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CHAPTER VI
MY SECOND VISIT TO THE SHEYKH AND MY EXPERIENCES WITH AN UNFAITHFUL SERVANT

MY friend explained to the Sheykh my desire to set up an easel in some parts of his house. A suspicious fear added to his wish to please gave me an uncomfortable feeling of having presumed on the good man’s hospitality. It took some time to clear his mind of any prejudicial effects which might ensue on my working here. Picture painting is so foreign to the Moslem’s education, and strictly speaking is a breach of Koranic law, that a slight hesitation in giving me permission is understandable. The likeness of nothing, which is in heaven above or in the earth beneath, hung on his walls to assist us in explaining the nature of my work; and that veil which is ever in a degree between the western and the oriental mind seemed thickened for a while. The wish to please, however, predominated over the suspicious fears, and he bade us farewell with the assurance that his house was at my disposal.

It was days before I returned, as I wished to complete a street scene I was then engaged on. I had lost my guide, philosopher, and friend, Mohammed, whom I did not wish to do out of a lucrative job up the Nile, and I had in his stead one with a plausible exterior, but possessing none of the virtues and all the vices which go to make up a dragoman. To work in the streets and bazaars in Cairo without a man to keep off the small boys is almost an impossibility, and much of one’s comfort depends on the tact and willingness of the man one employs.

Mansoor (to give him an alias) spoke and read English remarkably well, and having learnt like a parrot some sentences concerning the Pyramids and some of the chief monuments of Cairo, he was in hopes of soon obtaining a dragoman’s licence. Without this licence, happily, none may guide the tourist, and as an examination of sorts is now required, and also a character from some previous employer as to the good behaviour of the applicant, the tourist may run less risk in future of being hopelessly swindled than he did in earlier days. But acting merely as my servant, such licence was not a necessity. He had an irritating way of giving me uncalled-for information. The parrot-like sentences he had stored in his memory were repeated each time we passed a monument the tourist is taken to see. These might have been amusing had I not heard them ad nauseam before. I did not check him at first, and I even tried to supplement some facts absent from the little book which he had learnt by heart. His usual answer, ‘This is all the dragomans say,’ discouraged me from trying to teach him anything.

The Khan Khalil was the school in which the true tricks of his trade were to be studied. While I worked there, Mansoor would crawl about listening to the prices paid for the various purchases, and probably passed sleepless nights till he had found out about the commission the guides had obtained for bringing a customer. His smart clothes and his fluent English must have imposed on many a stall-holder that he was either a licensed dragoman or was shortly to become one. Coffee and cigarettes were pressed on him at whatever mastaba he deigned to sit.

While I worked in a mosque not far from this bazaar he would sit at the window and watch for tourists. Several times he had an uncle to bury. He would explain that there was only just time for him to pay his last respects to his deceased relative, and if I would let him go he would be sure to be back by the time I was prepared to leave. I would tell him to go and bury his relative, and had he asked to bury himself, I was prepared by this time to give him my full permission.

The last time he left me on his sorrowful errand, I mounted on to the window-sill where he was wont to watch for the prey as yet withheld from him. I saw a party of tourists just disappearing into an alley leading into the Khan Khalil, while Mansoor was questioning the driver of one of the cabs which they had left, and then he also was lost in the shadow of the selfsame alley. He returned some time after I was ready to start for my hotel, and I told him that as he had taken so long in burying his uncle, he should attend no more funerals while he was in my service. To be told a lie is seldom pleasant; but a very stupid lie reflects on the intelligence of the hearer, and this may partly have accounted for my growing dislike of this man.

I had unfortunately not found another to take his place when I went to the house of the Sheykh Saheime to start a drawing. I was most courteously received, and was told to ask for anything which I might require. I began a drawing from the anteroom of the mandara looking into the court and through the passage, which also led to the stairs of the former hareem. I did not wish to begin a too elaborate subject till I felt more sure that repeated visits were not inconvenient to my host. Mansoor joined the doorkeeper and the eunuch on their bench at the front entrance, where he doubtless enhanced his own importance by lying about my riches and relationship to the various high English officials in Cairo. The inconvenience of such lies is that a tip proportionate to such imagined wealth is looked forward to. He came presently as the bearer of a message from the Sheykh, that had the latter known I was coming that day, he would have prepared a dinner for me; but that he hoped I would return on the following morning and would honour him with my presence at the midday meal. I was grateful for his kind intentions, and yet sorry that I might be putting him to some trouble and inconvenience. I wished to come here often, and would only feel comfortable about doing so if I felt sure that I was not disturbing him.