Trousered policemen tread their beat by day, while the night watch is allowed to go its rounds in the native costume; presumably because it is less seen. The metal fanus which swing before the mosque entrances are being replaced by ugly petroleum lamps. The water-carrier will disappear as each stand-pipe is erected; this doubtless has its hygienic advantages. But had the well-to-do still the same pride in their city as had their forefathers, the water would have been conducted to the beautiful fountains which are now allowed to fall into decay.
Fortunately Cairo is large, and some years may yet elapse before ugliness will have crept into its innermost recesses.
Round and about the Tumbakiyeh—where the coarse Persian tobacco is retailed to the smokers of the nárgeeleh and the sheesheh—the old-world look seems still stern enough to frighten off any shoddy European accessories. Massive doors, nail-studded and heavily hinged, close in the Wekálehs where the tumbak is stored. More or less dilapidated gateways lead into spacious Khans where formerly caravans from Syria and Arabia unloaded their merchandise. The convent mosque of Beybars, the Taster, dominates this district. From its pepper-box minaret one can look down on extensive warehouses now partitioned into tenements of the very poor; houses of erstwhile merchant princes are now falling into decay, and their gardens used as rope-walks or bleaching-grounds. The mueddin’s call to prayer sounds like the funeral dirge of the departed glories of the Tumbakiyeh. The main street, known as the Gamalieh, has all the dignity of age; it is too poor a district, and too far from the present business centres, to be rejuvenated with the lack of taste which has ruined the Mousky.
Down a narrow lane leading out of the Gamalieh, a fine old doorway and some well-preserved oriel windows gave every promise that this was the back of a fine old Cairene house, still inhabited by its owner, and not allowed to fall into the ruinous state of most of its neighbours. My man Mohammed was with me when I made the discovery. I asked him to inquire to whom it belonged, and to try to find out if the interior was at all in keeping with what we saw from the lane.
SUK ES-SELAH, CAIRO
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Mohammed is a man of great resource. After considering his mode of procedure for a moment, he pushed open the door, which stood ajar, and we could see the bowab, or doorkeeper, asleep on the stone seat at the angle of the passage. Mohammed stepped lightly along this passage, evidently in hopes of getting round the angle and obtaining a peep into the courtyard, without awaking the sleeper. Not succeeding in this, and being asked what he wanted, he started inquiries after an imaginary relative who surely was once a servant in this household. ‘Is this not, then, the house of so-and-so?’ giving the name of an imaginary owner. ‘Then who does live here?’ The real name of the owner was then given by the doorkeeper. By a few more leading questions, it was found out that the owner was in his country place, and would not return till the cooler weather set in. Mohammed had in the meanwhile got his peep into the court, and had seen quite enough to feel satisfied that here was what I wanted. As the hareem was in the country, there would be no objection to the ghawaga also having a peep into the court, especially as a baksheesh might follow on the peep.
I was then allowed in, and here was a court similar in plan to many ruinous ones I had seen; but in a perfect state of preservation, and suggesting many beautiful things in the house which overlooked it. I had never painted in the interior of a fine Cairene house, still kept up as in the days before Ismael Pasha uttered his boast—‘L’Egypte fait partie de l’Europe.’ I made inquiries amongst Egyptian as well as European friends regarding the owner, and whether it would be possible to get an introduction to him. I was told that he was one of the old school, lived as his forebears had done, and did not frequent the modern quarters. The more inaccessible this gentleman seemed to be, the more I longed for an entrée into his house. Years went by, and this court remained in my memory as a beautiful picture which Lewis only could have adequately painted.