Part 10 (1/2)
Street View In Delhi, With the Juma Mas.h.i.+d. This Shows the Variety of Life In Delhi Streets. The Juma Mas.h.i.+d Is One of the Finest of the Mohammedan Mosques]
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE LVI
A Pa.r.s.ee Tower of Silence at Bombay. This Shows One of the Unique Burial Places at Malabar Head, Where Dead Bodies Are Exposed. Vultures Strip the Flesh From the Bones In a Few Minutes]
EGYPT, THE HOME OF HIEROGLYPHS, TOMBS AND MUMMIES
PICTURESQUE ORIENTAL LIFE AS SEEN IN CAIRO
The first impression of Cairo is bewildering. None of the Oriental cities east of Port Said is at all like it in appearance or in street life. The color, the life, the picturesqueness, the noises, all these are distinctive. Kyoto, Manila, Hongkong, Singapore, Rangoon, Calcutta, Bombay and Colombo--each has marked traits that differentiate it from all other cities, but several have marked likenesses. Cairo differs from all these in having no traits in common with any of them. It stands alone as the most kaleidoscopic of cities, the most bizarre in its mingling of the Orient and the Occident.
Ismail Pasha, who loved to ape the customs of the foreigner, made a deliberate attempt to convert Cairo into a second Paris, by cutting great avenues through the narrow, squalid streets of the old city, but Ismail simply transformed a certain quarter of the place and spoiled its native character. What he could not do, fortunately, was to rob the Egyptian of his picturesqueness or make the chief city of Egypt other than a great collection of Oriental bazars and outdoor coffee shops, as full of the spirit of the East as the camel or the Bedouin of the desert.
The ride from Port Said to Cairo on the train, which consumes four hours, is interesting mainly as a revelation of what the Nile means to these people, who without its life-giving water would be unable to grow enough to live on. With abundant irrigation this Nile delta is one of the garden spots of the earth.
The villages that we pa.s.s remind one somewhat of old Indian villages on the fringe of the desert in California and Arizona--the same walls of sun-baked adobe; the roofs of any refuse from tree pruning; the goats and chickens on terms of intimacy with the single living-room. But the people are not of the Western world. Dressed in voluminous black or blue cotton robes, which are pulled up over their heads to protect them from the keen wind of winter, they belong to the land as absolutely as the tawny, dust-colored camel. The dress of the women appears to differ very little from that of the men, but always the women gather a loose fold of their dress and bring it over the head, thus partially concealing the face. Men, women and children, all in bare feet, squat in the sand or sit hunched up against the sunny side of their houses. Beyond any other Orientals I have seen, these Egyptians have the capacity for unlimited loafing under circ.u.mstances that would drive an American insane in a few hours. Flies swarm over them; pa.s.sing donkeys or camels powder them with dust; the fierce sun beats down on their heads; but all these things they accept philosophically as an inevitable part of life, as something decreed by fate which it would be useless and senseless to change.
The first walk down the Street of the Camel in Cairo is one not soon forgotten. Before you are clear of the hotel steps an Arab in a sweater and loose skirt, something like the Malay sarong, rushes up and shouts: ”The latest New York Herald; just came this morning!” Although you tell him ”no” and shake your head, he follows you for half a block. Meanwhile you are badgered by dealers in scarabs, beads, stamps, postal cards, silver shawls and various curios, who dog your heels, and, when you finally lose your temper, retaliate by shouting: ”Yankee!” through their noses. These street peddlers are wonderfully keen judges of nationality and they manage to make life a burden to the American tourist by their unwearied and smiling persistence. This is due in great part to the foolish liberality of American travelers, who are inclined to accept the first price offered, although with an Egyptian or an Arab this is usually twice or three times what he finally agrees to take.
