Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt — Volume 2

by Gilbert Parker

This evening he added a whistle to his smile as he made his inspection of the engine-room and the galley and every corner of the Amenhotep, according to his custom. What he whistled no man knew, not even himself. It was ready-made. It might have been a medley, but, as things happened, it was an overture; and by the eyes, the red-litten windows of the mind of Mahommed Ibrahim, who squatted beside the Yorkshire engineer at the wheel, playing mankalah, he knew it was an overture.

As he went to his cabin he murmured to himself "There's the devil to pay: now I wonder who pays?" Because he was planning things of moment, he took a native drum down to Fielding's cabin, and made Fielding play it, native fashion, as he thrummed his own banjo and sang the airy ballad, "The Dragoons of Enniskillen." Yet Dicky was thinking hard all the time.

Now there was in Beni Hassan a ghdzeeyeh, a dancing-woman of the Ghawazee tribe, of whom, in the phrase of the moralists, the less said the better. What her name was does not matter. She was well-to-do. She had a husband who played the kemengeh for her dancing. She had as good a house as the Omdah, and she had two female slaves.

Dicky Donovan was of that rare type of man who has the keenest desire to know all things, good or evil, though he was fastidious when it came to doing them. He had a gift of keeping his own commandments. If he had been a six-footer and riding eighteen stone—if he hadn't been, as Fielding often said, so "damned finicky," he might easily have come a cropper. For, being absolutely without fear, he did what he listed and went where he listed. An insatiable curiosity was his strongest point, save one. If he had had a headache—though he never had—he would at once have made an inquiry into the various kinds of headache possible to mortal man, with pungent deductions from his demonstrations. So it was that when he first saw a dancing-girl in the streets of Cairo he could not rest until by circuitous routes he had traced the history of dancing- girls back through the ages, through Greece and the ruby East, even to the days when the beautiful bad ones were invited to the feasts of the mighty, to charm the eyes of King Seti or Queen Hatsu.

He was an authority on the tribe of the Ghawazee, proving, to their satisfaction and his own, their descent from the household of Haroon al Rashid. He was, therefore, welcome among them. But he had found also, as many another wise man has found in "furrin parts," that your greatest safety lies in bringing tobacco to the men and leaving the women alone. For, in those distant lands, a man may sell you his nuptial bed, but he will pin the price of it to your back one day with the point of a lance or the wedge of a hatchet.

Herebefore will be found the reason why Dicky Donovan—twenty-five and no moustache, pink-cheeked and rosy-hearted, and "no white spots on his liver"—went straight, that particular night, to the house of the chief dancing-girl of Beni Hassan for help in his trouble. From her he had learned to dance the dance of the Ghawazee. He had learned it so that, with his insatiable curiosity, his archaeological instinct, he should be able to compare it with the Nautch dance of India, the Hula-Hula of the Sandwich Islanders, the Siva of the Samoans.

A half-hour from the time he set his foot in Beni Hassan two dancing- girls issued from the house of the ghdzeeyeh, dressed in shintiydn and muslin tarah, anklets and bracelets, with gold coins about the forehead —and one was Dicky Donovan. He had done the rare thing: he had trusted absolutely that class of woman who is called a "rag" in that far country, and a "drab" in ours. But he was a judge of human nature, and judges of human nature know you are pretty safe to trust a woman who never trusts, no matter how bad she is, if she has no influence over you. He used to say that the better you are and the worse she is, the more you can trust her. Other men may talk, but Dicky Donovan knows.

What Dicky's aunt, the Dowager Lady Carmichael, would have said to have seen Dicky flaunting it in the clothes of a dancing-girl through the streets of vile Beni Hassan, must not be considered. None would have believed that his pink-and-white face and slim hands and staringly white ankles could have been made to look so boldly handsome, so impeachable. But henna in itself seems to have certain qualities of viciousness in its brownish-red stain, and Dicky looked sufficiently abandoned. The risk was great, however, for his Arabic was too good and he had to depend upon the ghdzeeyeh's adroitness, on the peculiar advantage of being under the protection of the mistress of the house as large as the Omdah's.

From one cafe to another they went. Here a snakecharmer gathered a meagre crowd about him; there an 'A'l'meh, or singing-girl, lilted a ribald song; elsewhere hashish-smokers stretched out gaunt, loathsome fingers towards them; and a Sha'er recited the romance of Aboo Zeyd. But Dicky noticed that none of the sheikhs, none of the great men of the village, were at these cafes; only the very young, the useless, the licentious, or the decrepit. But by flickering fires under the palm- trees were groups of men talking and gesticulating; and now and then an Arab galloped through the street, the point of his long lance shining. Dicky felt a secret, like a troubled wind, stirring through the place, a movement not explainable by his own inner tremulousness.

At last they went to the largest cafe beside the Mosque of Hoseyn. He saw the Sheikh-el-beled sitting on his bench, and, grouped round him, smoking, several sheikhs and the young men of the village. Here he and the ghdzeeyeh danced. Few noticed them; for which Dicky was thankful; and he risked discovery by coming nearer the circle. He could, however, catch little that they said, for they spoke in low tones, the Sheikh-el- beled talking seldom, but listening closely.