And what is this: large pools of
water in the middle of the road! Granted that there is more rain here
than formerly, since the valley of the Nile has been artificially
irrigated, it still seems almost impossible that there should be all
this black water, into which our carriage sinks to the very axles; for
it is a clear week since any serious quantity of rain fell. It would
seem that the new masters of this land, albeit the cost of annual
upkeep has risen in their hands to the sum of fifteen million pounds,
have given no thought to drainage. But the good Arabs, patiently and
without murmuring, gather up their long robes, and with legs bare to
the knee make their way through this already pestilential water, which
must be hatching for them fever and death.
Further on, as the carriage proceeds on its course, the scene changes
little by little. The streets become vulgar: the houses of "The
Arabian Nights" give place to tasteless Levantine buildings; electric
lamps begin to pierce the darkness with their wan, fatiguing glare,
and at a sharp turning the new Cairo is before us.
What is this? Where are we fallen? Save that it is more vulgar, it
might be Nice, or the Riviera, or Interkalken, or any other of those
towns of carnival whither the bad taste of the whole world comes to
disport itself in the so-called fashionable seasons. But in these
quarters, on the other hand, which belong to the foreigners and to the
Egyptians rallied to the civilisation of the West, all is clean and
dry, well cared for and well kept. There are no ruts, no refuse. The
fifteen million pounds have done their work conscientiously.
Everywhere is the blinding glare of the electric light; monstrous
hotels parade the sham splendour of their painted facades; the whole
length of the streets is one long triumph of imitation, of mud walls
plastered so as to look like stone; a medley of all styles, rockwork,
Roman, Gothic, New Art, Pharaonic, and, above all, the pretentious and
the absurd. Innumerable public-houses overflow with bottles; every
alcoholic drink, all the poisons of the West, are here turned into
Egypt with a take-what-you-please.
And taverns, gambling dens and houses of ill-fame. And parading the
side-walks, numerous Levantine damsels, who seek by their finery to
imitate their fellows of the Paris boulevards, but who by mistake, as
we must suppose, have placed their orders with some costumier for
performing dogs.
This then is the Cairo of the future, this cosmopolitan fair! Good
heavens! When will the Egyptians recollect themselves, when will they
realise that their forebears have left to them an inalienable
patrimony of art, of architecture and exquisite refinement; and that,
by their negligence, one of those towns which used to be the most
beautiful in the world is falling into ruin and about to perish?
And nevertheless amongst the young Moslems and Copts now leaving the
schools there are so many of distinguished mind and superior
intelligence! When I see the things that are here, see them with the
fresh eyes of a stranger, landed but yesterday upon this soil,
impregnated with the glory of antiquity, I want to cry out to them,
with a frankness that is brutal perhaps, but with a profound sympathy:
"Bestir yourselves before it is too late. Defend yourselves against
this disintegrating invasion - not by force, be it understood, not by
inhospitality or ill-humour - but by disdaining this Occidental
rubbish, this last year's frippery by which you are inundated. Try to
preserve not only your traditions and your admirable Arab language,
but also the grace and mystery that used to characterise your town,
the refined luxury of your dwelling-houses. It is not a question now
of a poet's fancy; your national dignity is at stake. You are
/Orientals/ - I pronounce respectfully that word, which implies a whole
past of early civilisation, of unmingled greatness - but in a few
years, unless you are on your guard, you will have become mere
Levantine brokers, exclusively preoccupied with the price of land and
the rise in cotton."
CHAPTER III
THE MOSQUES OF CAIRO
They are almost innumerable, more than 3000, and this great town,
which covers some twelve miles of plain, might well be called a city
of mosques. (I speak, of course, of the ancient Cairo, of the Cairo of
the Arabs. The new Cairo, the Cairo of sham elegance and of "Semiramis
Hotels," does not deserve to be mentioned except with a smile.)
A city of mosques, then, as I was saying. They follow one another
along the streets, sometimes two, three, four in a row; leaning one
against the other, so that their confines become merged. On all sides
their minarets shoot up into the air, those minarets embellished with
arabesques, carved and complicated with the most changing fancy. They
have their little balconies, their rows of little columns; they are so
fashioned that the daylight shows through them. Some are far away in
the distance; others quite close, pointing straight into the sky above
our heads. No matter where one looks - as far as the eye can see - still
there are others; all of the same familiar colour, a brown turning
into rose. The most ancient of them, those of the old easy-tempered
times, bristle with shafts of wood, placed there as resting-places for
the great free birds of the air, and vultures and ravens may always be
seen perched there, contemplating the horizon of the sands, the line
of the yellow solitudes.
Three thousand mosques! Their great straight walls, a little severe
perhaps, and scarcely pierced by their tiny ogive windows, rise above
the height of the neighbouring houses. These walls are of the same
brown colour as the minarets, except that they are painted with
horizontal stripes of an old red, which has been faded by the sun; and
they are crowned invariably with a series of trefoils, after the
fashion of battlements, but trefoils which in every case are different
and surprising.
