The sole furniture of the reception room of Arabi’s wife consisted of small hard divans covered with brown linen and a tiny table with a crochet antimacassar thrown over it. On the whitewashed walls the only ornaments were photographs of him in black wooden frames, and one larger photograph of the Sacred Stone at Mecca. In the room where Arabi himself sat and received were a similar hard divan, two or three chairs, a table, and an inkstand covered with stains. His wife was ready to receive us, having heard an hour or two earlier of our intended visit. She greeted us warmly, speaking in Arabic, which Lady Anne interpreted to me. She has a pleasant, intelligent expression; but, having five children living out of fourteen that have been born to her, looked rather overcome with the cares of maternity, her beauty dimmed since the time when the tall, grave soldier she had seen passing under her window every day looked up at last, and saw and loved her. She wore a long dress of green silk. ‘My husband hates this long train,’ she told us afterwards; ‘he would like to take a knife and cut it off, but I say I must have a fashionable dress to wear when I visit the Khedive’s wife and other ladies.’ I think there are English husbands who, in this grievance at least, will sympathise with Arabi.
An old woman with white hair, dressed in the common country fashion—a woollen petticoat and blue cotton jacket—came into the room and occupied herself with the children. Presently we found that she was Arabi’s mother. She spoke with great energy and vivacity, welcoming us and talking of her son with much affection and pride. ‘I am only a fellah woman,’ she said, ‘but I am the mother of Ahmed Arabi.’ She took me twice into another room to see an oleograph, of which she was very proud, representing him in staring colours. After a short time, a negro boy, the only visible attendant, brought in a tray, and we were invited to sit down and eat. The meal began with boiled chicken and broth, which were followed by forcemeat balls, rice, vegetables, sweet pastry, and other native dishes in abundance, though our hostess lamented the short notice she had been given of our visit. If she had known in time she would have had a cow killed. Two little girls, her daughters, waited on us, and brought water to wash our hands. She, herself, kept up an animated conversation, and gave us a vivid account of the imprisonment of the three colonels and their rescue. When they were in prison the others were frightened, but Arabi was not. He said: ‘It is not the will of God that we should perish.’ ‘When I heard what had happened, though I was almost too ill to leave the house, I hired a carriage and drove up towards the palace to ask for news of them, but could hear nothing, and soon I had to come back, and that evening my baby was born. At the moment of her birth came the news that my husband had been released by the soldiers, so I called her “Bushra”’ (good tidings). She was brought in for us to see, a tiny, thin, black-eyed creature, clinging to her grandmother. She is her father’s favourite, they said—she and Saida, the eldest girl, who was with him when he was quartered at Alexandria, and Hassan, a bright-eyed little imp of four years. We had paid a long visit, and got away after many leave-takings and hopes for their wellbeing as well as that of ‘El Bey.’ ‘Inshallah,’ his wife answered rather sadly. ‘They say the Christian Powers want to do something to my husband. I don’t understand it at all. We can’t get on without the Christians, or they without us. Why can’t we all live in peace together?’
In November I had been taken to see Madame Sherif Pasha, a voluble lady, full of importance, and telling us between the puffs of her cigarette how she had had a visit from Arabi’s wife, and had spoken severely to her, and told her to go home and make her husband behave better and keep him from these bêtises, and the poor woman had cried and promised to do her best. Now, in February, Madame Sherif had retired to obscurity, and Madame Arabi was wife of the Minister of War.
Sherif himself I did not know, but those who knew him found him a pleasant companion, a plausible speaker, and a crack billiard-player. Arabi, terribly in earnest about some important question, calling at his house and finding him engrossed in a game of billiards, would retire in disgust. A clear-sighted foreign Consul said of him: ‘Sherif is full of good intentions, but he has never any intention of carrying them out.’ The most able of our English officials said of him, ‘He is honest in intention, hazy in his ideas, indolent in action; but, as partisanship for his Ministry seems to be one of the chief causes that has led us into war, let us say the best of him now.’
Towards the end of March, before we left Cairo, Arabi came to say good-bye to us. A little worried and troubled by false accusations made against him in English newspapers, he was still confident that some day his character would be cleared. ‘They must know some day that it is the good of the people that we seek.’ A little time before their work was judged, that was all he asked. This has been denied him, and those who thought it well to ‘bring things to a crisis and hasten intervention’ by raising a quarrel between him and the Khedive have done their work. I spoke of my visit to his house, and he said: ‘Our women have not been in the habit of receiving the visits of the ladies of Europe, so if in any way they failed in the courtesy and attention due to a guest, I hope you will understand it was not from want of goodwill, but from want of knowledge.’ I showed him a picture of my little boy; he raised it to his lips and kissed it, hoping he would some day come to Egypt to be the friend of his children. Perhaps I have not been a fair judge in his cause since then.
A day or two before we left I went again to see his wife. She looked a little sadder, a little more anxious, than when I had last seen her, but was on hospitable cares intent, and soon went out of the room to see to the preparation of dinner. I had an Italian lady with me as interpreter, who spoke French and Arabic very well. They had expected me this time, and made more preparations, and when the meal was ready and I saw dish after dish coming in, I was in despair until I found that one of the children, my little bright-eyed friend Hassan, was quite ready to sit by me, and be fed from my plate, and so I disposed of my share to his great satisfaction. ‘I like this better than having to wait downstairs till dinner is over,’ he said; ‘then they forget me and eat up all the good things.’ By the time dessert arrived he said he liked me but hated other ladies, and would like to come and see me in England, but did not know how he could manage it, as his papa wanted the carriage every day. I advised him to learn English, and his mother said she would like to send him to one of the Christian schools in Cairo, ‘But how can I send him where he would hear his father spoken ill of?’ She seemed troubled, poor woman, because the Khedive’s wife, who used to be good and kind to her, now says: ‘How can we be friends when your husband is such a bad man?’ The old mother sat in the corner attending to the children and counting over her beads. I said, ‘Are you not proud now your son is a Pasha?’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘we were happier in the old days when we had him with us always and feared nothing. Now he gets up at daybreak and has only time to say his prayers before there are people waiting for him with petitions, and he has to attend to them and then go to his business, and often he is not back here until after midnight, and until he comes I cannot sleep, I cannot rest; I can do nothing but pray for him all the time. There are many who wish him evil and they will try to destroy him. A few days ago he came home suffering great pain, and I was sure then he had been poisoned; but I got him a hot bath and remedies and he grew better, and since then I keep even the water that he drinks locked up. But, say all I can, I cannot frighten him or make him take care of himself; he always says, “God will preserve me.”’
‘God will preserve me!’ ‘It is not the will of God that we should perish.’ The words of a man who believes God has given him work to do and will support him while he does it—not the words of a coward. But those who wrote the published despatches say that cowardice is the mainspring of his character, and surely they know better than his old mother!
‘The Khedive is unjust to him,’ she went on; ‘he will give him no help or support, and yet if anything goes wrong, or there is a disturbance ever so far away, Arabi is blamed for it.’ She had a grievance against her son also. He had been already working hard towards the abolition of slavery, and I found that in this matter his foes were they of his own household. ‘He ought not to do it,’ the old woman said; ‘he does not see the consequences as I do. All the slaves will leave as soon as they are freed, and European women will take their places, and they will seduce their masters, and their children will be stronger than ours, and we shall be driven out of the country.’ Poor old soul! she must have had sore and anxious days since then. I often think of her, and of the poor wife, puzzled and troubled, ‘Why should the Christian Powers want to harm my husband?’
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