The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" / or, Life and Adventures in the Orient

by Thomas Wallace Knox

THE winter climate of Egypt is one of the most charming in the world and some persons say it is the most delightful to be found anywhere. I met invalids there who had been at all the famous resorts of the West Indies, at the Sandwich Islands, in the south of France, in Spain, anywhere and everywhere, and they give the credit of superiority to Egypt.

Unfortunately the winter of 1873-4 was very bad, the worst ever known in Cairo, so the old residents said. There was a great deal of rain; altogether during the winter it rained on seventeen days; sometimes only for a few minutes, and again there were several hours of pouring rain. Ordinarily there will be from six to ten showers in the course of the winter, and for the rest of the time there is the clear sky of Egypt, day after day, and night after night. I was there nearly four months and aired my umbrella only twice in that time though there were two other occasions when I would have been glad to air it; I was caught in heavy showers with no better protection than my cane, and was forced to go home in a condition like that of a cat after an involuntary bath.

While I was up the Nile there was one slight shower of five minutes or so one evening and that was all; at the same time there was a heavy rain in Cairo that converted all the streets into lanes of mud and made it very difficult to get around. And in Alexandria it is much worse as the rain falls there many a time when not a drop is known in Cairo. The farther you go to the South in Egypt the drier you find the climate until you get beyond the desert country and into the region of the tropical rains.

Among the invalids who go there there are some who are greatly benefited, while others find no relief or are positively injured. At my hotel there were several ailing persons; some with difficulties of the chest, others with bad circulation of the blood, others with cerebral affections, others recovering from broken or sprained limbs, and others with a shortness of bank account. For the last Cairo is not to be recommended, as it is an expensive place and the habits of the country require cash payments unless you can find somebody willing to give you credit.

As for the other sufferers, some grow rapidly better, and some grow rapidly worse until sent away by the doctors, and I have known two cases of chest difficulty where one man recovered almost entirely, and the other afflicted almost exactly as his neighbor was obliged to leave in a fortnight under penalty of furnishing a fee to the coroner if he remained longer.

A resident physician says that bronchial affections, chronic diseases of the mucous membrane, debilitated circulation and scrofulous diseases of all kinds are more likely to be subdued in Egypt than most other maladies. Some consumptives have been entirely restored by a voyage on the Nile and where a man is in search of a dry atmosphere he can find it for three or four months without trouble, provided he can undertake the voyage on the river so as to spend a fortnight or three weeks in Nubia about the beginning of the year. He will thus avoid the few rains of Cairo and get back to the city in season for the delightful weather at the end of March.

There is an end to the delightful winter climate of Cairo, a climate with which I was enchanted and regretted exceedingly to leave. In all the winter I did not need an overcoat except when going out for a carriage ride, I did not need a fire in my room and there was no place for making one even had I wanted it. Every day I was able to sit at an open window and write—sometimes with my coat off—and the thermometer from eleven o’clock till an hour before sunset was rarely lower than 68°. The nights are cool and the mornings particularly so, but as I do not rise early except upon compulsion the morning freshness did not incommode me.

It is necessary to be very cautious about the night air, and one should not go out in the evening without wrapping the throat in something that will keep off the dew. But whatever the nights may be, the days are warm and one can sit in the open air, without danger and with positive comfort, provided there is no wind blowing! The trees were in full leaf, and during the month of March there was an abundance of flowers. But early in April comes the Khamseen.

“What is that?” you may possibly ask.

Well, early in April, though sometimes not till the middle or end of that month, there comes a wind from the south, a hot debilitating wind that makes you feel as stupid as a dead horse, and as cross as a bear whose ears and tail were cropped yesterday. The mercury goes above par in the shade, and is at a premium of twenty-five or thirty per cent, in the sun. Every drop of moisture has been wrung from the atmosphere in its passage over the desert, and the blast upon you feels like the breath of a furnace. Everything dries up—furniture cracks; the leaves fall from the trees; the hair crackles and emits sparks in combing; your newspaper will rustle and crack as though held over the flame of a lamp; the sheet of the letter you are writing will curl up, and before you are at the end of a word of three syllables, the first part of it will have the ink as dry as though baked in a kiln; and a wet cloth hung at the window dries up almost instantaneously. If you are in the house, you think you will walk out, and if you walk out you will wish you had staid in. It is time for you to settle your hotel bill, and get away from Cairo.