“Come,” says Wycherley, and they enter.
“I say, what in the deuce does all that mean?” demands the mystified Canadian.
“Oh, my boy! I dare not explain. It is soul language. I have been initiated into the Order of Nomads. I’ve eaten salt with them. That is as far as I can go. There are the camels. Now to chase the blue devils away. Nobody can stand here five minutes and fail to laugh.”
And Wycherley is quite right. The uncouth figures of the hump-backed animals, so strange to Western eyes, their meek, docile aspect, the ridiculous manner of their rising and squatting are enough in themselves to arouse interest. Add to this the alarmed shrieks of the daring women who brave the merriment of the crowd and venture to take a ride, the clattering of donkeys with pilgrims astride of them whose legs almost touch the ground, the shouting of donkey boys and camel drivers, and one can have a faint idea of the sounds of old Cairo Street.
Several times during the day and evening the wedding procession takes place; an unique affair, headed by the stout major-domo, with whirling sword and fierce expression, who is followed by the strangest rabble American eyes ever gazed upon, from the palanquin to the dancing girls in the rear, their faces half concealed behind the yashmak.
Looking down the singular street from a second story balcony, or an upper chamber of the Mohammedan mosque, as this procession approaches, one could easily imagine himself in the old native quarter of Cairo on the Nile. Aleck speedily forgets his troublesome thoughts in laughing at the ridiculous sights presented on all sides.
Cairo Street was better than a doctor. No one came out regretting having entered. There you saw only the jolly side of life, for everyone laughed and joked. While walking along it was nothing to have a camel poke his nose over one’s shoulder, or be brushed aside by a donkey boy on the run, shouting, “Look out for Mary Anderson!” or “Make way for Lily Langtry!”
“Will you have your fortune told?” asks Wycherley, as, mounting the steps of the mosque, they look through a grated window into a dimly lighted room where a black Nubian, with a rather repulsive face, dressed after the manner of his race, squats upon a rug and manipulates some sand upon the floor, spreading it out deftly, tracing certain mystic symbols, and finally in rapid Arabic delivering his prophecy to the smiling interpreter who translates it in the ear of the mulcted victim, after which “Next,” and another hard-earned American quarter has started to roll toward the Nile. This fakir appears to do a flourishing business—Americans have come to the Fair to be taken in, and anything connected with the Orient has a peculiar charm for their Western eyes.
At the question Craig laughs:
“What! have you a pull with this wonderful seer in the turban, this ebony prophet from the land of the lotus?”