Théophile Gautier
Egypt (1869)
Part II: From Alexandria to Cairo
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Conditions and Exceptions apply.
Contents
- Chapter 4: Alexandria.
- Chapter 5: From Alexandria to Cairo.
- Chapter 6: From Alexandria to Cairo - Continued.
Chapter 4: Alexandria
The approach to the harbour possesses the property of curing seasickness far better than those Maltese bonbons they advertise, or other such impotent panaceas. All of us were on deck, completely free of it, and gazing through binoculars at the rapidly emerging shoreline. The buildings stood out clearly, and various palaces raised their large blue facades above the houses below. A few minarets granted the skyline an Oriental appearance. Pompey’s Pillar adorned with its large capital, rose on high like a beacon. A light breeze slowly turned the windmills, each with eight sails, whose appearance reminded me of the windmills of Syros. Here and there date-palms bloomed, like feather dusters whose handles were stuck in the earth, and over all stretched a sky that was pale, being so bright.
Alexandria (1846-1849)
David Roberts (Scottish, 1796-1864)
Artvee
In the harbour, clustered an extraordinary influx of vessels from every nation: English, American, Austrian, Italian, French, whose sunlit flags fluttered joyfully, their masts and rigging forming a leafless forest, through which sailors, busy with one task or another, fluttered like birds. There were sailing-ships, and steamboats in greater numbers, these the poetry and prose of sea-going vessels. Nothing is more cheerful than such a spectacle. Human activity appears there in all its richness, and a city that lacks a seaport is always lacking to some degree. They are a charming sight, these many vessels, with carved and gilded figures at their prows; their painted load-lines; their copper fittings, coated with verdigris by sea-water on arrival from India or China and having as yet had insufficient time to be washed down; their masts as high as cathedral spires; their topsails like minaret balconies; their shrouds recalling acrobats’ tightropes; their delicate tangle of rigging, whose tenuity seems to defy the brush; their funnels striped with black, white or yellow; their rounded disc-like paddle-drums; their names inscribed at the stern, on the crowning-board, sometimes in Arabic, Greek, or Russian; their ship’s boats elegantly suspended; all the intricate details, so complex yet so precise, of things so strong yet apparently so light!
Alexandria (1846-1849)
David Roberts (Scottish, 1796-1864)
Artvee
As soon as the Moeris had dropped anchor, at a considerable distance from shore, for ships of heavy tonnage cannot approach the quay directly, a large number of boats, canoes, and steamboats detached themselves from the jetty. These, the Khedive’s envoys of hospitality, flew to meet us. They danced as they hastened through the choppy water, amidst which the light was shattered to a thousand shards, as in a broken mirror. Some had sails, others were oared, but a steamboat, bearing the star and crescent on its red flag, easily left them in its wake. One could already distinguish among the vessels the wide variety of facial types and costumes that render the ports of North Africa so interesting.
Nubar Pasha (Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Antonio Colucci Bey, (President of the Sanitary Superintendence and the Municipality of Alexandria), with their retinue, had soon climbed the boarding-ladder of the Moeris. Nubar already knew of my accident, and revealed the full interest that he took in my misfortune by thanking me for not having allowed myself to be discouraged by that unhappy beginning. Courtesies having been exchanged, the transhipment of various packages and pieces of luggage began, which was no small matter. Despite the eagerness of the porters, of all kinds, to receive the items which the sailors were hoisting from the hold, they formed a tumultuous throng, wherein polyglot imprecations were exchanged. They jostled, and stumbled against each other, grasped each other, and thrust each other to the top of the ladder, at the risk of falling into the sea, or tumbling back down into the boat, which would have been more serious. Finally, the flow of trunks moderated a little, the cascade was at last exhausted, and I was able to embark on the steamboat supported by my comrade. A crate on the poop deck served as a seat, and after a few minutes we were ashore, on a sandy beach.
On this strand, beneath the rays of a burning sun, whose heat enveloped us, suddenly, like the atmosphere in a steam bath, swarmed a motley crowd composed of black Africans, Copts, Fellahin, Barabra (Nubians), Greeks, and Maltese, restrained with great difficulty by the Khedive’s officials, young men of distinguished manners, recognizable by their official tarbouches (the tarbouche is the conical brimless fez) and responsible for welcoming guests from Europe on landing, and directing them to their respective hotels. The difficult problem to solve in this melee was how not to be parted from one’s luggage. Twenty arms of all colours were stretched out for the smallest parcel. Two or three Herculean fellows fought furiously over a hat-box or an overnight bag; and whoever had managed to seize one would start racing towards the city, without knowing where the traveller was going. The officials managed to moderate this excessive zeal, and the luggage was loaded, near their owners, onto carriages waiting a little further away. The coachmen of the most diverse races, some in white robes and turbans, others in the blue tunic and felt cap of the fellahin, some wearing the wide trousers and fez with blue tassel of the Greeks of the Islands, others in a Frankish costume that one might have thought borrowed from the wardrobe of Robert Macaire (a character created on stage by Frédérick Lemaître), waved their whips, and the travellers, only just seated, set off at a gallop through the compact crowd which parted to the cries of the sais (stable-boys) preceding the carriages.
Although I advised my coachman to go slowly, because of my arm, he simply moderated the pace of his animals for a moment, then resumed a gallop, humiliated by proceeding at a walking pace. How eagerly I looked around, to capture the slightest characteristic detail! Nothing equals the impression produced by a first glance. Alexandria is not a wholly Oriental city, but it has more character than travellers claim. Despite the clumsy European shapes affected by the fine houses, one feels one is in North Africa. Here, a door is framed by ornamentation carved in the Turkish style; there, a mashrabiya (an enclosed, latticed balcony) allows a glimpse, through its fine grille, of a woman looking out; further on, a floor overhangs, a house ends in a terrace, or a date-palm darts above a wall its column surmounted by a capital of leaves. At a street-corner a woman masked like a domino appears; half-naked donkey drivers drive their donkeys before them; and a camel advances with measured steps, swinging its long neck.
