IT IS THE END of the season, in Cairo. The hall porters are calculating their gains in leisure moments. The Sudanese boys, in their long full velvet trousers and their zouave jackets, are preparing for their spring move toward the Equator, where they will probably wear nothing to speak of; men in dirty white robes with equally dirty turbans are sweeping down the stone front of the building with brushes on handles eighteen feet long, for this is a Swiss hotel, and is the last word in cleanliness. The hairdresser and his staff, the maids and waiters will soon be gone to whatever part of Europe they hark from. And the dragomen——
What becomes of these splendid if slightly avaricious gentlemen when the season ends? Do they pack away those royal garments, the striped silk under-robe, the long outer dress of fine wool, the silk scarves, the little canes, and become as other men? Do they go back to their desert, for most of them are Bedouins, and live in a low and dirty camels’-hair tent, lording it over several wives and a dozen children? Or to their Arab villages where the dogs bark all night and they sit in the endless discourse of their kind over tiny cups of thick coffee, while their women carry the heavy water jugs and tend their houses and their lords?
The jewelers, too, and the dealers in antiques. Already the jewelers at the hotels are reducing their prices, and preparing to steal away. The galli-galli man on the terrace at Shepheard’s is still there, working longer hours, now that the end is in sight; pulling his day-old chickens from the waistcoats of embarrassed elderly gentlemen, eating fire and breaking eggs in hats reluctantly loaned.
But the season is over. The flies have come; they are quiet, but persistent. One wipes them away, but they return again and in the end one lets them stay. It is easier.
On the terrace, outside our bedroom overlooking the Nile, magpies come at the breakfast hour and shriek madly for bits of toast. An increasing line of dahabeahs is tied along the water front, their awnings down, their cushions and wicker deck furniture being put away.
The corner policemen have donned longish white coats with brass buttons; the baby carriages of resident Europeans have screened canopies erected over them against the flies, and small tots have veils attached to their hats.
At the sporting club the polo players are enveloped in clouds of dust. The races are over, and today there is a sand storm and the very Nile looks dusty. The Pyramids are lost in a yellow haze, the date palms describe great arcs with their fronded tops, bowing like haughty ladies. Heavy glasses with shields at the sides, or veils, are necessary if one tries to go outdoors. The parade ground nearby is a sand storm in itself.
And toward the sea near Alexandria, and even as far as the hills of distant Lebanon, the movement away from the summer’s heat is commencing.
As our train winds through the dawn, Egypt after her casual fashion is still asleep; servants asleep wherever they have dropped in the hotels, shepherds asleep behind reed or bush shelters in the fields, and villagers on the hard earth of their mud houses. The Nile is a silver thread, the Pyramids are crowned with rose.
But as the sun comes up Egypt rises. It makes, in the rural districts, no morning toilet. It sits up and draws its night wrapping of blankets over its shoulders, against the morning chill.
The stockades are opened. Young lambs and kids leap out, and baby camels, slower, awkward and long of leg. The older animals follow; they stop and sniff the morning air, then fall to grazing. From the chimneyless houses smoke begins to rise, hanging like a low white mist, and women with water jars on their heads appear and go for water. Soon men in loin cloths are working at the primitive shidoufs, and the water wheels begin to whine.
“Why do you suppose they have blindfolded the bullock at that water wheel?” I ask.
“So he won’t know he isn’t getting anywhere,” says the Head, philosophically.
And now begins the procession out to the fields. Along the high dike-like paths they move to the day’s work, and as the sun grows higher and the train moves on we see them squatted on the ground, industrious and infinitely patient, cutting with their inadequate knives alfalfa, green and thick beyond belief.
Poppy fields in bloom; an old man at a wayside station, painstakingly searching his garments for fleas; a village headman in bright blue, on a horse caparisoned in purple velvet, his stirrups of silver and the saddle cantle of gold, his servant behind him with a crate of tiny live quail; poverty and splendor side by side, industry and indolence, beauty and squalor—Egypt.
And we are leaving it. Turning our faces from what we know a little to what we know not at all.
We are on our way to Bagdad.