NOW AS LONG AGO as last Christmas the Head and I had had Egypt in mind. And with Egypt, a camel caravan. It was, indeed, from a welter of tissue paper, ribbons and cards that I looked up one day from my wrapping and said:
“What does one wear on a camel?”
And the Head, who was trying to remember where he had hidden some gift or other, said:
“What camel?”
“Any camel,” I said largely. “We’ll have to make up our minds what to take.”
“Judging by the pictures, a sheet and pillowslip would answer,” he said. “But anyhow, why worry? We don’t have to ride a camel.”
But seeing that I felt strongly about it, he suggested a golf suit for himself. And being a consistent person, a golf suit he took and a golf suit later on he wore. But my problem was not so simple.
There is something infuriating to the average woman about the competence of a man’s wardrobe. The only anxiety he ever knows is whether it is to be dinner jacket or tail coat. He can pack a suit-case and be prepared to mount a camel or to meet a king. The matter of riding a cross-saddle on a donkey, in a short tight skirt, never sends a blush to his face, nor does he hobble across sandy wastes in low pumps because he hasn’t the strength of mind to wear proper shoes.
No. The Head packed his golf suit, thus tacitly acquiescing in the camel idea, and let it go at that. But I——!
Personally I had had an idea that while men on camels rode between humps, as it were, women were luxuriously housed in a curtained and boxlike arrangement, from which ever and anon they peered out, or waved a white and surreptitious hand to some passing gallant. And Assour had fathered this delusion.
“If we do go, Assour,” I said one day, “we must be comfortable. Why can’t I dress like a Bedouin woman, in something soft and loose? And the doctor the same way?”
“You like go in native costumes?” he said, his eyes brightening. “Sure, madams. Very fine, very comfortable. You make fine Bedouin lady.”
It is true that so far all the Bedouin ladies we had seen had been wrapped in a black cloth, generally trailing in the dirt behind and covering them from head to foot. But this had not daunted us, and to the bazaars under Assour’s guidance we went and made our purchases. Then we carried them back to the hotel and put them on!
Over a striped green and white robe the Head wore a brown camel’s hair aba or cloak, heavily embroidered in gold thread. The under-robe was girt with a sash of many colors. On his head was a white turban, and over that a gorgeous and brilliantly colored silk scarf, hung with tassels and held in place by a gold cord.
I myself was modestly attired in a gold-colored slip and over it a cloak or aba of turquoise blue silk shot with gold. My head scarf was a brilliant piece of work, and over my nose and extending downward was a thick white veil, which I inhaled and exhaled with each passing breath.
With a single voice we shouted with laughter.
“Any camel,” said the Head, “would run a mile at the sight of you.”
“And any woman would run a mile at the sight of you,” I retorted pleasantly.
We took them off and put them away, and on the ship coming back they served very well as fancy dress costumes. They stood out like sore thumbs, as a matter of fact. But as costumes for a hard desert trip in a matter-of-fact world they were a failure.
Even then, however, the desert trip still remained in abeyance. True, Assour now and then mentioned it; about three times a day or thereabouts.
“If madams,” he would say in his soft Arab voice, “if madams will but sleep one night in the desert, she will be strong as a lions. The desert, it healthy, very healthy, madams.”
“It looks healthy,” the Head would say, gazing out from the Pyramids or some kindred spot over interminable sand dunes. “But what about us? Will we be healthy?”
And in the meantime kindly friends were advising us not to go. Some of them were quite certain that the Egyptians were intending to rise and drive out the British, and that in the ensuing massacres the Americans would suffer as well. While others told us intriguing stories of various desert fauna.
There was, for instance, the scorpion, an unpleasant insect resembling a crayfish in general outline, and which grasps one with its claws and then brings a stinging tail up over its back and down in front with extremely disagreeable results. The cobra, too, was mentioned, and the sand adder, an interesting viper which buries all but its poisonous horns in the ground, and you do not know it is there until you sit on it.
The net result of which was that we were considering taking a boat up the Nile, when we received an invitation to a party.
“We are camping in the desert three miles from the Pyramids,” it said. “And please come out to dinner. Camels will meet you at the corner of Sphinx Avenue and Cheops Street.”
Or words to that effect.
So we went. They say that in Abyssinia, where there are no roads for vehicles, English men go to dinner parties in full evening dress on the upper portions of their bodies, and riding breeches and puttes below. Seated at the table they must be rather impressive, but standing——
However, we ourselves affected no such compromise. I wore, among other things, I remember, a pair of white slippers. And then we found no camels waiting, and after taking our motor as far into the desert as the driver would be coaxed, we started to walk. We walked and walked, ever and anon pausing to empty the desert out of our shoes. Down in low valleys, where the sand gave way like fresh wet snow, again climbing ridges in the black dark, slipping back a foot for each foot gained, while time passed and dinner receded. And the Pyramids were just as close as ever. But at last we found the camp, and later on the camels, and with these two discoveries our last doubts faded.
We too would start on such a pilgrimage. Let the scorpions perform their acrobatic feats, let the cobras swell their necks and spit their venom, let the sand adders bury themselves, all but their horns. We would stand up, if necessary.
But we too would be served by turbaned, bowing Arabs, in tents of green and red and yellow and blue. We too would sit in chairs, and for the clapping of our hands have nautch girls dance and ancient pipers play. We too would rise at dawn to see the desert turn from rose to gold and hear the camels grumble near at hand.
In short, we were going to do the thing, or die trying.
Exactly one week later we were in camp on that identical spot, ready for the next day’s move,