THE RULING CLASS IN Egypt is largely, although not entirely, of Turkish blood. Thus Hassanein Bey, Chamberlain to the King and Egypt’s great explorer, is the son of a Bedouin of high rank and a Circassian mother. It was Hassanein Bey who took with him on his trip to the Forbidden City Rosita Forbes, the Englishwoman, a fact which that lady forgot to emphasize on her book of the journey.
The Turk is a born ruler, a master of men. True, his methods are not ours, they consist often of periods of laxness followed by a descent with fire and the sword. But a strong ruling class is necessary over an illiterate and ignorant people, until in time to come that ignorance and that illiteracy are abolished.
The failure of the attempt at constitutional government showed certain weaknesses of the British administration in Egypt, and not the least of these has been in the direction of education. If forty years ago they had built for today in that regard, they would not, and King Fouad today would not, be dealing with a proletariat they cannot reach. Its sullenness slowly changing to fury, a passionate and uninstructed people may rise at any time, and dethroning the King, attempt to drive out his British support. They have already forced the King to a declaration of a free Egypt and a free Sudan.
That Egypt hopes for eventual complete independence is natural enough; that she is not yet ready for it must be the private opinion of many of her more intelligent people. And the British, whose lot there in recent years has been only one of anxiety and trouble, feel that they cannot let go.
British capital is heavily invested there, for one thing, and there is also a sense of responsibility.
“If we go now,” one official said to me, “Egypt in spite of herself will become a bakshish country again. Taxes will be diverted, and bribery and corruption will eat up the revenues. There is no adequate administrative class; it will take time to develop one. And in the interval there will be chaos.”
Again, and this time from a prince:
“Our faults are for all to see,” he said. “We are selfish, suspicious, jealous and without vision. We build for ourselves, caring neither for the past nor for the future. And trusting to no one, we lose our own good faith.”
Not Egyptian only, these weaknesses. All the Orient must plead guilty to them, and not a little of the West. But curiously, Mohammedan countries seem to show these traits in very high degree. It is hard to say why, for the religion of Allah is an ethical and highly moral one, although it has been debased by its fanatics and its more ignorant adherents.
Perhaps what Egypt requires is not only education, but a spiritual re-awakening.
Cultivated, delightful people, these upper-class Egyptians. Traveled and cultured, polyglot in tongue, rich many of them even beyond our conception of wealth, they provide the color and light and sparkle of life in a country of indomitable industry and drab living conditions.
True, the veil persists, but is largely a convention; it hides nothing. And true, too, that the upper-class woman is still secluded, not appearing at mixed gatherings. But her isolation is not immolation; it is perhaps a matter of pride.
Yet the effect of a theatre entirely filled with men in the conventional frock coat of Egyptian full dress, with red tarbushes on their heads, is not easily forgotten. Nor are those curtained boxes near the stage, behind whose impenetrable hangings are the only women in the house except oneself.
Yet there may be wisdom in it. At a ball in Constantinople we saw Turkish women of high rank, newly liberated from the veil and the harem. Some of the more conventional still wore the hair covered with a black veil, twisted rather like a cap, but many had nothing. Some of them were quite lovely, but like all people who change from eastern to our ugly western dress, they had lost something. The short skirt and box-like lines were out of place on bodies trained to draperies and to veils.
A Turkish woman in short skirts and French heels dancing the fox-trot may represent emancipation. But it is rather like the emancipation of Doctor Mary Walker and her trousers.
So the strangeness of a society largely woman-less persists. We were, one day, invited to the house of a most delightful Pasha to luncheon. A cosmopolitan and delightful man of the world, he served us Turkish food from one of the few remaining Turkish kitchens in Cairo, and such food as few may find anywhere. But although there were a dozen of us, and half were women, of the ladies of his household we saw no sign.
A great house it was, set in a great garden. High walls surrounded it on all sides, and through an arched gate we drove in. Men in Turkish livery received us, and inside the entrance the Pasha himself made us welcome.
The palace was built around a large court, marble floored. Part of it has been opened since the war, and at the request of one of the guests the Pasha showed us photographs of its hidden glories. I have known and visited some great houses, but nothing I have ever seen compared with what we saw that day in the——Palace, tucked away in the heart of Cairo behind its concealing wall.
The fact is that the west knows luxury, but the East has splendor. From the scented air of the dining room to the ceremony of coffee, with its five acolytes in Mameluke costume to serve it, its equipage swinging from a silver chain; from the six-foot stems of the chibouka, their tiny bowls reposing on silver platters on the floor, each with a lighted coal on top to keep it burning, and the amber mouth-pieces banded with diamonds and with rubies, beauty, ceremony and dignity presided. And in the midst of them moved the prince himself, no longer young, but kindly and hospitable.
All around him a new Egypt is arising, and Turk of the old regime that he is, it must puzzle him sometimes. The Turks gone, and the British in full control; the British aloof and cold, and not too tactful.
Even the gold coffee cups, set with diamonds, rubies and pearls, had been a gift from the former Khedive; the cigarette holders, some studded with diamonds, others with mouthpieces of great emeralds, possibly came from the same royal source. And now the very overseers from his cotton fields may perhaps go to Cairo as deputies, and vote as they are convinced, or bribed!
Power has been placed in untried hands, and all day and all night guards watch alike the British Residency and the palace of the King.