Custom and habit probably blunt one's sensibilities in time, but this constant annoyance by peddlers detracts much from the pleasure of any stroll through Cairo streets. To the new arrival everything is novel and attractive. The main avenues are wide, well paved and lined with s.p.a.cious sidewalks, but here the European touch ends. After pa.s.sing some fine shops, their windows filled with costly goods from all parts of Egypt and the Soudan, one comes upon one of the great cafes that form a distinctive feature of Cairo street life. Here the sidewalk is half filled with small tables, about which are grouped Egyptians and foreigners drinking the sweet Turkish coffee that is served here at all hours of the day.
Many of these Egyptians are in European dress, their swarthy faces and the red fez alone showing their nationality. The young men are remarkably handsome, with fine, regular features, large, brilliant black eyes and straight, heavy eyebrows that frequently meet over the nose.
Their faces beam with good nature and they evidently regard the frequent enjoyment of coffee and cigarettes as among the real pleasures of life.
But the older men all show traces of this life of ease and self-indulgence. It is seldom that one sees a man beyond fifty with a strong face. The Egyptian over forty loses his fine figure, he lays on abundant flesh, his jowl is heavy and his whole face suggests satiety and the loss of that pleasure in mere existence that makes the youth so attractive.
Walking down this main artery of Cairo life one sees on the left a large park surrounded by a high iron fence. This is the Esbekiyeh Gardens, which cover twenty acres, and are planted to many choice trees and shrubs. They contain cafes, a restaurant and a theater, and on several evenings in the week military and Egyptian bands alternate in playing foreign music. Beyond the gardens is an imposing opera house, with a small square in front, ornamented with an impressive equestrian statue of old Ibrahim Pasha, one of the few good fighters that Egypt has produced. From the opera house radiate many streets, some leading to the new Europeanized quarters, with n.o.ble residences and great apartment houses; others taking one directly to the bazars and narrow streets that give a good idea of Cairo as it existed before the foreigner came to change its life.
Although the modern tram car clangs its way through these native streets, it is about the only foreign touch that can be seen. Everything else is distinctively Oriental. It is difficult to give any adequate idea of the narrowness of these streets or of the amount of life that is crowded into them. As in many cities of India, all the work of the shops goes on in plain view from the street. The shops themselves are mere cubicles, from eight to ten feet wide and seldom more than from six to eight feet deep. In certain streets the makers of shoes and slippers are ma.s.sed in solid rows; then come the workers in bra.s.s and metals; then the jewelers, and following these may be dealers in shawls and in curios of various kinds. The native shopkeeper sits cross-legged amid his stock and, although he shows great keenness in getting you to examine his wares, he never reveals any haste in closing a bargain.
Shopping in this native quarter and in the great Muski bazar that adjoins it is a constant source of amus.e.m.e.nt to the foreign woman who has a fondness for bargaining. These Arabs and Egyptians never expect one to give more than half what is demanded, except in the case of a few large shops in which the price is marked. If one of the silver shawls made at a.s.siut attracts a lady's attention and the polite shopkeeper demands five pounds sterling, she may safely offer him two pounds, and then, after haggling for a half hour, she will probably become the possessor of the shawl for two pounds ten s.h.i.+llings. Of one thing the traveler may be sure: he will never get any article from an Egyptian on which the shopkeeper cannot make a small profit.
The Muski bazar is about a mile long and, although many European shops line it, the street still retains its Oriental attractiveness. Branching off from it are many narrow streets crowded with shops on both sides.
Here may be seen the real life of Old Cairo, unhampered by any foreign innovations. The street is not more than twelve feet wide and above the first floor of the houses projecting latticed windows and open balconies reduce this width to three or four feet. Looking up one sees only a narrow slit of blue sky, against which are outlined several tiers of latticed windows. From these the harem women look down upon the street life in which they can have no real part. Peeping over the balconies may be seen black eyes that gleam above the yashmak or Oriental veil worn by the poorer cla.s.ses. This veil covers the face almost to the eyes and it is held in place by a curious bit of bamboo that comes down over the forehead to the nose. The women of the better cla.s.s do not wear this ugly yashmak, but content themselves with a white silk veil that is stretched across the lower part of the face, leaving the eyes and a part of the nose uncovered.
