It is pleasant to turn from Zohra to the mistress of a princely hareem, who is now a great lady in Cairo. Though having children of her own, she still finds room in her affections, as well as in her palace, to mother many little girls who have either lost or have been abandoned by their parents. She not only gives them a good education, but, as children by adoption, she keeps them until suitable husbands are provided for them. A kinder form of charity is hard to conceive.
Entertainments and visits from lady friends are of constant occurrence in the wealthier hareems in Cairo, though the life of Egyptian ladies in a general way must, from a European standpoint, be exceedingly dull. Girl schools are on the increase as well as home instruction; but taking the whole female population of Egypt, it is barely one per cent. as yet who can either read or write. The percentage among men is low enough—about five in a hundred; but as the enormous majority of Egyptians are peasants, five per cent. may cover those who are above the status of labouring men.
I have heard the complaint from educated Moslems that their wives were poor companions, and that they therefore spent but little of their time in their company. I don’t know what else they could expect. The fellaha woman may at times be overworked, but her existence seems a happier one than that of many of her wealthier sisters in their enforced idleness.
A fashionable French modiste was for a while a guest at the Villa Victoria. She spent her time running from one hareem to another, getting orders for the latest things in hats. As some of these hats, at the time of which I am writing, were about half the size of a billiard table, we would see her driving to her clients nearly lost amongst colossal bandboxes. For convenience she wore her chef-d’œuvre, that is the biggest, on her own head, and she would sometimes return crowned with a smaller one, having, as she told us, disposed of the masterpiece in one of the hareems. We were curious to know when and where her clients could wear them, for they never appeared in Cairo with a European hat on their heads. ‘Oh! mais c’est pour Paris ou Vienne,’ she said, and assured us that they looked ‘bien chics.’
Just think of it!—Zuleika in a Paris taxi balancing one of these shapeless masses of millinery on the top of her head!
To see things as others see them may often be the wish of most of us. I have never felt this wish stronger than when I have seen some old village sheykh asking his way about modernised Cairo. Some evil ginn must have raised these huge blocks of buildings which house the unbelievers. Strange things to help them on their road to perdition are exposed in the stores, and sheets of some invisible material which his eye can penetrate, but which resists the touch of his finger, hang before the accursed articles. Cars run along the streets with neither an ass nor a camel to draw them. Sparks which fly from beneath the wheels and overhead, accompanied by a crackling sound, must be sure evidence of the afrit who drives them. Naserene women talk in a strange language to men, and shamelessly expose their faces to all. He passes a large modern café, and sees coreligionists unturbaned and dressed as the Frank, partaking of forbidden drinks and disregarding the call of the mueddin, which alone brings a ray of hope to the poor sheykh. He hastens to the mosques—it is some way off, for mosques are few and far between in this godless part—he makes his prostrations, and he prays to Allah that the Muslemeen may come by their own again.
After he has rested in the native quarters, and he meditates on his well-watered fields, he may wish that some of his prayers be not too literally answered. He may still remember the time when excessive taxation robbed his people of the fruits of their labour, and scars may yet remain on his back of the Kurbág which drove him to the forced labour.
I have much in sympathy with the old sheykh, though we may see things from opposite points of view. Were the old town not being slowly robbed of its beauty and oriental character, I might feel indifferent as to what was being done in the new, for my object in spending so many seasons in Egypt has never been to paint the modern city, which at its best could never equal that which I could find nearer home. The inconsistency of the old man’s prayer, and the contemplations of his better watered fields, finds a parallel in my regrets that the old order gives place to the new; while I am certainly not indifferent to the creature comforts which a Europeanised hotel allows me to enjoy. The discomforts I have endured in native inns in the unfrequented places may not have left permanent scars; but they would recall some very unpleasant experiences had not the interest of what I was in search of given them a back seat in my memory. Apart from this selfish point of view, it is a joy to know that the thousands who dwell in the old city can now drink an unpolluted water, that their sick can have an enlightened medical treatment, and that the education of their young is at present adapted to a useful citizenship.
