No more forlorn and desolate spot ever lay under the zealous blue of the sky. Not a tree, not a blade of grass, not a rill of water, not a bird singing in the empty air. Only an arid waste, dotted over by an irregular encampment of the narrow mansions of the dead, the round hummocks of blistered clay, each with its upright stone, its shahed, capped with turban or tarboosh. The barren nakedness and savage aridity of the place make it a melancholy spectacle by day, but in the silence of night, under the moon's quiet eye, or with the darkness flushed by the white light of the stars, the wild desolation of the city of the dead is an awesome sight. Such was the spot in which the people of Cairo had concluded to pass their Night of Lamentation—such was their Gethsemane.
When tidings of their intention passed through the town there were rumblings of thunder in the ever-lowering diplomatic atmosphere. The Consul-General heard it, and sent for the Commandant of Police.
"This gathering of great numbers of natives outside the walls," he said, "looks like a ruse for an organised attack on the European inhabitants. Therefore let your plans for their protection be put into operation without delay. As the ostensible object of the demonstration is a funeral, you cannot stop it, but see that a sufficient body of police goes with it and that your entire force is in readiness."
After that he called up the officer who was now in command of the Army of Occupation, and advised that the troops at Kasr-el-Nil, at the Citadel, and particularly at the barracks of Abbassiah, should be strictly confined and kept in readiness for all emergencies.
"If all goes well to-night," he said, "give your men an airing in the streets in the morning. Let their bands go with them, so that when the turbulent gentlemen who are organising all this hubbub take their walks abroad they may meet one of your companies coming along. If they turn aside to avoid it, let them meet another and another ... And wait!" said the old man, while his brow contracted and his lip stiffened. "The man Ishmael Ameer has escaped us thus far. He has been lying low and allowing others to get into trouble. But he seems to be putting his head into the noose this time. Follow him, watch him—don't be afraid."
The bodies of the students who were to be buried that night had been lying in the Mosque of the Sultan Hasan at the foot of the Citadel, and as soon as word came that the Imams had recited the prayer for the dead, asking "Give your testimony respecting them—were they faithful?" and being answered, "Aye, faithful unto death," the cortège started.
First a group of blind men, at slow pace, chanting the first Surah of the Koran; then the biers, a melancholy line of them, covered with red and green cloths and borne head foremost; then schoolboys singing, in shrill voices, passages from a poem describing the last judgment; then companies of Fikees, reciting the profession of faith; then the female relatives of the dead, shrouded black forms with dishevelled hair, sitting in carriages or squatting on carts, wailing in their woe; and finally Ishmael Ameer himself and his vast and various following.
Never had any one seen so great a concourse, not even on the days when the sacred carpet came from Mecca. There were men and women, rich and poor, great and small, religious fraternities with half-furled banners and dervishes with wrapped-up flags, sheikhs in robes and beggars in rags. Boys carried lamps, women carried candles, and young men carried torches and open flares which sent coils of smoke into the windless air.
Their way lay down the broad boulevard of Mohammed Ali, across the wide square of the Bab-el-Khalk, past the Governorat and the police headquarters. As they walked at slow pace, they chanted the Surah which says, "O Allah! There is no strength nor power but in God! To God we belong and to Him we must return." The shops were shut, and the muezzins called from the minarets as the procession went by the mosques.
Thus like a long, sinuous stream, sometimes flowing deep and still, sometimes rumbling in low tones, sometimes breaking into sharp sounds, they passed through the narrow streets of the city and out by the Bab-en-Nasr to the Mohammedan cemetery beyond the walls.