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

by Thomas Wallace Knox

Our train was long, and consisted of one first-class, one second-class, and eight third-class carriages. The first and second-class carriages were only moderately filled, but the third-class were crowded, so that it must have been anything but comfortable to ride in them. The sides of the third-class coaches are quite open, so that the passengers get the full benefit of dust and rain.

The most important town passed on this line of railway is Tantah, a place with many handsome houses and a viceregal palace, and known as the capital of one of the Delta provinces. Many of our third-class passengers stopped there and many others joined us, as it happened to be the time of one of the three fairs or festivals held here each year.

The railway station was crowded with people, the streets were full, and on the outskirts of the town we could see tents, booths, and crowds, just as one sees them elsewhere at great gatherings of a rural population for a fair that is to last several days. There were not a dozen Europeans visible in the crowd; all were natives, chiefly from the surrounding region, though many had doubtless come from Cairo and Alexandria.

The tents were of all sorts, sizes, and colors, and there were horses, donkeys, and camels, picketed around them or grazing in the meadow close at hand. The people were generally in their best clothes, and there was quite a variety of turbans and flowing robes. The delay of our train for an hour or more gave us an opportunity to study the crowd and its peculiarities.

January, April, and August, are the months for these festivals, each of which lasts eight days, and brings together sometimes as many as two hundred thousand people. Ostensibly they come to pray at the tomb of a celebrated saint of Islam, none other than Seayyid-Ahmed el-Bedawee, a sort of Moslem Big Indian, who flourished about seven hundred years ago, and was buried at Tantah. The pilgrims recite a few prayers at his tomb, and then attend to fun and business. A large trade is carried on in horses, camels, and other merchandise, and formerly there was an extensive commerce in slaves. The sound of Oriental music was borne to our ears, and we strolled through row after row of tents or booths occupied as cafés, and the resort of singing and dancing girls, jugglers, story-tellers, and performers of all kinds.

Among the sights, none seemed to draw larger crowds than the snake-charmers, several of whom were displaying their skill before admiring audiences.

The snake-charmers of Egypt are much like their confreres of the extreme Orient, but are less famous in the matter of skill and daring. An Egyptian snake-charmer carries his pets in a bag, and is ready to give a performance whenever and wherever he can secure a patron. One afternoon, while in Cairo, I was enjoying my after-dinner cigar and strolling through the Esbekeeah Gardens, when along came a man with a sort of satchel over his shoulder and a girdle confining his frock to his waist. He stopped, and I did the same. He then took two or three large snakes out of the satchel and hung the empty receptacle on the fence. The snakes slowly unwound, and to my astonishment I perceived that they were cobras, the dreaded cobra de capello of India, one of the most deadly serpents on the face of the globe. He struck them with a small stick as they were standing erect with their heads puffed out with rage, and their tongues darting rapidly from their mouths. He had an attendant who played a sort of rude flute, and the serpents, who had been trained with the stick, kept an imperfect time to the music in the undulations of their bodies. The performer picked up the snakes and allowed them to wind around his arms and neck, and when he had put them through their paces he restored them to the satchel and asked for “backsheesh,” as a reward for his and their labors.

But the show was not over. I observed that his blue cotton frock bulged out just above the girdle; and what do you suppose he carried there?

He opened the front of his frock or shirt and thrust his hand into the opening and down to his waist. When he withdrew it he had a dozen or more small snakes in his grasp, and very deliberately placed them on the ground. Then he produced another and another handful, until a peck or so of small serpents were crawling and wriggling before our wondering eyes!

The snake-charmers I saw at the festival at Tantah went through pretty much the same performance as that I witnessed in Cairo, and a very few moments sufficed to satisfy my curiosity.