“BUT CAN YOU NOT see,” said the woman in dirty black, “that these are rich people? And am I blind that I see it not?”
“Avaricious one!” said Abdullah. “Have I not given you already twenty piasters? And have they not bought you beer?”
We were in a tiny room off a back street in Luxor. The flies were thick, those dogged Egyptian flies which return the moment you cease brushing them away, so that our fly whisks lay neglected in our laps; the heat was beyond words, and crowding and pressing about us, shutting out such air as there was, was an Egyptian holiday crowd, intent and not too friendly.
“Give her something and let’s get out,” said the Head.
He broached a passage-way, the woman calling after us things it is well we did not understand, and at his determined attitude the crowd fell back. Behind us the drum and pipes began again, and the two dancing women in cotton stockings and run-down American shoes began again their posturing and grinning, their abdominal gyrations and their stilted, un-beautiful steps.
Sweat poured from their wide faces, the crowd kept time by clapping its hands, and sickly warm beer circulated at prices a third of what we had paid.
It was a religious holiday in Luxor.
The procession was still moving about the narrow streets to the beating and bleating of two native bands; many gayly trapped camels, each with a hooded palanquin on top, black Sudanese dancers afoot, whirling and leaping, thousands of men and children, afoot and on donkeys, it passed and repassed us. One camel carried two great drums, one on each side, and an agile drummer on the top beat them both at once; another with a green canopy Abdullah told us carried the clothing of the Prophet, but we have no other authority for the statement.
Dust rose from the unpaved streets, the drums beat, the flies settled down and the sun registered a direct hit the moment one ventured into it. In the shade of a building we drew up our carriage and there let the procession pass us once more.
And as we sat, with that barbaric and ancient procession moving by, a gentle, unctuous voice spoke from beside us.
“You are Americans?” it said.
We stared. The voice had come from a native, in cloak and turban, who stood beside us.
“Yes.”
“Ah!” he breathed. “And how is everything over there? All right, eh?”
“It was all right when we left.”
“That’s good.”
He breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’m going back there this fall,” he said softly. “I used to have a barber shop in Rochester, New York, I’m tired of this town. It’s too old-fashioned for me.”
He melted away into the crowd, and slipping between two whirling, leaping and shouting Sudanese, was lost to us.
“Very fine man,” said Abdullah. “Sheik. Big business in America. Very rich. You not know him there?”
Abdullah had temporarily replaced Assour, and was called “the fortieth thief” by the Head. A little elderly man, as contrasted to Assour's smiling youth and comeliness, Abdullah early lost our confidence. There was the matter of the necklace which broke during my first and only donkey ride, half the beads of which are undoubtedly adorning the ears—and maybe the noses—of certain portions of the population of Luxor today. And there was the curious fact that, although we consistently gave him vast over-charges for divers carriages and so on, his payments invariably caused dire distress and loud wailings and protests,
Under such auspices we have therefore a legitimate reason to doubt certain of the information he gave us. Thus, in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, he drew me aside and pointed to an ancient scene carved on the wall.
“You see that?” he said. “The ladies, they wear a tight skirt, eh? Like today?”
“Well, something like today,” I agreed, observing that through the transparency the outlines of the wearers’ bodies were considerably more than indicated.
Then he told me that some years ago a celebrated dressmaker from Paris, a woman, had spent several days in this tomb, making drawings, and that when she went home she brought out the sheath skirt, slash and all as it was pictured there!
And there was one point in his favor. There had been a sheath skirt—have I not worn one?—and it was neatly and deftly and not too modestly slashed.