An Artist in Egypt

by Walter Tyndale

Turkish draughts is also a popular game, and to my thinking much more amusing than the way we play it in England. That this game was known (or a form of it) amongst the ancients is certain, and most visitors to Medinet Habú will have been shown the presentment of Rameses III. playing it with his queen.

Games of chance, as well as betting, are forbidden by the Koran. A point is, however, usually stretched in allowing the loser to pay for the cups of coffee. In mankaleh the player backs his skill more than his luck, whereas in backgammon the throw of the dice brings in a large element of chance. A strict Mohammedan will therefore abstain from the latter game.

As the day declined, more customers would drop in, and by the time the lamps were lit I often regretted that my hotel table d’hôte called me away to the Ismaeliyeh quarter.

The light from the primitive lamps piercing a blue atmosphere of smoke, and falling on the groups of figures intent on their games, left a picture in my mind which I hoped might not be dimmed by the more commonplace aspect of an up-to-date hotel.

Perhaps, after all, it is as well that circumstances oblige me to reside away from that part which I regard as the true Cairo. Putting aside matters of health, it is a loss to be cut off from one’s countrymen, or those of other countries whose mode of life resembles one’s own. Unless a man can take his wife with him, he may pass months without seeing a woman’s face, or exchanging a word with one of his opposite sex. This has been my experience in Upper Egypt and while camping in the desert, where the woman will hide away from a strange man, and where her voice will never be heard except she be screaming at one of her children, or in altercation with a neighbour. The servants are always males, and the food bought in the villages is always sent by a man or a boy. If I strolled in to see the Omdeh or the village sheykh, I should have to wait till his women-folk were well out of the way. Their conversation might not have been edifying; but was that of the men always so? Life in a purely Mohammedan country, if separated from wife and family, is a one-sex existence.

I have met cultured men in the Near East, who for long periods had had little intercourse with those of their own nationality, and I noticed how ill at ease they seemed when brought in contact with European ladies and gentlemen. Life was strange enough away from the European settlements in Japan, but it was a more complete life. Though I might not understand a word spoken by the Okosan or the mousume, their smiles of welcome were perfectly understandable.

The hotel Villa Victoria, which I have of late made my headquarters in Cairo, is out of the general rush of tourists, and is frequented by many who are at times engaged in excavating, or are in some way connected with the Antiquities Department. There are also permanent guests in various Government Offices, as well as others whose business brings them in contact with things Egyptian. I was here long enough for acquaintance with my fellow-lodgers to ripen into friendship, and besides the pleasure of their company, I was enabled to pick up a good deal of information. I could also stay here at any time of the year, whereas most of the huge caravansaries put up their shutters when the tourist season is over.

There were also ladies here who had the entrée into the hareems of the principal houses, and though they were careful not to give away what is not intended for general discussion, I was yet able to get some idea of the life which is led in the ‘prohibited places.’ The interior of a princely home in Cairo at present must resemble that of a large Parisian or London house, much more than that of the Sheykh Saheime which I attempted to describe in a former chapter. The picture which a reception-room in the hareem conjures up in the western mind—of love-sick Zuleikas sprawling on cushioned floors, sighing for their Selims and sucking sweets—may be safely dismissed. Diaphanous divided skirts no more conceal their lower limbs, nor do gold-braided corsets set off the symmetry of their figures. The Parisian modiste ‘a changé tout cela.’ To us poor males, who only catch a sight of them as they drive by in their broughams, they look still as oriental as ever. The black silk habarah entirely covers the ‘creation’ from Paris, and the coiffeur’s art is hid beneath its folds. The white muslin burko veils the face except the eyes, and whether these veils be thinner than formerly I cannot say. But they are not sufficiently thick to hide completely an often very pretty outline of cheek and chin.

My informant went there to read, or hear read, the French classics, and though some of the ladies may have felt bored with extracts from Corneille, I was told that many were intelligently interested. For fear lest my readers might take Zohra as a fair specimen of an Egyptian princess, I hasten to assure them that she was as great an exception among the women as was her illustrious father amongst the men of his time.

There was much in common between father and daughter. The great Pasha let nothing stand between himself and his ambitions; any means were good enough to remove those who obstructed his plans. He was a brave man and a great soldier, and yet he could stoop to treacherously murdering the mameluke Beys and their followers, when he considered his rule in Egypt was safer without them. His young daughter was prepared to sacrifice any one who might thwart her in her misplaced love; and the form of madness which followed on her unsatisfied desires had its parallel in the loss of reason by her father, when his ambitions to found a great empire were not realised. He is reported to have had eighty-five children, and strange it is that, with a family of such dimensions, the succession of the present Khedive should have come through an adopted son. Therefore, as far as we know, there is no blood relationship between the actual members of the ruling house and Mohammed Ali and his descendants.