I had now had more than enough, and slipped quietly off before a fourth began his ‘turn.’
Mohammed followed me out. He was not very communicative about the unnatural orgy we had assisted at, and as he is a good Moslem, I fancy he seemed ashamed of the performance.
While walking down the Mousky on the following morning, a cabman seated on the box of his arabeyeh greeted Mohammed with an unusually cheery ‘Salaam Alêkum.’ The answer, ‘Alêkum es-Salaam, ya ibne Kelb,’ with an accompanying shake of the finger, was surprising; that is, ‘The peace be with you, O son of a dog.’ The cabby laughed and drove on. Mohammed looked rather consciously at me, and seeing that I looked puzzled, he asked me if I did not recall that cabman’s face. Yes, I had seen him before, but when or where I could not say. ‘Why, he is the darweesh who ate all that broken glass last night.’
True enough, it was the very man! But no première danseuse seen with her tinsel and spangles behind the footlights, and afterwards met in everyday garb, could have shown as great a contrast as did this cabby and the wild dervish of the previous night. He was dressed in European clothes, except for the red tarbouch, and he seemed none the worse for his last night’s glass supper.
CHAPTER IV
THE FESTIVAL OF THE ‘HASANEYN’ AND THE STORY OF THE PRINCESS ZOHRA
THE promise I had made to my acquaintances in the Khan Khalil, to come again, was soon fulfilled. This great bazaar attracts me most when the season in the modern quarters of Cairo is over or not begun. I have painted so many of its shops and corners, that I and my faithful servant must be as familiar to the stall-holders as they are to us.
An opportunity occurred to see it by night, for, except on the great festival of the ‘Hasaneyn,’ the gates of the Khan are closed before the evening prayer.
The mosque of Hoseyn stands opposite the east entrance, and it is the one most used by the shopkeepers of these bazaars.
It is a spacious building, but of little interest from an architectural point of view. Its great popularity is one cause of this, for money could always be found to restore it, and unhappily a great wave of enthusiasm for the shrine of the martyred sons of Ali obtained during a late period of debased Saracenic architecture, during which the mosque was almost entirely rebuilt.