About Egypt by Mrs. Susan E. Wallace

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 34.

About Egypt.

By Mrs. Susan E. Wallace

Very pleasant was that ride to Cairo, the city called by Orientals the precious diamond in the handle of the green fan of the Delta. It was the retreat of the Fatimite Caliphs, the beloved asylum of the poets, and is famed in flowery prose and voluptuous song.

Our swift train appeared to glide through rather than break the stillness of the drowsy country. The mellow sunshine was like our Indian Summer, balmy and yellow, glorifying all it touched, and made less melancholy the squalid, filthy Arab villages, haunted by hags who are not witches, but wives and daughters of the fellahin. The mud houses are like an outgrowth of Nilotic slime and ooze, and beside them grow lovely acacias and mimosa or gum arabic trees, in which pigeons flock and flutter. About the straw heaps at the door chickens cackle, and dirty sheep hunt for food, and sore-eyed children lie basking, resembling torpid reptiles. It was in November, which was mild and delightful as bridal June is with us.

The valley of the Nile produces three crops a year; and sowing, plowing, reaping go on at the same time. Women worked in the fields with the men, each wearing one loose garment. There was no machinery but the shadof, like our old-fashioned well-sweep, the most primitive of pumps, and a rush basket. Swinging the water-tight basket, they moved with machine-like precision, these forever oppressed Egyptians, without recollections of a great past or ambition pointing to a better future. Their very souls are enslaved by centuries of grinding tyranny, knowing no change but a change of taskmasters. The locomotive gives them no impulses, and they do not lift their heads as the herald of a new civilization, a chariot mightier than Pharaoh's, rolls past. Among the low bending figures we saw the tattooed faces and painted blue lips, forbidden by the Levitical law.

In a slow, heart-broken way they moved steadily, swinging the rush basket, in the hard service of the field named in Deuteronomy, drawing up water from the river and emptying it on the fields in the higher levels. Sometimes the passer-by may hear a dull, droning sound from the unpaid toilers, a melancholy chorus chanted by gangs of boys and girls degraded unspeakably, who are set to work together along the Nile banks. The Arabic scholar tells us these are the words of the slow, sad song:—

GIRLS.

They starve us, they starve us!

BOYS.

They beat us, they beat us!

CHORUS ALL TOGETHER.

But there's some one above, There's some one above, Who will punish them well, Will punish them well.

Another burden in full chorus is:—

The chief of the village, The chief of the village, May the dogs tear him, tear him, tear him!

In the oldest of the world's illustrated histories, on the walls of Thebes, are pictures, perfect as though sculptured yesterday, for which these waiting human machines might have served as models. There is little doubt that, in the changeless East, this is the very same cry which went up to Heaven from the enslaved Hebrews, groaning under their taskmasters. An exceeding bitter cry when swelled in a chorus of multitudes doomed to perform impossibilities, gazing in despair at their unconquerable work. There is a tomb-painting near Ghizeh supposed to represent the hard usage of Israelites in Egypt, an accurate illustration of the house of bondage. The features of the Jews it is impossible to mistake. They are making brick, their bodies are splashed with clay, and their service is plainly exacted “with rigor.” In the center of the picture sits an overseer or taskmaster, with baton in hand, ready to enforce obedience,—an actual portrait of some Egyptian face, with oblique eyes, and narrow, receding forehead.

As we journeyed, camels in twos and threes went by, their Arab drivers seated on horrible high-posted saddles, taking the motion of the brute in that tilting perch. The mangy, dreary creatures did not take fright at the steam-whistle; they were too far gone for that. They only turned, and chewing the cud of nothing particular, surged slowly along unmindful of our invasion on the sanctity of the past; and musing, it would seem, on the hard lot of the beast of burden, the slave of slaves. I thought they had no spirit left, but when a load too heavy to be endured is being girded the kneeling beasts give a complaining groan most dismal to hear. The Scripture word “girded” first has meaning here. It was a new idea to see two heavy bales balanced, one on either side, and kept in place with broad bands, wound round and round the animal.

A street-car line is projected for Cairo. Venerable and historic monuments are laid low to make room for glaring hotels, and the dreadful costume of the Christian is adopted, instead of the flowing robes and soft, light fabrics suited to tropic heat. Comfortable loose slippers are abandoned for leather shoes, and women are forsaking cool draperies for corsets and the many discomforts of Parisian toilet. It is consoling to learn they must keep to the veils which law and religion hold sacred, and which no foreign influence can alter.

The hills of the Libyan Desert gird the horizon and frame the matchless picture, and the mountain tombs of Ghizeh tower against the sky, blue as when Cleopatra lavished her blandishments on Antony, as they did when the great Rameses breathed the burning incense offered to him as to a god. They look no older now than when the patriarchs saw them as they went down into Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was grievous in their land.

Formerly the soft sand of the streets of Cairo gave back no sound of chariot wheel, hoof, or footstep; now the paved roadway of the Muski is a din worthy of Regent Street or Broadway. It has lost in dignity and quiet, but much gain is made, in some respects, by the improvements of Ismail Pasha. Instead of donkeying to the pyramids, or perching on a back-breaking camel, you ride in an open barouche to the very foot of the Great Pyramid. It is a delicious drive, eleven miles on a raised causeway, under the shady acacia trees, sacred in our eyes to poetry and song. The highway was built for the Prince of Wales, according to an immemorial compliment in the East, which orders a new road made for a guest the king delights to honor. Verily, Ismail Pasha builded better than he knew, when he ordered this for the Prince of Wales. His it is now.

The Arab proverb runs: “Time mocks all, but the Pyramids mock time.” How the outer casing of Ghizeh has been carried off to found new towns, and for the upbuilding of Cairo, is an old tale and often told. The illiterate children of the desert paid no heed to tablets of hewn stone which contained precious histories, and the conqueror Amrou founded the city of Victory on the field where the leathern tent of the commander-in-chief was pitched. When he was to return to Alexandria, and ordered his tent to be struck for the march, he was told that a pair of pigeons had made their nest on its roof. He exclaimed, “God forbid that a Mohammedan should deny his shelter to a living being, a creature of Allah who had confided to the protection of his hospitality. Leave the tent standing. It is an omen of good.”

The pigeons remained unharmed in their nest, and when Amrou returned, flushed with triumph, from Alexandria, he found it there standing, occupied it again, and made the spot a center for the new capital, Fostat, i. e., the tent. The reader will remember a similar story told of the Emperor Charles of Spain in Flanders, immortalized in verse by Longfellow. “Golondrina is my guest,” the emperor said, “let no hand molest nor hurt her.” And when the army disbanded, the canvas palace was left standing for the sake of the swallow's nest.

—Mrs. Susan E. Wallace, in The Advance.