Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE

In the old quarters this is Arabian. The beauty lies largely in the latticed balconies called mouchrabiyehs, which overhang the narrow roadways. These bay-windows sometimes stud the façades thickly, now large, now small, but always a fretwork of delicate wood-carving. Often from the bay projects a second and smaller oriel, also latticed. This is the place for the water jar, the current of air through the lattices keeping the water cool. An Arabian house has no windows on the ground-floor in its outer wall save small air-holes placed very high, but above are these mouchrabiyehs, which are made of bits of cedar elaborately carved in geometrical designs. The small size of the pieces is due to the climate, the heats of the long summer would warp larger surfaces of wood; but the delicacy and intricacy of the carving are a work of supererogation due to Arabian taste. From the mouchrabiyehs the inmates can see the passers-by, but the passers-by cannot see the inmates, an essential condition for the carefully guarded privacy of the family.

There is in Cairo a personage unconnected with the government who, among the native population, is almost as important as the Khedive himself; this is the Sheykh Ahmed Mohammed es Sadat, the only descendant in the direct line of the Prophet Mohammed now living. He has the right to many native titles, though he does not put them on his quiet little visiting-card, which bears only his name and a mysterious monogram in Arabic. By Europeans he is called simply the Sheykh (the word means chief) es Sadat. The ancestral dwelling of the sheykh shares in its master's distinction. It is pointed out, and, when permission can be obtained, visited. It is a typical specimen of Saracenic domestic architecture, and has always remained in the possession of the family, for whom it was first erected eight hundred years ago. There are in Cairo other Arabian houses as beautiful and as ancient as this. By diplomatic (and mercenary) arts I gained admittance to three, one of which has walls studded with jasper and mother-of-pearl. But these exquisite chambers, being half ruined, fill the mind with wicked temptations. One longs to lay hands upon the tiles, to bargain for an inscription or for a small oriel with the furtive occupants, who have no right to sell, the real owners being Arabs of ancient race, who would refuse to strip their walls, however crumbling, for unbelievers from contemptible, paltry lands beyond the sea. The house of the Sheykh es Sadat may not leave one tranquil, for it is tantalizingly picturesque, but at least it does not inspire larceny; the presence of many servitors prevents that. To reach this residence one leaves (gladly) the Boulevard Mohammed Ali, and takes a narrower thoroughfare, the Street of the Sycamores, which bends towards the south. This lane winds as it goes, following the course of the old canal, the Khaleeg, and one passes many of the public fountains, or sebeels, which are almost as numerous in Cairo as the mosques. A fountain in Arab signification does not mean a jet of water, but simply a place where water can be obtained. The sebeels are beautiful structures, often having marble walls, a dome, and the richest kind of ornament. The water is either dipped with a cup from the basin within, or drawn from the brass mouth-pieces placed outside. Nothing could represent better, I think, the difference between the East and the West than one of these elaborate fountains, covering, in a crowded quarter, the space which might have been occupied by two or three small houses, adorned with carved stone-work, slabs of porphyry, and long inscriptions in gilt, and an iron town pump, its erect slenderness taking up no space at all, and its excellent if unbeautiful handle standing straight out against the sky.

A narrow lane, leaving the Street of the Sycamores, burrows still more deeply into the heart of the quarter, and at last brings us to a porch which juts into the roadway, masking, as is usual in Cairo, the real doorway, which is within. Upon entering, one finds himself in a quadrilateral court, which is open to the sky. An old sycamore shades several latticed windows, among them one which contains three of the smaller oriels; this portion of the second story rests upon an antique marble column. On one side of the column is the low, rough archway leading to the porch; on the other, the high decorated marble entrance of the reception-hall. For in Arabian houses all the magnificence is kept for the interior. In the streets one sees only plain stone walls, which are often hidden under a stucco of mud, more or less peeled off, so that they look half ruined. In the old quarters of Cairo, among the private houses, one obtains, indeed (unless one has an invitation to enter), a general impression of ruin. At the back of the sheykh's court is the stairway to the hareem, the entrance masked by a gayly colored curtain. Across another side extends the private mosque, only half hidden by an ornamented grating. One can see the interior and the high pulpit decked with the green flag of the Prophet. The walls which encircle the court, and which are embellished here and there with Arabic inscriptions, are of differing heights, as they form parts of separate structures which have been erected at various periods through the eight centuries. The place is, in fact, an agglomeration of houses, and some of the older chambers are crumbling and roofless. The central court (which shows its age only in a picturesque trace or two) is adorned with at least twenty beautiful mouchrabiyehs, some large, some small, and no two on the same level. A charm of Saracenic architecture is that you can always make discoveries, nothing is stereotyped; of a dozen delicate rosettes standing side by side under a balcony, no two are carved in the same design.

