In Egypt we are eaten up with taxes; there is not a penny left to anyone. The taxes for the whole year eight months in advance have been levied, as far as they can be beaten out of the miserable people. I saw one of the poor dancing girls the other day, (there are three in Luxor) and she told me how cruel the new tax on them is. It is left to the discretion of the official who farms it to make each woman pay according to her presumed gains, i.e. her good looks, and thus the poor women are exposed to all the caprices and extortions of the police. This last new tax has excited more disgust than any. ‘We now know the name of our ruler,’ said a fellah who had just heard of it, ‘he is Mawas Pasha.’ I won’t translate—but it is a terrible epithet when uttered in a tone which gives it the true meaning, though in a general way the commonest word of abuse to a donkey, or a boy, or any other cattle. The wages of prostitution are unclean, and this tax renders all Government salaries unlawful according to strict law. The capitation tax too, which was remitted for three years on the pasha’s accession to the people of Cairo, Alexandria, Damietta and Rascheed, is now called for. Omar will have to pay about £8 back tax, which he had fondly imagined himself excused from. You may conceive the distress this must cause among artisans, etc., who have spent their money and forgotten it, and feel cheated out of the blessings they then bestowed on the Pasha—as to that they will take out the change in curses.
There was a meeting here the other day of the Kadee, Sheykh el-Beled, and other notables to fix the amount of tax each man was to pay towards the increased police tax; and the old Shereef at the end spoke up, and said he had heard that one man had asked me to lend him money, and that he hoped such a thing would not happen again. Everyone knew I had had heavy expenses this year, and most likely had not much money; that my heart was soft, and that as everyone was in distress it would be ‘breaking my head,’ and in short that he should think it unmanly if anyone tried to trouble a lone woman with his troubles. I did offer one man £2 that he might not be forced to run away to the desert, but he refused it and said, ‘I had better go at once and rob out there, and not turn rogue towards thee—never could I repay it.’ The people are running away in all directions.
When the Moolid of the Sheykh came the whole family Abu-l-Hajjaj could only raise six hundred and twenty piastres among them to buy the buffalo cow, which by custom—strong as the laws of the Medes and Persians—must be killed for the strangers who come; and a buffalo cow is worth one thousand piastres. So the stout old Shereef (aged 87) took his staff and the six hundred and twenty piastres, and sallied forth to walk to Erment and see what God would send them; and a charitable woman in Erment did give a buffalo cow for the six hundred and twenty piastres, and he drove her home the twenty miles rejoicing.
There has been a burglary over at Gourneh, an unheard-of event. Some men broke into the house of the Coptic gabit (tax-gatherer) and stole the money-box containing about sixty purses—over £150. The gabit came to me sick with the fright which gave him jaundice, and about eight men are gone in chains to Keneh on suspicion. Hajjee Baba too, a Turkish cawass, is awfully bilious; he says he is ‘sick from beating men, and it’s no use, you can’t coin money on their backs and feet when they haven’t a para in the world.’ Altogether everyone is gloomy, and many desperate. I never saw the aspect of a population so changed.
January 1, 1867. God bless you, dearest Alick, and grant you many good years more. I must finish this to go to-morrow by the steamer. I would give a great deal to see you again, but when will that be?
January 12, 1867: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon
To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.
Luxor,
January 12, 1867.
Dearest Alick,
Only two days ago I received letters from you of the 17 September and the 19 November. I wonder how many get lost and where? Janet gives me hopes of a visit of a few days in March and promises me a little terrier dog, whereat Omar is in raptures. I have made no plans at all, never having felt well enough to hope to be able to travel. The weather has changed for the better, and it is not at all old now; we shall see what the warmth does for me. You make my bowels yearn with your account of Rainie. If only we had Prince Achmet’s carpet, and you could all come here for a few months.