My Winter on the Nile / Eighteenth Edition

by Charles Dudley Warner

On the beach at Wady Haifa are half a dozen trading-vessels, loaded with African merchandise for Cairo, and in the early morning there is a great hubbub among the merchants and the caravan owners. A sudden dispute arises among a large group around the ferry-boat, and there ensues that excited war, or movement, which always threatens to come to violence in the East but never does; Niagaras of talk are poured out; the ebb and flow of the parti-colored crowd, and the violent and not ungraceful gestures make a singular picture.

Bales of merchandise are piled on shore, cases of brandy and cottons from England, to keep the natives of Soudan warm inside and out; Greek merchants splendid in silk attire, are lounging amid their goods, slowly bargaining for their transportation. Groups of camels are kneeling on the sand with their Bedaween drivers. These latter are of the Bisharee Arabs, and free sons of the desert. They wear no turban, and their only garment is a long strip of brown cotton thrown over the shoulder so as to leave the right arm free, and then wound about the waist and loins. The black hair is worn long, braided in strands which shine with oil, and put behind the ears. This sign of effeminacy is contradicted by their fine, athletic figures; by a bold, strong eye, and a straight, resolute nose.

Wady Haifa (wady is valley, and Haifa is a sort of coarse grass) has a post-office and a mosque, but no bazaar, nor any center of attraction. Its mud-houses are stretched along the shore for a mile and a half, and run back into the valley, under the lovely palm-grove; but there are no streets and no roads through the deep sand. There is occasionally a sign of wealth in an extensive house, that is, one consisting of several enclosed courts and apartments within one large mud-wall; and in one we saw a garden, watered by a sakiya, and two latticed windows in a second story looking on it, as if some one had a harem here which was handsome enough to seclude..

We called on the Kadi, the judicial officer of this district, whose house is a specimen of the best, and as good as is needed in this land of the sun. On one side of an open enclosure is his harem; in the other is the reception-room where he holds court. This is a mud-hut, with nothing whatever in it except some straw mats. The Kadi sent for rugs, and we sat on the mud-bench outside, while attendants brought us dates, popped-corn, and even coffee; and then they squatted in a row in front of us and stared at us, as we did at them. The ladies went into the harem, and made the acquaintance of the judge's one wife and his dirty children. Not without cordiality and courtesy of manner these people; but how simple are the terms of life here; and what a thoroughly African picture this is, the mud-huts, the sand, the palms, the black-skinned groups.

The women here are modestly clad, but most of them frightfully ugly and castor-oily; yet we chanced upon two handsome girls, or rather married women, of fifteen or sixteen. One of them had regular features and a very pretty expression, and evidently knew she was a beauty, for she sat apart on the ground, keeping her head covered most of the time, and did not join the women who thronged about us to look with wonder at the costume of our ladies and to beg for backsheesh. She was loaded with necklaces, bracelets of horn and ivory, and had a ring on every finger. There was in her manner something of scorn and resentment at our intrusion; she no doubt had her circle of admirers and was queen in it. Who are these pale creatures who come to stare at my charms? Have they no dark pretty women in their own land? And she might well have asked, what would she do—a beauty of New York city, let us say—when she sat combing her hair on the marble doorsteps of her father's palace in Madison Square, if a lot of savage, impolite Nubians, should come and stand in a row in front of her and stare?

The only shops here are the temporary booths of traders, birds of passage to or from the equatorial region. Many of them have pitched their gay tents under the trees, making the scene still more like a fair or an encampment for the night. In some are displayed European finery and trumpery, manufactured for Africa, calico in striking colors, glass beads and cotton cloth; others are coffee-shops, where men are playing at a sort of draughts—the checker-board being holes made in the sand and the men pebbles. At the door of a pretty tent stood a young and handsome Syrian merchant, who cordially invited us in, and pressed upon us the hospitality of his house. He was on his way to Darfoor, and might remain there two or three years, trading with the natives. We learned this by the interpretation of his girl-wife, who spoke a little barbarous French. He had married her only recently, and this was their bridal tour, we inferred. Into what risks and perils was this pretty woman going? She was Greek, from one of the islands, and had the naïvete and freshness of both youth and ignorance. Her fair complexion was touched by the sun and ruddy with health. Her blue eyes danced with the pleasure of living. She wore her hair natural, with neither oil nor ornament, but cut short and pushed behind the ears. For dress she had a simple calico gown of pale yellow, cut high in the waist, à la Grecque, the prettiest costume women ever assumed. After our long regimen of the hideous women of the Nile, plastered with dirt, soaked in oil, and hung with tawdry ornaments, it may be imagined how welcome was this vision of a woman, handsome, natural and clean, with neither the shyness of an animal nor the brazenness of a Ghawazee.

Our hospitable entertainers hastened to set before us what they had; a bottle of Maraschino was opened, very good European cigars were produced, and a plate of pistachio nuts, to eat with the cordial. The artless Greek beauty cracked the nuts for us with her shining teeth, laughing all the while; urging us to eat, and opening her eyes in wonder that we would not eat more, and would not carry away more. It must be confessed that we had not much conversation, but we made it up in constant smiling, and ate our pistachios and sipped our cordial in great glee. What indeed could we have done more with words, or how have passed a happier hour? We perfectly understood each other; we drank each other's healths; we were civilized beings, met by chance in a barbarous place; we were glad to meet, and we parted in the highest opinion of each other, with gay salaams, and not in tears. What fate I wonder had these handsome and adventurous merchants among the savages of Darfoor and Kordofan?

The face of our black boy, Gohah, was shining with pleasure when we walked away, and he said with enthusiasm, pointing to the tent, “Sitt tyeb, quéi-is.” Accustomed as he was to the African beauties of Soudan, I do not wonder that Gohah thought this “lady” both “good” and “beautiful.”

We have seen Wady Haifa. The expedition to Darfoor is packing up to begin its desert march in the morning. Our dahabeëh has been transformed and shorn of a great part of its beauty. We are to see no more the great bird-wing sail. The long yard has been taken down and is slung above us the whole length of the deck. The twelve big sweeps are put in place; the boards of the forward deck are taken up, so that the Lowers will have place for their feet as they sit on the beams. They sit fronting the cabin, and rise up and take a step forward at each stroke, settling slowly back to their seats. On the mast is rigged the short stern-yard and sail, to be rarely spread. Hereafter we are to float, and drift, and whirl, and try going with the current and against the wind.

At ten o'clock of a moonlight night, a night of summer heat, we swing off, the rowers splashing their clumsy oars and setting up a shout and chorus in minor, that sound very much like a wail, and would be quite appropriate if they were ferrymen of the Styx. We float a few miles, and then go aground and go to bed.