by a dahabeëh on the river—names such as the Lotus, the Ibis, the Gazelle, Cleopatra, Zenobia, names with an Eastern flavor. And we must have not only a name for the boat, but a motto or device for our pennant, or “distinguisher flag,” as the dragoman calls the narrow fifty feet long strip of bunting that is to stream from the forward yard. We carry at the stern the flag of our country, but we float our individuality in the upper air. If we had been a bridal party we should of course have taken some such device as that of a couple who went up the river under the simple but expressive legend of “Nestle-down,” written on their banner.
What would you name a Nile dahabeëh?
The days go all too rapidly for us to catch the shifting illusions about us. It is not so much what we see of the stated sights that can be described, but it is the atmosphere in which we live that makes the strangeness of our existence. It is as if we had been born into another world. And the climate is as strange as the people, the costumes, the habits, the morals. The calendar is bewitched. December is a mixture of September and July. Alas, yes. There are the night-fogs of September, and the mosquitoes of July. You cannot tell whether the season is going backwards or forwards. But for once you are content to let Providence manage it, at least so long as there is a north wind, and you forget that the sky has any shade other than blue.
And the prophecy of the poet is realized. The nights are filled with music, and the cares that infest the day are invariably put off till tomorrow, in this deliciously procrastinating land. Perhaps, however, Mr. Longfellow would not be satisfied with the music; for it seems to be the nasal daughter of Lassitude and Monotony, ancient gods of the East. Two or three strings stretched over a sounding skin and a parchment drum suffice to express the few notes that an Arab musician commands; harmony does not enter into his plan. Yet the people are fond of what they consider music. We hear on all sides at night the picking of strings, the throb of the darabooka and the occasional outburst of a wailing and sentimental strain. Like all barbarous music, this is always minor. When the performers are sailors or common strollers, it is doubtless exactly the same music that delighted the ancient Egyptians; even the instruments are the same, and the method of clapping the hands in accentuation of the music is unchanged.
There is a café chantant on one side of the open, tree-grown court of a native hotel, in the Ezbekeëh where one may hear a mongrel music, that is not inexpressive of both the morals and the mixed condition of Cairo to-day. The instruments of the band are European; the tunes played are Egyptian. When the first strain is heard we say that it is strangely wild, a weird and plaintive minor; but that is the whole of it. The strain is repeated over and over again for a half hour, as if it were ground out of a coffee-mill, in an iteration sufficient to drive the listener insane, the dissolute scraping and thumping and barbarous dissonance never changing nor ending. From time to time this is varied with singing, of the nasal, fine-tooth-comb order, with the most extraordinary attempts at shakes and trills, and with all the agony of a moonlit cat on a house-top. All this the grave Arabs and young Egyptian rakes, who sit smoking, accept with entire satisfaction. Later in the evening dancing begins and goes on with the strumming, monotonous music till at least the call for morning prayer.
In the handsome Ezbekeëh park or garden, where there are shady walks and some fine sycamores and banyans to be seen, a military band plays every afternoon, while the foreigners of both sexes, and Egyptian men promenade. Of course no Egyptian lady or woman of respectability is ever seen in so public a place. In another part of the garden, more retired, a native band is always playing at nightfall. In this sheltered spot, under the lee of some gigantic rock and grotto-work are tables and chairs, and a divan for the band. This rock has water pleasantly running through it, but it must have been struck by somebody besides Moses, for beer is brought out of its cool recesses, as well. Rows of men of all colors and costumes may be seen there, with pipe and mug and coffee cup; and on settees more elevated and next the grotto, are always sitting veiled women, in outer wrappers of black silk, sometimes open enough to show an underskirt of bright color and feet in white slippers. These women call for beer or something stronger, and smoke like the men; they run no risk in being in this publicity, for they have nothing to lose here or elsewhere. Opposite them on a raised divan, not unlike a roomy bedstead, sits the band.
It is the most disreputable of bands. Nothing in the whole East so expressed to me its fagged-out dissoluteness as this band and its performances. It is a sleepy, nonchalant band, as if it had been awake all the previous night; some of its members are blear-eyed, some have one eye, some have two; they are in turbans, in tarbooshes, in gowns of soiled silk, of blue cotton, of white drilling. It is the feeblest band; and yet it is subject to spurts of bacchantic fervor. Sometimes all the instruments are striving together, and then only one or two dribble the monotonous refrain; but somehow, with all the stoppings to light cigarettes and sip coffee, the tune is kept groaning on, in a minor that is as wild as the desert and suggestive of sin.
The instruments are as African as the music. There is the darabooka, a drum made of an earthen or wooden cylinder with a flaring head, over which is stretched a parchment; the tar, a kind of tambourine; kemengeh, a viol of two strings, with a cocoa-nut sounding-body; the kanoon, an instrument of strings held on the knees, and played with the fingers; the ’.od, a sort of guitar with seven double strings; played with a plectrum, a slip of vultures’ feather held between the thumb and finger; and the nay, a reed-flute blown at the end.
In the midst of the thumbing and scraping, a rakish youth at the end, is liable, at any moment, to throw back his head and break out in a soft womanish voice, which may go no farther than a nasal yah, ah, m-a-r-r, that appears to satisfy his yearnings; or it may expand into a droning song, “Ya benat Iskendereeyeh,” like that which Mr. Lane renders:—
“O ye damsels of Alexandria!
Your walk over the furniture is alluring:
Ye wear the Kashmeer shawl with embroidered work,
And your lips are sweet as sugar.”
Below the divan sit some idlers or supernumeraries, who, as inclination moves them, mark the rhythm by striking the palms of the hands together, or cry out a prolonged ah-yah, but always in a forgetful, uninterested manner, and then subside into silence, while the picking and throbbing of the demoralized tune goes on. It is the “devilish iteration” of it, I think, that steals away the senses; this, and some occult immorality in the debased tune, that blots virtue out of the world. Yet there is something comic in these blinking owls of the night, giving sentimental tongue to the poetic imagery of the Eastern love-song—“for a solitary gazelle has taken away my soul”:—
“The beloved came to me with a vacillating gait;
And her eyelids were the cause of my intoxication.
I extended my hand to take the cup;
And was intoxicated by her eyes.
O thou in the rose-colored dress!
O thou in the rose-colored dress!
Beloved of my heart! remain with me.”
Or he pipes to the “dark-complexioned, and with two white roses”:—
“O damsel! thy silk shirt is worn out, and thine arms have become visible,
And I fear for thee, on account of the blackness of thine eyes.
I desire to intoxicate myself, and kiss thy cheeks,
And do deeds that Antar did not.”
To all of which the irresponsible chorus, swaying its head, responds O! y-a-a-a-h! And the motley audience sips and smokes; the veiled daughters of sin flash invitation from their kohl-stained eyes; and the cool night comes after the flaring heat of the day; and all things are as they have been for thousands of years. It is time to take you to something religious.
The Howling Derweeshes are the most active religionists in the East; I think they spend more force in devotion