No visit to Cairo is complete without a sight of Old Cairo, with its bazars. This is a quarter of the city that remains as it was in the days of the Caliphs. It is inhabited mainly by Copts and among the mean houses, built of sun-dried bricks, may be traced part of the old Roman wall that encircled this suburb, then known as Babylon. The houses are mainly of two or three stories, but the streets are so narrow that two people on opposite sides may easily join hands by leaning out of their windows. Many or the antique doors of oak, studded with great wrought-iron nails, still remain. Here is the old church of St. Sergius, which is said to antedate the Moslem conquest. In the ancient crypt the Virgin Mary and the Child are said to have sought shelter after their flight into Egypt.
Near by is the island of Roda, which is noteworthy for the legend that here the infant Moses was found by Pharaoh's daughter. The visitor crosses a narrow arm of the Nile by a crude ferry and then walks through a quaint old garden to a wall that overlooks the Nile and the Pyramids.
This wall marks the spot, according to local tradition, where Moses was taken from the bulrushes. The bulrushes are no more because they have been dredged out, but the place has the look of extreme age and the garden contains many curious trees.
AMONG THE RUINS OF LUXOR AND KARNAK
Luxor, the ancient city of Upper Egypt, which may be reached by a night train ride from Cairo, is the center of the most interesting ruins on the Nile. The city itself has been built around the splendid temple of Luxor, founded by Amenophis III, but altered and extensively rebuilt by Rameses II. From the Nile the colonnade of this temple is a beautiful spectacle, as the huge columns are in perfect preservation. Big tourist hotels make up most of the other buildings. The town boasts a good water front, which is generally lined in the winter season with tourist steamers. The view across the Nile is fine, as it includes the lofty Libyan range of mountains, in whose flanks were cut the tombs of the Pharaohs. Here, in two or three days, one may study the ruins of Luxor, Karnak and Thebes--names that the historian still conjures with.
All the Egyptian temples were built on one general plan, like the mosques of North India, and Luxor does not differ from the others, except that it surpa.s.ses them all in the beauty of its colonnaded pillars. Seven double columns, about fifty-two feet high, with lotus capitals, support a ma.s.sive architrave, while beyond them are double columns on three sides of a great court. This temple of Luxor was originally built by Amenophis III of the eighteenth dynasty in honor of Ammon, the greatest of Egyptian G.o.ds, his wife and their son, the moon-G.o.d Khons. The successor of this monarch erased the name of Ammon and made other changes, but Seti I restored Ammon's name, and then came Rameses II, the builder who never wearied in rearing huge temples and in carving colossal figures of himself.
Rameses added a colonnaded court in front of the temple, built an enormous pylon, with obelisks and colossal statues that celebrate his own greatness, and erased the cartouches of the original builder, subst.i.tuting his own and thus claiming credit for the erection of the whole temple. Were the spirit of the great Rameses allowed to return to earth and reanimate the mummy that now forms the most interesting exhibit in the Cairo Museum, how great would be his humiliation to know that his ingenious devices to appropriate the credit of other men's work have been exposed? In nearly all the remains of Upper Egypt, Rameses figures as the sole builder, but the cunning of modern archaeologists has stripped him of this credit and has revealed him as the greatest of royal charlatans.
The general plan of the Luxor temple is repeated at Karnak and all other places in Egypt. The pylon, two towers of ma.s.sive masonry, formed the entrance to the temple, the door being in the middle. The towers of the pylon resemble truncated pyramids and, as they were formed of large stones, they frequently survived when all other parts of the temple fell into ruins. The surfaces of the pylon afforded s.p.a.ce for reliefs and inscriptions, telling of the glories of the king who reared the temple.