The Moslems of Egypt, like those elsewhere, have their fast days, during which, from sunrise to sunset, they do not allow a bit of food nor a drop of water to touch their lips. Some of them carry the fast to such an extent that they will not even swallow their saliva, and in this dry climate their thirst must be terrible. The moment the cannon booms out the hour of sunset, however, they dash for water and food, and often gorge themselves half the night. You may see a man with a cigarette in his hand waiting until the sun goes down in order that he may light it, or another holding a cup of water ready while he listens for the sound of the cannon. This fasting is very severe upon the poor people of Egypt, who have to work all day without eating. The rich often stay up for the whole night preceding a fast day, and by going to bed toward morning they are able to sleep the day through and get up in time for a big meal after sunset.
The poor are the best Mohammedans, and many of the more faithful are much alarmed at the laxity in religious duty that comes through contact with Europeans. A missionary friend told me of a Moslem sheik who was offered a glass of cognac by a brother believer on a fast day. Shortly after this he met my friend and spoke of the incident, saying: “I don’t know what we are coming to. Good Mohammedans think they can drink without sinning, and this man laughed when I told him it was fast day and said that fasts were for common people, and that religion was not of much account, anyhow. We have many infidels among us, and it seems to me that the world is in a very bad way.”
The Moslems have many doctrines worthy of admiration and the morals of the towns of Egypt which have not been affected by European civilization are, I am told, far better than those of Cairo or Alexandria. A traveller to a town on the Red Sea, which is purely Mohammedan, says that the place has had no litigation for years, and there is no drunkenness or disorder. The people move on in a quiet, simple way, with their sheik settling all their troubles. Mohammedan Cairo is quite as orderly as the part in which the nobility and the Europeans live. It contains the bazaars and the old buildings of the Arabian part of the city, and is by all odds the most interesting section.
CHAPTER VII
IN THE BAZAARS OF CAIRO
Cairo is the biggest city in Africa. It is larger than St. Louis and one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the Orient. The Christians and the Mohammedans here come together, and the civilizations of the East and the West touch each other. The modern part of Cairo has put on the airs of European capitals. It has as wide streets as Paris, and a park, full of beautiful flowers and all varieties of shrubs and trees, lies in its very centre. Here every night the military bands play European and American airs, and veiled Mohammedan women walk about with white-faced French or Italian babies, of which they are the nurses. People from every part of the world listen to the music. The American jostles the Englishman while the German and the Frenchman scowl at each other; the Greek and the Italian move along side by side, as they did in the days when this country was ruled by Rome, and now and then you see an old Turk in his turban and gown, or a Bedouin Arab, or a white-robed, fair-faced heathen from Tunis.
The European section of Cairo now has magnificent hotels. It is many a year since the foreign traveller in Egypt has had to eat with his fingers, or has seen a whole sheep served up to him by his Egyptian host as used to be the case. To-day the food is the same as that you get in Paris, and is served in the same way. One can buy anything he wants in European Cairo, from a gas-range to a glove-buttoner, and from a set of diamond earrings to a pair of shoestrings. Yesterday I had a suit of clothes made by an English tailor, and I drive about every day in an American motor car. There are, perhaps, fifty thousand Europeans living in the city, and many American visitors have learned the way to this great winter resort. The bulk of the Europeans are French and Italian, and the Mouski, one of the main business streets, is lined for a mile with French and Italian shops. There are thousands of Greeks, and hundreds of Jews from Palestine, the states of southern Europe, and Asia Minor. One sees every type of Caucasian moving about under dark red fezzes and dressed in black clothes with coats buttoned to the chin.
The foreign part of Cairo is one of great wealth. There are mansions and palaces here that would be called handsome in the suburbs of New York, and property has greatly risen in value. Many of the finest houses are owned by Greeks, whose shrewd brains are working now as in the classic days. The Greeks look not unlike us and most of them talk both English and French. They constitute the money aristocracy of Alexandria, and many of the rich Greek merchants of that city have palatial winter homes here. As I have said, they are famed as bankers and are the note-shavers of Egypt. They lend money at high rates of interest, and I am told that perhaps one fifth of the lands of the country belong to them. They have bought them in under mortgages to save their notes. The lower classes of the Greeks are the most turbulent of Egypt’s population.
FROM CAIRO TO KISUMU