A divan of honor filled the end of the room; on the side was another, less honorable, as is usual in all Egyptian houses; on the floor a carpet, partly covering it. A straw matting extended beyond the carpet toward the door, and between the matting and the door was a bare space of stone floor, whereon to shed the slippers.
Hadji Hamed, the long cook, had been ill, but hearing of music and dancing and Ghawazee, he had turned out for the nonce, and accompanied us to the house, not all unmindful possibly, of the delectations of the Mecca pilgrimage. He stood upon the stone terrace afterward, looking in with huge delight! The solemn, long tomb-pilgrim! The merriest lunges of life were not lost upon him, notwithstanding.
The Howadji seated themselves orientally upon the divan of honor. To sit as Westerns sit is impossible upon a divan. There is some mysterious necessity for crossing the legs; and this Howadji never sees a tailor now in lands civilized, but the dimness of Eastern rooms and bazaars, the flowingness of robe, and the coiled splendor of the turban, and a world reclining leisurely at ease, rise distinct and dear in his mind—like that Sicilian mirage seen on divine days from Naples—but fleet as fair. To most men a tailor is the most unsuggestive of mortals; to the remembering Howadji he sits a poet.
The chibouque and nargileh and coffee belong to the divan, as the parts of harmony to each other. I seized the flowing tube of a brilliant amber-hued nargileh, such as Hafiz might have smoked, and prayed Isis that some stray Persian might chance along to complete our company. The Pacha inhaled at times a more sedate nargileh, at times the chibouque of the Commander, who reclined upon the divan below.
A tall Egyptian female, filially related, I am sure, to a gentle giraffe who had been indiscreet with a hippopotamus, moved heavily about, lighting the lamps, and looking as if her bright eyes were feeding upon the flame, as the giraffes might browse upon lofty autumn leaves. There was something awful in this figure. She was the type of those tall, angular, Chinese-eyed, semi-smiling, wholly homely and bewitched beings who sit in eternal profile in the sculptures of the temples. She was mystic, like the cow-horned Isis. I gradually feared that she had come off the wall of a tomb, probably in Thebes hard by, and that our Ghawazee delights would end in a sudden embalming, and laying away in the bowels of the hills with a perpetual prospect of her upon the walls.
Avaunt, Spectre! The Fay approaches, and Kushuk Arnem entered her bower. A bud no longer, yet a flower not too fully blown. Large laughing eyes, red pulpy lips, white teeth, arching nose, generous-featured, lazy, carelessly self-possessed, she came dancing in, addressing the Howadji in Arabic—words whose honey they would not have distilled through interpretation. Be content with the aroma of sound, if you can not catch the flavor of sense—and flavor can you never have through another mouth. Smiling and pantomime were our talking, and one choice Italian word she knew—buono. Ah! how much was buono that choice evening. Eyes, lips, hair, form, dress, every thing that the strangers had or wore, was endlessly buono. Dancing, singing, smoking, coffee—buono, buono, buonissimo! How much work one word will do!
The Ghazeeyah entered—not mazed in that azure mist of gauze and muslin wherein Cerito floats fascinating across the scene, nor in the peacock plumage of sprightly Lucille Grahn, nor yet in that June cloudiness of airy apparel which Carlotta affects, nor in that sumptuous Spanishness of dark drapery wherein Fanny is most Fanny.
The glory of a butterfly is the starred brilliance of its wings. There are who declare that dress is divine—who aver that an untoileted woman is not wholly a woman, and that you may as well paint a saint without his halo, as describe a woman without detailing her dress. Therefore, while the coarser sex vails longing eyes, will we tell the story of the Ghazeeyah's apparel.
Yellow morocco slippers hid her feet, rosy and round; over these brooded a bewildering fullness of rainbow silk—Turkish trowsers we call them, but they are shintyan in Arabic. Like the sleeve of a clergyman's gown, the lower end is gathered somewhere, and the fullness gracefully over-falls. I say rainbow, although to the Howadji's little cognizant eye was the shintyan of more than the seven orthodox colors. In the bower of Kushuk, nargileh-clouded, coffee-scented, are eyes to be strictly trusted?
Yet we must not be entangled in this bewildering brilliance. A satin jacket, striped with velvet, and of open sleeves, wherefrom floated forth a fleecy cloud of under-sleeve, rolling adown the rosy arms, as June clouds down the western rosiness of the sky, inclosed the bust. A shawl, twisted of many folds, cinctured the waist, confining the silken shintyan. A golden necklace of charms girdled the throat, and the hair, much unctuated, as is the custom of the land, was adorned with a pendent fringe of black silk, tipped with gold, which hung upon the neck behind.