Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

The streets of old Cairo resound with the cries of vendors of sweetmeats and drinks. Lemonade is dispensed from a great brass bottle on the back of the seller, while around his waist is a tin tray of glasses or cups.

Over many warehouses, shops, and even stables of old Cairo are homes of the well-to-do with marble floors covered with fine rugs. The supporting arch is much used because long timbers are not available.

Here is a lady with a eunuch, who, as black as your hat and as sombre as the Sphinx, guards the high-born dame lest she should flirt with that handsome young man from Tunis sitting cross-legged in the midst of his bottles of attar of roses. He offers a bottle to the lady while he talks of its merits in the most flowery terms. Here is a barefooted girl, who, strange to say, has no veil over her face, but whose comely features might be considered by a jealous lover to warrant such protection. Her chin is tattooed and the nails of her fingers and toes are stained deep orange with henna. She has a great tray on her head and is calling out her wares in the strangest language: “Buy my oranges! They are sweet as honey, and I know that God will make my basket light.”

This is in Arabic, and one hears the same extravagant sort of talk all about him. Here two Turks meet and salute each other. They almost fight in their struggle each to humble himself first by kissing the hand of the other. After they have done so a third passes and they all say: “Naharak sayed”—“May thy day be happy and blessed.” There are no more polite people on earth than these Mohammedans, whose everyday talk is poetry.

I can always amuse myself for days in watching the trading in the bazaars. I saw an Egyptian woman buying some meat to-day. The butcher’s whole stock consisted of a couple of sheep, one of which hung from a nail on the wall. The woman drew her finger nail along the piece she wished to take home, and the butcher sawed it off with a clasp knife. He weighed it on a pair of rude scales, and the woman objected, saying that he had given her too much. He then took one end of the strip of meat in his hand, and putting the other end in his mouth, severed it by drawing the knife quickly across it. He handed the piece he had held in his mouth to the woman, who took it and paid for it, evidently seeing nothing out of the way in his methods.

In the bazaars the merchants sit in little booths no bigger than the packing-box of a piano. A ledge about two feet high, and of about the same width, runs along the front of the store, on which the customers sit. A purchaser is usually offered coffee, and asked to take a smoke out of the long-stemmed water pipe of the proprietor. It takes a great time to make a deal, for the Mohammedan always asks three times what he expects to get, and never comes down without bargaining. The better merchants all keep book accounts, which they foot up in Arabic characters, taking the ink out of a brass inkstand with a handle a foot long which is so made that it will contain the pen as well as the ink. This inkwell is thrust into the belt of the gown when the proprietor leaves his shop.

If one is not satisfied at one place he can go to another. In the Cinnamon Bazaar there are dozens of stores that sell nothing but spices, and in the Shoemakers’ Bazaar are the gorgeously embroidered slippers and red-leather shoes, turned up at the toes, worn by all good Mohammedans. In the Silver Bazaar the jewellers are at work. They use no tools of modern invention. Their bellows is a bag of goatskin with a piece of gun-barrel for the mouth and two sticks like those used for the ordinary fire bellows at the end. One’s only guarantee of getting a good article is to buy the silver, have it tested by the government assayer, and let the jeweller make it up under his own eyes. Poor jewellery is often sold, and I remember buying a silver bracelet for a friend during a visit to Cairo which looked very pretty and very barbaric, but six months after its presentation it began to change colour, and proved to be brass washed with silver.

I see many watches displayed, for there is now a craze among the peasants of Egypt to own watches. They want a cheap article, and in many cases buy a fresh watch every year. As a result the Swiss and Germans have been flooding the country with poor movements, put up in fancy German silver, nickel, and gun-metal cases, and are selling them at two dollars and upward apiece. They are not equal to our timepieces which sell at one dollar. Some of these watches are advertised as of American make, and sell the quicker on that account. I doubt not that a good American watch would sell well and displace the poor stuff now sent in by the Swiss. In one bazaar only brass articles are shown, while in another nothing but rugs are sold. The Persian Bazaar and the Turkish Bazaar are managed by men of these nations. In fact, wandering through the business parts of Cairo, one can see types of every oriental people on the globe.