Small boys would occasionally crawl on to the sill and hang on to the grating to try and see what I was doing, till my man, whom I kept outside, would send them away.
A ragged fakir chose the bit of pavement just below my window to do a little basking in the sun. Mohammed whispered to me, through the grating, that he was a great saint, and squatted next to him in the full odour of his sanctity. A current of air would now and again bring some of this odour my way; but I restrained Mohammed from disturbing the fakir in his sleep. Others were not so considerate, for, in spite of the old man’s saintly repute, a number of young hooligans soon surrounded him, and comments on his appearance provoked such laughter as to wake him up.
The fakir now seemed as one possessed of a devil; he laid about with his staff and cursed his tormentors with a fluency which only a long practice, during his unregenerate days, could have given him. A young woman at a safe distance called out to him that the ghawaga, that is I, was sketching him, whereupon he turned round and directed the flow of bad language in my direction. The grating was a protection from the old fellow’s staff, and an unused-up lot of curses soon fell on the head of Mohammed, who moved him off.
Too much attention having been drawn to my window, I retired with my materials within the shades of the mosque interior.
I made inquiries about the old man. The term, fakir, is used in Egypt to denote a wandering dervish, and is also applied to any poor beggar. His rags were not simply the torn garments of a poor man, but a carefully made coat of many patches and of variously coloured stuffs, known as a ‘dilk.’ Shreds of coloured cloth were also fastened to the end of his staff. He wore no turban, and had supplemented his own hair with what I believe ladies call ‘a front’ made from a horse’s tail.
I was told that he belonged to the Rifaiyeh order of dervishes, and was famous in his day for being able to pass swords through his body without leaving a wound; he would also charm serpents and scorpions away from a house, eat live coals and chew glass.
As I have seen many appear to do these wonders without necessarily being considered very holy men, there remained a more potent reason for his reputed sanctity. I tapped my forehead once or twice, suggesting that an excess of miracles must have made him mad. ‘His mind is in heaven and only his body remains on earth,’ was the answer to my suggested question.
A superstitious awe for persons whose intellect is affected obtains all over the Mohammedan world—the Cairo hooligan being apparently the exception.
The great majority of dervishes are men of some trade or another and take part in a zikr during the religious festivals; a few lead a tramp’s life and beg their way from town to town where one of these festivals may be taking place; while those who are mentally afflicted without being actually dangerous can generally find the wherewithal to live in the district to which they belong. The latter are now rarely met with in the European parts of Cairo, and as they seem generally bereft of all sense of decency, the police may have something to say in the matter.
I attended a zikr during my first visit to Egypt, when an evening with the Howling or Dancing dervishes was still looked upon as one of the ‘sights.’ These were often got up by the dragomans as an entertainment for the tourists. H. H. the Khedive has since forbidden these shows as liable to bring Islamism into disrepute. Some wit remarked of the dragomans, that they believed in Mohammed and his profits. The dervishes (or darweesh, as they are called in Egypt) were genuine ones, and argued that their religious exercises might be just as acceptable even if they resulted in some profit in the shape of a ‘baksheesh’ from the unbelievers.