Prince Abbas now informed his grandfather of the goings-on in his daughter’s palace. Gentle persuasion was never a characteristic of the old gentleman, and the manner in which he put a stop to these scandals reads like a story in the Arabian Nights. It is related that thirty masons and twenty-five donkeys laden with bricks were immediately despatched to wall up, during that very day, every outside window and door except the one surmounted by the crocodile. A company of soldiers were also sent to see that these orders were strictly carried out. Before sundown Zohra’s palace had become a veritable prison.
A modest house immediately facing the crocodile was inhabited by a Coptic scribe. This innocent man and his family were bundled out with all their belongings, and his house was turned into a guard-room. A watch was kept here day and night to see that no one, or nothing but what was necessary to the upkeep of the household, should pass through the one access to the palace.
We are not told how the princess passed the next few years in her prison. Mohammed Ali sank into his dotage, and the reins of government were taken over by his adopted son Ibrahim. Prince Abbas had not to wait long before the legitimate succession came to him, for Ibrahim Pasha died within a year of his viceroyalty and shortly before the demented Mohammed Ali’s decease. Abbas then became the ruler of Egypt.
Zohra now realised her danger in remaining in Cairo. In spite of the guard set to watch her movements she succeeded in escaping from the canal side of her palace, and she crossed into Syria before her flight became known to her nephew. From Syria she repaired to Constantinople, where she sought and obtained the protection of the Sultan of Turkey.
We will leave her there for the present, and perhaps we may refer to her doings later on.
The crocodile I was in search of had disappeared, and nothing remained whereby I could exactly locate the palace. The story of Zohra, though of so recent a date, seems now to take its place with the tragedies enacted within Mo’izz’s ‘guarded city.’
CHAPTER VIII
OF A CAIRO CAFÉ AND OTHER MATTERS
I HAD not far to go along the filled-in canal before a partly pulled down housefront enabled me to see the court of a once important dwelling. It was similar in plan to many I have seen; but it was the only instance I have met of a vaulted takhtabosh. A wooden screen partly shut it off from the yard, and an opening in one of the panels served as a doorway. Whether this screen belonged to the original building I cannot say; but it certainly added greatly to its picturesque appearance. The recess was now converted into a coffee-shop, while the rest of the house was let out in tenements to poor people.
It is never safe to leave a good subject to a later period, if it can possibly be helped. Some arrangement of line or colour, often hard to define, may be just what gives the subject its charm. Something may have disturbed this, or some touch of colour may have gone, before a second visit, and it leaves the painter wondering as to what he could have seen in the place to have made him wish to paint it. I started sketching in the café at once, hoping that some customers might arrive to suggest a grouping of figures. Should these customers be queer ones, I could trust to Mahmood to keep them from disturbing me at my work.