The Nile is rising fast; we shall kill the poor little Luxor black lamb on the day of the opening of the canal, and have a fantasia at night; only I grieve for my little white pussy, who sleeps every night on Ablook’s (the lamb’s) woolly neck, and loves him dearly. Pussy (‘Bish’ is Arabic for puss) was the gift of a Coptic boy at Luxor, and is wondrous funny, and as much more active and lissom than a European cat as an Arab is than an Englishman. She and Achmet and Ablook have fine games of romps. Omar has set his heart on an English signet ring with an oval stone to engrave his name on, here you know they sign papers with a signet, not with a pen. It must be solid to stand hard work.
Well, I must finish this endless letter. Here comes such a bouquet from the Pasha’s garden (somebody’s sister’s son is servant to the chief eunuch and brings it to me), a great round of scarlet, surrounded with white and green and with tall reeds, on which are threaded single tube-rose flowers, rising out of it so as to figure a huge flower with white pistils. Arab gardeners beat French flower-girls in bouquets.
July 17, 1866: Alick
Cairo,
July 17, 1866.
Dearest Alick,
I am perfectly comfortable now with my aquatic ménage. The Reis is very well behaved and steady and careful, and the sort of Caliban of a sailor is a very worthy savage. Omar of course is hardworked—what with going to market, cooking, cleaning, ironing, and generally keeping everything in nice order but he won’t hear of a maid of any sort. No wonder!
A clever old Reis has just come and over-hauled the bottom of the boat, and says he can mend her without taking her out of the water. We shall see; it will be great luck if he can. As I am the river doctor, all the sailoring men are glad to do me a civility.
We have had the hottest of summers; it is now 98 in the cabin. I have felt very unwell, but my blue devils are quite gone, and I am altogether better. What a miserable war it is in Europe! I am most anxious for the next papers. Here it is money misery; the Pasha is something like bankrupt, and no one has had a day’s pay these three months, even pensions of sixty piastres a month (seven shillings) to poor old female slaves of Mahommed Ali’s are stopped.
August 4.—The heat is and has been something fearful: we are all panting and puffing. I can’t think what Palgrave meant about my being tired of poor old Egypt; I am very happy and comfortable, only I felt rather weak and poorly this year, and sometimes, I suppose, rather wacham, as the Arabs say, after you and the children. The heat, too, has made me lazy—it is 110 in the cabin, and 96 at night.
I saw the Moolid en-Nebbee (Festival of the Prophet), and the wonderful Dóseh (treading); it is an awful sight; so many men drunk with religious ardour. [293] I also went to a Turkish Hareem, where my darweesh friends sent me; it is just like a tea-party at Hampton Court, only handsomer, not as to the ladies, but the clothes, furniture and jewels, and not a bit like the description in Mrs. Lott’s most extraordinary book. Nothing is so clean as a Turkish hareem, the furniture is Dutch as to cleanliness, and their persons only like themselves—but oh! how dull and triste it all seemed. One nice lady said to me, ‘If I had a husband and children like thee, I would die a hundred times rather than leave them for an hour,’ another envied me the power of going into the street and seeing the Dóseh. She had never seen it, and never would.