WE CAMPED AND RESTED, and the Head looked for adhesive plaster in his traveling bag. Below and beyond us lay Memphis, but near at hand and before us was the tea table. We lounged in steamer chairs and surveyed the historic prospect with bored and satiated eyes.
“I suppose we have to see Memphis,” I said, “but I don’t get any particular thrill out of the idea.”
Nevertheless, Memphis, or the site of it, furnished us one modern and authentic thrill, and that the very next day.
We had started—let’s be honest about this—we had started to buy a drum. One of those quaint Egyptian affairs which you put on the top of the bookcases in the library at home, and when people comment on it, you say:
“Oh, that! We picked it up in Egypt.”
Of course we wanted to see, or at least were willing to see, the overthrown and broken statue of Rameses II, that great ruler and megalomaniac. But we also intended to go to the market place at Bedraschein and buy our drum for fifteen piasters, or seventy-five cents. Thus musically outfitted, our men having only walked all day in desert sand and blistering heat and then set up our camp, would dance for us in the evenings.
So we did all the usual things. Refused imitation scarabs, stood on a shaky platform and looked down at the great fallen statue of a great dead king, and finally started on our camels along the high and narrow dike beside the canal toward market-day at Bedraschein.
About three feet wide was that foot-path, and Dahabeah hated the very sight of water. She was a constant explanation to me of why a camel can do without a drink for seven days, or is it that they have seven stomachs? There is a seven in it somewhere. Even then she shied and fidgeted. And ahead of us a most prodigious racket commenced in the market-place. Dahabeah would have pricked up her ears, had they been prickable. As it was, the shrieks and roars growing louder, she showed every inclination to cut and run. And then, suddenly, things began to happen.
A man shot across the foot-path ahead of us and leaped into the canal. A dozen others followed him, swimming across madly, while out of the market-place and onto our foot-path there began to swarm the accumulated and hysterical people and livestock of a half dozen villages; old men on donkeys frantically beating their beasts, screaming and pallid women, camels, cows, sheep, children, goats and dogs.
Bedraschein was erupting like a volcano. Terror was in every face, and in the midst of this lava stream of frightened humanity, crowding us to the edge of the ditch, we were caught and held. Impossible to go on, impossible to turn back.
And the situation was growing worse. The sounds of battle had left the market-place and were approaching us. Terrific roars and yells, and the smashing of stick on stick grew nearer. More and more cloaked and turbaned figures dived into the canal. And finally the battle itself emerged onto the foot-path a few feet ahead of us, and resolved itself into a full-sized riot.
What would have happened had it come in our direction I do not know. Personally, I think our entire outfit would have gone into the canal, and from a later experience with Dahabeah and a ditch, that she could quite resignedly have died there. But by some chance of battle the retiring party here gained an advantage and drove the other side back. And an Arab policeman came a-running and firing his revolver, and the rioters were compelled to disperse.
For some time we remained where we were. I cannot speak for the Head and Missouri, but Dahabeah and I were trembling violently. And long after, as we proceeded on our way, we saw dignified elderly gentlemen sitting in the fields in their under-garments, wringing water out of their clothing and turbans, and examining their wounds. Here and there were family groups by the wayside, the women still crying, the men surly and somewhat damaged.
And all because two small boys of rival villages had got into a fight and their elders had interfered!
But one wonders. Egypt has been a conquered nation for twenty-five hundred years. Always the conquerors have climbed to prosperity over the bent backs of these husbandmen; they have been non-resisters for almost three thousand years, men of peace, accepting their lowly place without complaint, disarmed, subjugated.
But lately a new and militant spirit has been born among them. Its voices go up and down the Nile, calling to them who cannot read or write. And these voices are preaching to them a new doctrine. American born but not American supported; the right of small nations to determine for themselves their form of government.
Will they listen?