The Rulers of the Mediterranean

by Richard Harding Davis

SHADOW OF THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS
(From a Photograph taken on the top of the Pyramid just before sunset)

Besides these, much passes that is intended for your especial entertainment. Sellers of turquoises, which they dig out from various creases in their robes; venders of stuffed crocodiles and live monkeys; strange men from the desert with a jackal, which they throw, bound by all four legs, and snarling and snapping, on the marble at your feet; little girls who sing songs, and play accompaniments to them on their throats with the tips of their fingers; women conjurers, who draw strings of needles and burning flax from their mouths, and who swallow nasty little wriggling snakes, and hatch pretty fluffy little chickens out of the slabs of the terrace. Or else there is a troop of blue and white Egyptian soldiers marching by, or gorgeous young officers on polo ponies, or red-coated Tommies on donkeys, with their toes trailing in the dust and the ribbons of their Scotch caps floating out behind; and consuls-general with gorgeous guards in gold lace, and with wicked-looking curved silver swords; or the young Khedive himself, who comes with a great clatter of hoofs and bellowing sais before, and another galloping troop of cavalry in the rear, at the sound of which the people run to the curb and touch the fez, as he raises his hand to his, and rolls by in a cloud of dust.

There are very good things to see, and with a companion on one side to explain them, and another on the other side to whom you can impart this information as though you had been born knowing it, you cannot spend a more entertaining afternoon. There is only one drawback, and that is a lurking doubt that you should be up and about seeing the show-places. Friday, in consequence, is the best day in Cairo, as all the things you ought to see are then closed, and you can sit still on the terrace with a clear conscience. Among the mosques and the tombs and the palaces and museums to which all good tourists go, and of which there are excellent descriptions, giving their various dimensions and other particulars, in the guide-books, there are the Citadel and the Mosque of Mehemet Ali. The Citadel is the fortress built on the hill above the city, but which, with the Oriental incompleteness of that time, was reared upon high but not upon the highest ground. The sequel to this naturally was that when Mehemet Ali wanted the city of Cairo he sought out the highest ground, and dropped cannon-balls into the fortress until it capitulated. He afterwards asked all the Mamelukes to dinner at the Citadel, and then had them treacherously killed—all but one, who rode his horse down the side of the Citadel and escaped. If you can imagine the reservoir at Forty-second Street placed upon the top of Madison Square Garden, and a man riding down the side of it, you can understand what a very difficult and dangerous thing this was to do. There is no doubt that he did it, for I saw a picture of him in the very act in a book of history when I was at school, and I also have seen the marks of his horse's hoofs in the stone parapet of the Citadel, and they are just as fresh as they were three years ago, when they were on the other side.

The Mosque of Mehemet Ali surmounts the Citadel, and its twin minarets are the distinguishing mark of Cairo; they are as conspicuous for miles above the city as is the dome of St. Paul's over London, and they are as light and graceful as it is impressive and heavy. The men on guard tie big yellow shoes on your feet before they allow you to enter this mosque, the outer court-yard of which is floored with alabaster, over which you slide as though you were on a mirror or a sheet of ice. It is very beautiful, and one is as unwilling to walk on it as to tramp in muddy boots over a satin train. The floor of the mosque is covered with the most magnificent rugs, as wide-spreading as a sheet and as heavy as so much gold; alabaster pillars reach to the top of the square, empty building, and from these rise five domes, colored blue and red, and lightened with gilded letters. It is very rich-looking, gloomy, silent, and impressive. It is the best of the mosques. From the outside, on the ramparts, you can see Cairo stretching out below for miles in a level gray jumble of flat roofs and rounded domes and slender minarets, with the high walls of a palace here and the thick green of a park there to break the monotony; beyond it lies the Nile, a twisting ribbon of silver; and beyond that rich green fields and canals and bunches of palm-trees; and seven miles away, where the green ceases and the desert begins, are three monuments of gray stone, looking, at that distance, disappointingly small and familiarly commonplace. It is not, I think, until you have seen them several times, and have climbed to their top and gazed up at them from below, that you appreciate the pyramids as you had expected to appreciate them; but after they have laid their charm upon you, you will find yourself twisting your neck to take another look, or going out of your way to see them again before the sun has said good-night to them, as it has done ever since it first climbed over the edge of the world and found them waiting there.

There is a mosque on the outside of the city which people visit on certain days to see the howling dervishes go through their peculiar form of worship. This mosque consists of four square walls with a dome. It is whitewashed within, and bare and rude and old. The sunlight enters it through square holes cut in the dome, and beats upon thirty or forty men who stand in a semicircle facing the East. They are of all sorts, from Arabs of the desert with long hair and wild eyes, to fat, pleased-looking merchants from the bazars, and the beggars and water-carriers of the streets. Around them on chairs are the tourists and the residents, like the spectators at a play rather than the guests of a religious sect watching a religious ceremony. Most of the men wear their hats, and some of the women take careful notes and make sketches. They reminded me of medical students at a clinic when a man is being cut up. An archdeacon from one of our Western cities wore his hat, to show, probably, that he disapproved of the whole thing; but as he used to eat with his knife while on board the Fulda, his conduct in any place was not to be considered. The priest recites something from the Koran, and the men repeat it, moving their bodies back and forward as they do so with gradually increasing rapidity. What they may be saying is quite unintelligible, and the chorus they make resembles that of no human sound, but rather the gasping or panting of an animal. It is to the visitor absolutely without any religious significance; all that is impressive about it is its horrible earnestness and its at times repulsive results. As the voice of the priest grows more accentuated the bodies of the men swing farther and lower, until their hair sweeps the floor, and their eyes, when they throw their bodies back, are on a level with those of the spectators. A drum beats in quickening time to the voice of the priest and to the gasps of the dervishes, and a flute playing a weird accompaniment seems to mock at their fierce grunts and breathings. It was one of the most unpleasant exhibitions I ever witnessed, and affected one's nerves to such a degree that several of the women had to leave. The eyes of the men rolled in their sockets, and their lips parted, and through their clinched teeth came fiercer and louder gasps, until the chorus of sound reached you like the quick panting of an engine as it draws out of a station. The sweat ran from them like water from a sponge, and the veins stood out on their faces, showing in congested knots beneath the skin. Some of them groaned, and others shrieked and cried out, "Allah! Allah!" This acted like the strokes of a whip on the others, who rocked more and more violently, and swung themselves almost off their feet. Then, as the music grew fainter the motion of the bending bodies grew less vigorous and finally ceased, and the men stood rigid, some apparently unmoved and unconcerned, and others turning and reeling in a fit.

While this was going forward, and you felt as though you were assisting at a heathen rite in which self-punishment was being inflicted as a bid for God's indulgence, two interesting things happened. An officer in the English Army of Occupation turned to his dragoman and cried at the top of his voice, angrily: "Do you call this worth ten piasters? Well, I don't. Now if you've got anything to show me, take me to see it. This isn't worth coming to see. You're a rank impostor."

A SECTION OF THE PYRAMID