Letters from Egypt Part 32

The worst is I am so strong.

I repeat I could not be better cared for anywhere than by my good and loving crew. Tell Maurice how they all cried and how Abd el-Haleem forswore drink and hasheesh. He is very good too. But my Reises are incomparable. G.o.d bless you. I wish I had seen your dear face once more-but not now. I would not have you here now on any account.

Footnotes:

{1} See my 'Three Generations of English Women.'

{4} See 'Three Generations of English Women.'

{48} A smoker or eater of _hasheeshs_ (hemp).

{55} Lady Mary and Lord Jesus.

{188} About 7 bushels.

{293} Now, I believe, abolished. The Sheykh of the Saadeeyeh darweeshes, pa.s.sing part of the night in solitude, reciting prayers and pa.s.sages of the Koran, went to the mosque, preached and said the noonday prayer; then, mounting his horse, proceeded to the Ezbekeeyeh. Many darweeshes with flags accompanied him to the house of the Sheykh of all the darweeshes where he stayed for some time, whilst his followers were engaged in packing the bodies of those who wished to be trampled under the hoofs of the Sheykh's horse as closely together as they could in the middle of the road. Some eighty or a hundred, or more men lay side by side flat on the ground on their stomachs muttering, Allah Allah! and to try if they were packed close enough about twenty darweeshes ran over their backs, beating little drums and shouting Allah! and now and then stopping to arrange an arm or leg. Then appeared the Sheykh, his horse led by two grooms, while two more rested their hands on his croup. By much pulling and pus.h.i.+ng they at last induced the snorting, frightened beast to amble quickly over the row of prostrate men. The moment the horse had pa.s.sed the men sprang up, and followed the Sheykh over the bodies of the others. It was said that on the day before the Doseh they, and the Sheykh, repeated certain prayers which prevented the horse's hoofs from hurting them, and that sometimes a man, overcome by religious enthusiasm, had thrown himself down with the rest and been seriously hurt, or even killed.

{315} Mohammed Ali Pasha, who was an illiterate coffee-house keeper in Salonica, first came to Egypt at the head of a body of Albanians and co-operated with the English against the French. By his extraordinary vigour and intelligence he became the ruler of Lower Egypt, and succeeded in attaching the Mameluke Beys to his person. But finding that they were beginning to chafe under his firm rule, he invited them, in 1811, to a grand dinner in the Citadel of Cairo. The gates were closed, and suddenly fire was opened upon them from every side. Only one man, Elfy Bey, spurred his horse and jumped over the battlements into the square below (some 80 or 90 feet). His horse was killed and he broke his leg, but managed to crawl to a friend's house and was saved. This same Elfy Bey, on the death of Abbas Pasha, held the Citadel for his son, El Hamy, against his uncle, Said Pasha, and it was only by the intervention of the English Consul-General, who rode up to the Citadel, that Elfy was induced to acknowledge Said as Viceroy of Egypt.

{334} Alexis was a clair-voyant who created some sensation in London about fifty years ago. One evening at Lansdowne House he was reading people's thoughts and describing their houses from the lines in their hands, and a few leading questions. The old Marquess asked my mother to let Alexis read her thoughts, and, I suppose, impressed by her _grand air_ and statuesque beauty, imagining that she would think about some great hero of ancient days, he said, after careful inspection of her hand, 'Madame vous pensez a Jules Cesar.' She shook her head and told him to try again. His next guess was Alexander the Great. She smiled and said, 'Non, Monsieur, je pensais a mon fidele domestique negre, Ha.s.san.' He then described her house as something akin to Lansdowne House-vast rooms, splendid pictures, etc. She laughed and told him she lived in 'une maison fort modeste et tant soi peu bourgeois,' which elicited his angry exclamation that she had not faith enough, _i.e._ that she did not help him.

{336} See Introduction, p. 6.

{350} According to tradition, the first Christian church in Egypt was built by St. Mark the Evangelist at Baucalis near Alexandria, and Christianity was introduced into Abyssinia under Athanasius Patriarch of Alexandria from 236 to 273. The authority of the Egyptian Coptic Patriarch is still paramount in Abyssinia, where he counts his adherents by the million.