The men at work dress in the slight manner of the ancient Egyptians; the women, however, wear garments covering them, and not seldom hide the face at our approach. But the material of their dress is not always of the best quality; an old piece of sacking makes a very good garment for a Nubian woman. Most of them wear some trinkets, beads or bits of silver or carnelian round the neck, and heavy bracelets of horn. The boys have not yet come into their clothing, but the girls wear the leathern belt and fringe adorned with shells.
The people have little, but they are not poor. It may be that this cornstalk house of our friend is only his winter residence, while his shadoof is most active, and that he has another establishment in town. There are too many sakiyas in operation for this region to be anything but prosperous, apparently. They are going all night as we sail along, and the screaming is weird enough in the stillness. I should think that a prisoner was being tortured every eighth of a mile on the bank. We are never out of hearing of their shrieks. But the cry is not exactly that of pain; it is rather a song than a cry, with an impish squeak in it, and a monotonous iteration of one idea, like all the songs here. It always repeats one sentence, which sounds like Iskander logheh-n-e-e-e-n—whatever it is in Arabic; and there is of course a story about it. The king, Alexander, had concealed under his hair two horns. Unable to keep the secret to himself he told it in confidence to the sakiya; the sakiya couldn't hold the news, but shrieked out, “Alexander has two horns,” and the other sakiyas got it; and the scandal went the length of the Nile, and never can be hushed.
The Arabs personify everything, and are as full of superstitions as the Scotch; peoples who have nothing in common except it may be that the extreme predestinationism of the one approaches the fatalism of the other—begetting in both a superstitious habit, which a similar cause produced in the Greeks. From talking of the sakiya we wander into stories illustrative of the credulity and superstition of the Egyptians. Charms and incantations are relied on for expelling diseases and warding off dangers. The snake-charmer is a person still in considerable request in towns and cities. Here in Nubia there is no need of his offices, for there are no snakes; but in Lower Egypt, where snakes are common, the mud-walls and dirt-floors of the houses permit them to come in and be at home with the family. Even in Cairo, where the houses are of brick, snakes are much feared, and the house that is reputed to have snakes in it cannot be rented. It will stand vacant like an old mansion occupied by a ghost in a Christian country. The snake-charmers take advantage of this popular fear.
Once upon a time when Abd-el-Atti was absent from the city, a snake-charmer came to his house, and told his sister that he divined that there were snakes in the house. “My sister,” the story goes on, “never see any snake to house, but she woman, and much 'fraid of snakes, and believe what him say. She told the charmer to call out the snakes. He set to work his mumble, his conjor—('.xorcism'. yes, dat's it, exorcism 'em, and bring out a snake. She paid him one dollar.
“Then the conjuror say, 'This the wife; the husband still in the house and make great trouble if he not got out.'.rdquo;
“He want him one pound for get the husband out, and my sister give it.
“When I come home I find my sister very sick, very sick indeed, and I say what is it? She tell me the story that the house was full of snakes and she had a man call them out, but the fright make her long time ill.
“I said, you have done very well to get the snakes out, what could we do with a house full of the nasty things? And I said, I must get them out of another house I have—house I let him since to machinery.
“Machinery? For what kind of machinery! Steam-engines?”
“No, misheenary—have a school in it.”