February 7, 1864: Mrs. Austin
To Mrs. Austin.
Sunday, February 7, 1864
Dearest Mutter,
We have had our winter pretty sharp for three weeks, and everybody has had violent colds and coughs—the Arabs, I mean.
I have been a good deal ailing, but have escaped any violent cold altogether, and now the thermometer is up to 64°, and it feels very pleasant. In the sun it is always very hot, but that does not prevent the air from being keen, and chapping lips and noses, and even hands; it is curious how a temperature, which would be summer in England, makes one shiver at Thebes—Alhamdulillah! it is over now.
My poor Sheykh Yussuf is in great distress about his brother, also a young Sheykh (i.e., one learned in theology and competent to preach in the mosque). Sheykh Mohammed is come home from studying in ‘El-Azhar’ at Cairo—I fear to die. I went with Sheykh Yussuf, at his desire, to see if I could help him, and found him gasping for breath and very, very ill. I gave him a little soothing medicine, and put mustard plasters on him, and as it relieved him, I went again and repeated them. All the family and a lot of neighbours crowded in to look on. There he lay in a dark little den with bare mud walls, worse off, to our ideas, than any pauper; but these people do not feel the want of comforts, and one learns to think it quite natural to sit with perfect gentlemen in places inferior to our cattle-sheds. I pulled some blankets up against the wall, and put my arm behind Sheykh Mohammed’s back to make him rest while the poultices were on him, whereupon he laid his green turban on my shoulder, and presently held up his delicate brown face for a kiss like an affectionate child. As I kissed him, a very pious old moollah said Bismillah (In the name of God) with an approving nod, and Sheykh Mohammed’s old father, a splendid old man in a green turban, thanked me with effusion, and prayed that my children might always find help and kindness. I suppose if I confessed to kissing a ‘dirty Arab’ in a ‘hovel’ the English travellers would execrate me; but it shows how much there is in ‘Mussulman bigotry, unconquerable hatred, etc.,’ for this family are Seyyids (descendents of the Prophet) and very pious. Sheykh Yussuf does not even smoke, and he preaches on Fridays. You would love these Saeedees, they are such thorough gentlemen. I rode over to the village a few days ago to see a farmer named Omar. Of course I had to eat, and the people were enchanted at my going alone, as they are used to see the English armed and guarded. Sidi Omar, however, insisted on accompanying me home, which is the civil thing here. He piled a whole stack of green fodder on his little nimble donkey, and hoisted himself atop of it without saddle or bridle (the fodder was for Mustapha A’gha), and we trotted home across the beautiful green barley-fields, to the amazement of some European young men out shooting. We did look a curious pair, certainly, with my English saddle and bridle, habit, hat and feather, on horseback, and Sidi Omar’s brown shirt, brown legs and white turban, guiding his donkey with his chibouque. We were laughing very merrily, too, over my blundering Arabic.
Young Heathcote and Strutt called here, but were hurrying on up the river. I shall see more of them when they come down. Young Strutt is so like his mother I knew him in the street. I would like to give him a fantasia, but it is not proper for a woman to send for the dancing-girls, and as I am the friend of the Maōhn (police magistrate), the Kadee, and the respectable people here, I cannot do what is indecent in their eyes. It is quite enough that they approve my unveiled face, and my associating with men; that is ‘my custom,’ and they think no harm of it.
To-morrow or next day Ramadan begins at the first sight of the new moon. It is a great nuisance, because everybody is cross. Omar did not keep it last year, but this year he will, and if he spoils my dinners, who can blame him? There was a wedding close by here last night, and about ten o’clock all the women passed under my windows with crys of joy ‘ez-zaghareet’ down to the river. I find, on inquiry, that in Upper Egypt, as soon as the bridegroom has ‘taken the face’ of his bride, the women take her down to ‘see the Nile.’ They have not yet forgotten that the old god is the giver of increase, it seems.
I have been reading Miss Martineau’s book; the descriptions are excellent, but she evidently knew and cared nothing about the people, and had the feeling of most English people here, that the difference of manners is a sort of impassable gulf, the truth being that their feelings and passions are just like our own. It is curious that all the old books of travels that I have read mention the natives of strange countries in a far more natural tone, and with far more attempt to discriminate character, than modern ones, e.g., Niebuhr’s Travels here and in Arabia, Cook’s Voyages, and many others. Have we grown so very civilized since a hundred years that outlandish people seem like mere puppets, and not like real human beings? Miss M.’s bigotry against Copts and Greeks is droll enough, compared to her very proper reverence for ‘Him who sleeps in Philæ,’ and her attack upon hareems outrageous; she implies that they are brothels. I must admit that I have not seen a Turkish hareem, and she apparently saw no other, and yet she fancies the morals of Turkey to be superior to those of Egypt. It is not possible for a woman to explain all the limitations to which ordinary people do subject themselves. Great men I know nothing of; but women can and do, without blame, sue their husbands-in-law for the full ‘payment of debt,’ and demand a divorce if they please in default. Very often a man marries a second wife out of duty to provide for a brother’s widow and children, or the like. Of course licentious men act loosely as elsewhere. Kulloolum Beni Adam (we are all sons of Adam), as Sheykh Yussuf says constantly, ‘bad-bad and good-good’; and modern travellers show strange ignorance in talking of foreign natives in the lump, as they nearly all do.