of Egypt. Perhaps the staff believed them. But it was a mistake to give the order, "Fix Bayonets!" when those weapons were already so firmly "fixed" amidst the gear we were burdened with that nearly half the company utterly failed at first to find them—and when they did succeed, the officers of the staff had turned to go: thinking, no doubt, that the climate had a lot to answer for.
We marched the couple of miles or so to Zeitoun, where the New Zealanders were camped, about seven miles from Cairo, passing on the way many soldiers of the Dominion, who were in a slightly "elevated" condition. One six-foot infantryman attached himself to us as guide, informing all and sundry the while that he was as "right as the adjectived bank!" He may have been, but he didn't look it. And those two miles were easily the longest I ever padded. However, we found our camp at last, and in the fullness of time our blankets and kits also, and, after doing justice to a savoury, if rather overcooked, stew, turned in early on Christmas morning. Later we were informed that the boys had fixed to give us a boncer welcome, but "Christmas come but once a year," and in the words of our informant, "they blued their cheques, got shikkared, and the show was bust up." We got to sleep at last, lulled by the dulcet strains of a Maori haka voiced by a home-coming band of late—or early!—revellers.
CHAPTER III
LIFE IN EGYPT
Christmas Day on the edge of the desert, within sight of the Pyramids of Gizeh! The very last place in which I ever thought I should celebrate the festive season. And the outlook was far from "Christmassy": A big wide stretch of yellow sand; a rough, trampled track styled a road; a straggling collection of low, flat-roofed, mud-built native houses that looked as if they had been chucked from aloft and stuck where they happened to pitch; a few vines, date palms, and fig-trees, disputing the right to live in company with some sun-baked nectarines and loquats; a foreground made up of tents, both military and native, wooden shanties, and picketed horses; a background of camp stores, mechanics' shops, and corded firewood, closed in by a line of dusty poplars; in the distance the desert, a vast study in monochrome, the horizon line broken in places by an Arab village and cemetery, a camel train, and the forbidding walls of some Egyptian grandee's harem; overhead a scorching sun shining in a cloudless sky; underfoot the burning sand—and everywhere the subtle aroma (or "sense," if you will) of the East, at once repellent and yet attractive, calling with ever-increasing insistence to some nomadic strain that has hitherto lain dormant in our beings—calling with the call of the East....
There was general leave, of course. Most of the chaps took the Cairo trail, those who remained doing so in nearly every case not from choice, but dire necessity: a week's pay at the rate of 2s. per day (once on active service we had to allot 3s.) doesn't see one far in Egypt. Our crowd elected to stay for dinner, and I must say the cooks turned out an A1 meal. The turkey was missing, ditto the goose, but we had as much frozen mutton, followed by Christmas duff, as we could find room for. The wet canteen lay close handy, so the beer (English, too) wasn't missing. The desert didn't look so dusty when we left the tables.
They are keen on the dollars, are the Egyptians. They swarmed round our camp like a mob of steers round a water-hole in a dry spell; everywhere you ran across their matchboard stores where you could buy 'most anything, from a notebook to a glass of ice cream, made from camel's milk! They had the time of their lives, especially the orange-sellers. I have bought seven jolly good oranges for a half-piastre (1-1/4d.) more than once, but as a rule the price ranged from eight to twelve for a piastre (2-1/2d.) Barrows or baskets aren't in favour with the Gippy fruit-sellers. They wear loose shirts and wide skirts, and by making full use of these garments one man will carry nearly a sackful of oranges—and at the same time help complete the ripening process. It paid to wipe the fruit before eating it.
In Egypt a man's wealth and standing is usually reckoned on the basis of the number of wives he possesses: when our crowd arrived many of the fruit-sellers had only one—or one and an old one—yet inside a week or two the same johnnies were bossing up a tidy little harem of prime goods. So indirectly I guess our pay helped keep polygamy going—and increased the population.
Egypt exists by favour of the Nile. Outside the irrigation belt lies desert and nothing but desert—the Hinterland or Never-Never of Northern Africa. Except for an oasis here and there the eye searches in vain for a trace of greenery. A huge rolling plain of yellow sand mixed with limestone, and carpeted in places with round, seemingly water-worn pebbles, amongst which one finds agates in abundance; here and there broken and serrated rocks outcropping boldly in fantastic shapes from great drifts of storm-driven sand; a brooding loneliness—there you have it.
And yet in the Valley of the Nile what a contrast! The very atmosphere is redolent of fertility. Here is, indeed, a "land flowing with milk and honey"; a land which, give it the water, will bloom like a garden and smell like a huge pot-pourri. I have seen some of the best country in four continents, yet I never ran across richer soil or more exuberant growth than that of the Nile Valley. When one bears in mind that the methods of irrigation and system of tillage are those of the dim and distant past; that a metal plough is an object of mixed curiosity and distrust; that steam is not; that the fertiliser used (when it is used) once sheltered, in the form of towns and villages whose history was closed ere the Bible was written, the heads of their own forefathers—then one is, indeed, forced to marvel at a land which yields such husbandmen seventy- and eighty-ton crops of sugarcane to the acre, and gives nine and ten cuttings of berseine—in the year, while carrying at the same time the mixed flocks and herds of the lucky proprietor. Little wonder, then, that the fellahin pray to the Nile as the Romans used to pray to Father Tiber—although hardly with the same objects.