September 4.—My boat will soon be finished, and now will be as good as new. Omar has worked like a good one from daybreak till night, overlooking, buying all the materials, selling all the old wood and iron, etc., and has done capitally. I shall take a paper from my Ma-allims who are all first class men, to certify what they have done and that the boat is as good as new. Goodah Effendi has kindly looked at her several times for me and highly approves the work done. I never saw men do a better day’s work than those at the boat. It is pretty to see the carpenter holding the wood with one hand and one foot while he saws it, sitting on the ground—just like the old frescoes. Do you remember the picture of boat-building in the tomb at Sakkara? Well, it is just the same; all done with the adze; but it is stout work they put into it, I can tell you.
If you do not come (and I do not like to press you, I fear the fatigue for you and the return to the cold winter) I shall go to Luxor in a month or so and send back the boat to let. I have a neighbour now, Goodah Effendi, an engineer, who studied and married in England. His wife is gone there with the children, and he is living in a boat close by; so he comes over of an evening very often, and I am glad of his company: he is a right good fellow and very intelligent.
My best love to all at home. I’ve got a log from the cedars of Lebanon, my Moslem carpenter who smoothed the broken end, swallowed the sawdust, because he believed ‘Our Lady Mary’ had sat under the tree with ‘Our Lord Jesus.’
September 21, 1886: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
Off Boulak,
September 21, 1886.
I am better again now and go on very comfortably with my two little boys. Omar is from dawn till night at work at my boat, so I have only Mahbrook and Achmet, and you would wonder to see how well I am served. Achmet cooks a very good dinner, serves it and orders Mahbrook about. Sometimes I whistle and hear hader (ready) from the water and in tumbles Achmet, with the water running ‘down his innocent nose’ and looking just like a little bronze triton of a Renaissance fountain, with a blue shirt and white skull-cap added. Mahbrook is a big lubberly lad of the laugh-and-grow-fat breed, clumsy, but not stupid, and very good and docile. You would delight in his guffaws, and the merry games and hearty laughter of my ménage is very pleasant to me. Another boy swims over from Goodah’s boat (his Achmet), and then there are games at piracy, and much stealing of red pots from the potter’s boats. The joke is to snatch one under the owner’s very nose, and swim off brandishing it, whereupon the boatman uses eloquent language, and the boys out-hector him, and everybody is much amused. I only hope Palgrave won’t come back from Sookum Kaleh to fetch Mahbrook just as he has got clever—not at stealing jars, but in his work. He already washes my clothes very nicely indeed; his stout black arms are made for a washer-boy. Achmet looked forward with great eagerness to your coming. He is mad to go to England, and in his heart planned to ingratiate himself with you, and go as a ‘general servant.’ He is very little, if at all, bigger than a child of seven, but an Arab boy ‘ne doute de rien’ and does serve admirably. What would an English respectable cook say to seeing ‘two dishes and a sweet’ cooked over a little old wood on a few bricks, by a baby in a blue shirt? and very well cooked too, and followed by incomparable coffee.
You will be pleased to hear that your capital story of the London cabman has its exact counterpart here. ‘Oh gracious God, what aileth thee, oh Achmet my brother, and why is thy bosom contracted that thou hast not once said to me d------n thy father, or son of a dog or pig, as thou art used to do.’
Can’t you save up your holidays and come for four months next winter with my Maurice? However perhaps you would be bored on the Nile. I don’t know. People either enjoy it rapturously or are bored, I believe. I am glad to hear from Janet that you are well. I am much better. The carpenter will finish in the boat to-day, then the painter begins and in a week, Inshallah, I shall get back into her.