In a room which stretches back to the garden—and which at the time of our visit was empty, save for a row of antique silver-gilt coffee-pots standing on the marble floor—there is a long, low window, like a band in the wall, formed of small carved lattices. The hand of Abbey only, I think, could reproduce the beauty of this casement; but instead of the charming seventeenth-century English girls whom he would wish to place there, realism would demand the hideous eunuchs, with their gold chains and scarf-pins; or else (and this would be better) the dignified old Arab in a white turban who sat cross-legged in the court with his long pipe, his half-closed eyes expressing his disdain for the American visitors. The courtesy of the master of the house, however, made up for his servitor's scorn. The sheykh is a tall man, somewhat too portly, with amiable dark eyes, and a gleam of humor in his face. One scans his features with interest, as if to catch some reflection of the Prophet; but the rays from an ancestor who walked the earth twelve hundred years ago are presumably faint. There is nothing modern in the sheykh's attire; his handsome flowing gown is of silk; he wears a turban, slippers, and an India shawl wound round his waist like a sash. When the air is cool, he shrouds him self in a large outer cloak of fine dark blue cloth, which is lined with white fur. Sometimes Signor Ahmed carries in his hand the Mohammedan rosary. This string of beads appears to be used as Madame de Staël used her "little stick," as the English called it (in Italy, more poetically, they named it "a twig of laurel"). Corrinne must always have this beside her plate at dinner to play with before she conversed, or rather declaimed. Her maid, in confidence, explained that it was necessary to madame "to stimulate her ideas." One often sees the rosary on duty when two Turks are conversing. After a while, their subjects failing them, they fall into silence. Then each draws out his string from a pocket, and they play with their beads for a moment or two, until, inspiration reviving, they begin talking again. One hopes that poor Ahmed Mohammed has not been driven to his string too often as mental support during dumb visits from Anglo-Saxon tourists, who can do nothing but stare at him. The sheykh's reception-hall is forty feet wide and sixty feet long. The ceiling, which has the Saracenic pendentives in the corners and under the beams, is of wood, gilded and painted and carved in the characteristic style which one vainly tries to describe. Travellers have likened it to an India shawl; to me it seemed to approach more nearly the wrong side of a Persian scarf, which shows the many-hued silken ravellings. The effect, as a whole, though extraordinarily rich, is yet subdued. The walls are encrusted with old blue tiles which mount to the top. At one end of the room there is a beautiful wall-fountain. And now comes the other side of the story. To enjoy all this beauty, you must not look down; for, alas! the marble floor is tightly covered with a modern French carpet; chairs and tables of the most ordinary modern designs have taken the place of the old divans; and these tables, furthermore, are ornamented with hideous bouquets of artificial flowers under glass. Finally, the tiles which have fallen from the lower part of the walls have not been replaced by others; a coarse fresco has been substituted. What would not one give to see the sheykh, who is himself a purely Oriental figure, seated in this splendid hall of his fathers as it once was, on one of the now superseded divans, the marbles of his floor uncovered save for his discarded Turkish rugs, the fountain sending forth its rose-water spray, perfume burning in the silver receivers, and no encumbering furniture save piles of brocaded cushions and a jar or two on the gilded shelf.

But we shall never see this. In 1889, 180,594 travellers crossed Egypt by way of the Suez Canal. In this item of statistics we have the reason.