Beyond, in the adult schools, you will hear no mention of baksheesh, except from the high-priest of the Temple, the sheikh of the University, who demands it with dignity, as due in the nature of a temple-offering, but appropriated (you know) by himself and for his own purposes. Any knowledge of a British University renders this place interesting indeed by sheer virtue of comparison. The Koran is the only textbook—of literature, of history, of ethics, and philosophy in general: a wonderful book, indeed, and a reverend. What English book will submit successfully to such a test?...
Here is the same droning by heart and the same rhythmic, absorbed accompaniment, but in a less degree. The lecturer is more frequent and more animated in gesture and more loud and dogmatic in utterance. Declamation of the most vigorous kind is the method with him, and rapt attention with the undergraduates. The lecturers are invariably past middle age, and with flowing beards, and as venerable in feature as the Jerusalem doctors. The groups of students are small—as a rule, four or five. Yet the teachers speak as loud as to an audience of two hundred. The method here is that of the University semina: that is to say, small, and seemingly select, groups of students; frequent, almost incessant, interrogation by the student; and discussion that is very free and well sustained. The class-rooms, defined by low partitions, go by race, each with its national lecturers.
Within the building are the tombs of former sheikhs, enclosed and looked upon with reverence. These approximate to tablets to pious founders. The sheikh will tell you that, as he puts it, the Sultan pays for the education of all students: he is their patron. That is to say, in plain English, the University is State-controlled and State-supported. Moreover, the students sleep there. You may see their bedding piled on rafters. It is laid in the floor of the lecture-room at night.
When you have delivered over baksheesh to the sheikh and to the conductor and to the attendants who remove your slippers at exit, you move down to the brass and silver bazaar. Here is some of the most characteristic work you'll see in Egypt. Every vessel, every bowl and tray and pot, is Egyptian in shape or chiselled design, or both. As soon as you enter you are offered tea, and the bargaining begins, although Prix Fixé is the ubiquitous sign. It is in the fixed-price shops that the best bargains are struck, which is at one with the prevailing Egyptian disregard for truth. The best brass bazaars have their own workshops attached. Labour is obviously cheap—cheap in any case, but especially cheap when you consider that at least half the workers in brass and silver are the merest boys. Whatever may be the Egyptian judgment in colour, the Egyptian instinct for form is sound; for these boys of eight and ten execute elaborate and responsible work in design. They are entrusted with "big jobs," and they do them well. There is almost no sketching-out of the design for chisel work; the youngster takes his tool and eats-out the design without preliminaries. And much of it makes exacting demands upon the sense of symmetry. This is one of the most striking evidences of the popular artistic sense. The national handwriting is full of grace; the national music is of highly developed rhythm; and the national feeling for form and symmetry is unimpeachable.
You need more self-control in these enchanting places than the confirmed drinker in the neighbourhood of a pub. Unless you restrain yourself with an iron self-discipline, you'll exhaust all your feloose. The event rarely shows you to emerge with more than your railway-fare back to camp. But under your arm are treasures that are priceless—except in the eyes of the salesman. You trek to the post office and send off to Australia wares that are a joy for ever. And there you find on the same errand officers and privates and Sisters. There is a satisfied air about them, as of a good deed done and money well spent, as who should say: "I may squander time, and sometimes I squander money and energy in this Land; but in this box is that which will endure when peace has descended, and purses are tattered, and Egypt is a memory at the Antipodes."
BOOK II
GALLIPOLI