CHAPTER VI.—MOSQUES AND TOMBS.
WHAT we in Cairo like most to do, is to do nothing in the charming winter weather—to postpone the regular and necessary sight-seeing to that limbo to which the Arabs relegate everything—bookra, that is, tomorrow. Why not as well go to the Pyramids or to Heliopolis or to the tombs of the Memlooks tomorrow! It is to be the same fair weather; we never plan an excursion, with the proviso, “If it does not rain.” This calm certainty of a clear sky adds twenty-five per cent, to the value of life.
And yet, there is the Sirocco; that enervating, depressing south wind, when all the sands of the hot desert rise up into the air and envelope everything in grit and gloom. I have been on the Citadel terrace when the city was only dimly outlined in the thick air, and all the horizon and the sky were veiled in dust as if by a black Scotch mist. We once waited three days after we had set a time to visit the Pyramids, for the air to clear. The Sirocco is bad enough in the town, the fine dust penetrates the closed recesses of all apartments; but outside the city it is unbearable. Indeed any wind raises the sand disagreeably; and dust is the great plague of Egypt. The streets of Cairo, except those that are sprinkled, are seldom free from clouds of it. And it is an ancient dust. I suppose the powdered dead of thousands of years are blowing about in the air.
The desert makes itself apparent even in Cairo. Not only is it in the air, but it lies in wait close to the walls and houses, ready to enter at the gates, sifting in through every crevice. Only by constant irrigation can it be driven back. As soon as we pass beyond the compact city eastward, we enter the desert, unless we follow the course of some refreshing canal. The drive upon it is a favorite one on summer nights. I have spoken of the desert as hot; but it is always cool at night; and it is the habit of foreigners who are detained in Cairo in the summer to go every night to the desert to cool off.