My Winter on the Nile / Eighteenth Edition

by Charles Dudley Warner

When the funeral has passed and its incongruous mingling of chanting and shrieking dies away, we turn towards the gold bazaar. All the goldsmiths and silversmiths are Copts; throughout Egypt the working of the precious metals is in their hands. Descended from the ancient Egyptians, or at least having more of the blood of the original race in them than others, they have inherited the traditional skill of the ancient workers in these metals. They reproduce the old jewelry, the barbarous ornaments, and work by the same rude methods, producing sometimes the finest work with the most clumsy tools.

The gold-bazaar is the narrowest passage we have seen. We step down into its twilight from a broader street. It is in fact about three feet wide, a lane with an uneven floor of earth, often slippery. On each side are the little shops, just large enough for the dealer and his iron safe, or for a tiny forge, bellows and anvil. Two people have to make way for each other in squeezing along this alley, and if a donkey comes through he monopolizes the way and the passengers have to climb upon the mastabahs either side. The mastabah is a raised seat of stone or brick, built against the front of the shop and level with its floor, say two feet and a half high and two feet broad. The lower shutter of the shop turns down upon the mastabah and forms a seat upon which a rug is spread. The shopkeeper may sit upon this, or withdraw into his shop to make room for customers, who remove their shoes before drawing up their feet upon the carpet. Sometimes three or four persons will crowd into this box called a shop. The bazaar is a noisy as well as a crowded place, for to the buzz of talk and the cries of the itinerant venders is added the clang of the goldsmiths' hammers; it winds down into the recesses of decaying houses and emerges in another direction.

We are to have manufactured a bracelet of gold of a pattern as old as the Pharaohs, and made with the same instruments that the cunning goldsmiths used three thousand years ago. While we are seated and bargaining for the work, the goldsmith unlocks his safe and shows us necklaces, bracelets, anklets, and earrings in the very forms, bizarre but graceful, of the jewelry of which the Israelites spoiled the Egyptian women. We see just such in the Museum at Boulak; though these are not so fine as the magnificent jewelry which Queen Aah-hotep, the mother of Amosis, attempted to carry with her into the under-world, and which the scientific violators of her tomb rescued at Thebes.

In the shop opposite to us are squeezed in three Egyptian women and a baby, who have come to spend the day in cheapening some bit of jewelry. There is apparently nothing that the Cairo women like so much as shopping—at least those who are permitted to go out at all—and they eke out its delights by consuming a day or two in buying one article. These women are taking the trade leisurely, examining slowly and carefully the whole stock of the goldsmith and deliberating on each bead and drop of a necklace, glancing slily at us and the passers-by out of their dark eyes meantime. They have brought cakes of bread for lunch, and the baby is publicly fed as often as he desires. These women have the power of sitting still in one spot for hours, squatting with perfect patience in a posture that would give a western woman the cramp for her lifetime. We are an hour in bargaining with the goldsmith, and are to return late in the afternoon and see the bracelet made before our eyes, for no one is expected to trust his fellow here.

Thus far the gold has only been melted into an ingot, and that with many precautions against fraud. I first count out the napoleons of which the bracelet is to be made. These are weighed. A fire is then kindled in the little forge, the crucible heated, and I drop the napoleons into it, one by one. We all carefully watch the melting to be sure that no gold is spilled in the charcoal and no base metal added. The melted mass is then run into an ingot, and the ingot is weighed against the same number of napoleons that compose it. And I carry away the ingot.

When we return the women are still squatting in the shop in the attitude of the morning. They show neither impatience nor weariness; nor does the shopkeeper. The baby is sprawled out in his brown loveliness, and the purchase of a barbarous necklace of beads is about concluded. Our goldsmith now removes his outer garment, revealing his fine gown of striped silk, pushes up his sleeves and prepares for work. His only-tools are a small anvil, a hammer and a pair of pincers. The ingot is heated and hammered, and heated and hammered, until it is drawn out into an even, thick wire. This is then folded in three to the required length, and twisted, till the gold looks like molasses candy; the ends are then hammered together, and the bracelet is bent to its form. Finally it is weighed again and cleaned. If the owner wishes he can have put on it the government stamp. Gold ornaments that are stamped, the goldsmith will take back at any time and give for them their weight in coin, less two per cent.

On our way home we encounter a wedding procession; this is the procession conducting the bride to the house of the bridegroom; that to the bath having taken place two days before. The night of the day before going to the bridegroom is called the “Night of henna.” The bride has an entertainment at her own house, receives presents of money, and has her hands and her feet dyed with henna. The going to the bridegroom is on the eve of either Monday or Friday. These processions we often meet in the streets of Cairo; they wander about circuitously through the town making all the noise and display possible. The procession is a rambling affair and generally attended by a rabble of boys and men.

This one is preceded by half a dozen shabbily dressed musicians beating different sorts of drums and blowing hautboys, each instrument on its own hook; the tune, if there was one, has become discouraged, and the melody has dropped out; thump, pound, squeak, the music is more disorganized than the procession, and draggles on in noisy dissonance like a drunken militia band at the end of a day's “general training.”

Next come some veiled women in black; and following them are several small virgins in white. The bride walks next, with a woman each side of her to direct her steps. This is necessary, for she is covered from head to feet with a red cashmere shawl hanging from a sort of crown on the the top of her head. She is in appearance, simply a red cone. Over her and on three sides of her, but open in front, is a canopy of pink silk, borne on poles by four men. Behind straggle more musicians, piping and thumping in an independent nonchalance, followed by gleeful boys. One attendant sprinkles rose-water on the spectators, and two or three others seem to have a general direction of the course of the train, and ask backsheesh for it whenever a stranger is met.

The procession gets tired occasionally and sits down in the dust of the road to rest. Sometimes it is accompanied by dancers and other performers to amuse the crowd. I saw one yesterday which had halted by the roadside, all the women except the bride squatting down in patient resignation. In a hollow square of spectators, in front, a male dancer was exhibiting his steps. Holding a wand perpendicularly before him with both hands, he moved backwards and forwards, with a mincing gait, exhibiting neither grace nor agility, but looking around with the most conceited expression I ever saw on a human face. Occasionally he would look down at his legs with the most approving glance, as much as to say, “I trust, God being great, that you are taking particular notice of those legs; it seems to me that they couldn't be improved.” The fellow enjoyed his dancing if no one else did, and it was impossible to get him to desist and let the procession move on. At last the cortege made a detour round the man who seemed to be so popular with himself, and left him to enjoy his own performance.