We soon arrived at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, whose door was blocked by a riot of carriages and porters. Order was gradually restored. The accommodation of each guest was designated in advance, special arrangements were soon made so as not to separate groups of friends or acquaintances, and each, followed by fellahin bowed beneath the luggage, and preceded by utterly polite attendants, headed towards their room, climbing a vast staircase with a green-painted banister.
My lodgings framed in their large windows a wide stretch of sea and a patch of sky in which seagulls hovered. The waves, whose final surge broke in foam on the rocks at the foot of the hotel, were at that moment hosting a few sailing boats whose manoeuvres amused me, and consoled me somewhat for my being unable to run about town like my companions: not that I was unable to walk, but in the busy crowd, and the congested streets full of horses, donkeys, camels, and vehicles of all kinds, I feared an unpleasant jolt to my arm, so recently mended. Besides, the very next day, at nine in the morning, I was scheduled to board the train for Cairo, and needed a little rest on a floor less mobile than that of the ship, so as to restore my strength. I therefore remained within, admiring the glaucous blue of the sea, seated in an armchair, till dinner, which was served on an immense veranda decorated with latanier-palms, and tropical plants with large leaves, and aired by the breeze from the harbour and the light-filled bay.
Waiters in black coats and white ties, as correctly-dressed as those at the Grand Hôtel de la Paix (on the northwest corner of the intersection of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Place de l’Opéra, in Paris, opened in 1862), moved with silent eagerness about the horseshoe-shaped table, filled with hungry guests, most of whom had not eaten since Marseille. These waiters received the dishes from the hands of native servants, in long robes and turbans, who bore them from the pantry or the kitchen; numerous bottles, topped with shiny metallic-paper caps, adorned with pompous labels, and bearing the names of great wines, followed one another in quick succession, not belying their illustrious attributions too greatly. All were visibly happy to no longer have in front of them a plate fixed between two strips of wood, and to be able to raise their glass to their mouths without a sudden roll of the vessel causing them to spill the contents down their beard or waistcoat. They formed joyful plans, and were excited in advance by the wonders they were about to see. Cigars lit, coffee drunk, the travellers dispersed in small groups to explore the older quarters of the city, always the most picturesque, and grant themselves the intriguing spectacle of an Oriental city at night.
All rose early, next day, and weighted themselves with a cup of coffee, a bowl of broth or tea, or a piece of cold meat, depending on their appetite. The real lunch was to take place en route, at a railway station. Carriages arrived, and we headed towards the track, whose terminus was at the other end of the town. On the way, my curiosity tried to compensate for the deprivation of the day before. The houses, in that Italian-Oriental style I so often encountered, were mingled with shacks, built of disparate materials, shops, cafes and restaurants, decorated with signs in Italian, English, French, Arabic, or Greek, which my memories of school study allowed me to decipher, whenever the carriage, delayed by some traffic congestion, was not travelling too swiftly. We followed a new road, recently opened, through a forest of date-palms, whose roots, sometimes exposed, clung strangely to the embankments of the trench.
Some of these beautiful trees, shaken by the pickaxe, leaned haphazardly, others remained standing like the last columns of a ruined temple. On the road, among billows of dust, strings of camels laden with stones or sugar-cane passed by, trotting with their usual small, quick steps; donkeys were spurred on by their donkey-drivers; and boldly mounted horses stamped or galloped; primitive carts drawn by buffaloes creaked by; pedestrians hurried forward, most of them balancing some burden on their heads, while municipal water-carriers busied themselves, sprinkling the road from skinfuls of water, which were suspended from their loins by straps, and the contents of which they continually squeezed forth. A dazzlingly bright sky, much less laden with cobalt and ultramarine hues than painters usually depict, stretched above this panorama, strikingly new to my European eyes.
Egyptian railway stations are unremarkable and resemble any other; but the crowds that throng the platforms remind you, instantly, that you have left Europe. Seeing those dark complexions, those faces with prominent cheekbones, and vague sphinx-like smiles, those long flowing robes, those tunics tightened about the body with a camel-hair cord, like those of biblical shepherds, those rolled-up turbans, these red skullcaps with silk tassels, those visages with long beards reaching down to the knees, I knew I was clearly not at the Gare de l’Ouest, in Paris, preparing to buy my ticket for Auteuil, Versailles or Saint-Germain.
That morning, there was a frightful jumble of kavasses (kavass is Ottoman Turkish for an armed guard), dragomans, local servants, railway-employees, guests and native travellers, groups of whom were, every minute, disturbed by the passage of carts or by fellahin, carrying, on their backs, trunks and enormous packages, held by a cord tied around their foreheads. All followed their luggage with a very natural anxiety through this prodigious throng. The Arabic signs written on the walls were of no help; dialogue was reduced to simple pantomime. But soon one of the Khedive’s officers, who apparently spoke every language, intervened, and graciously acted as interpreters for the French, English and German foreigners; all difficulties were removed as if by magic, and order was established amidst this inevitable confusion.
I am not seeking to ridicule my travelling companions, in any way; since I have been obliged to open myself to mockery more than anyone; we fail to see ourselves, and the mote in our own eye becomes a beam in our neighbour’s, but it is difficult to imagine costumes more comically eccentric than those of most of the guests. For a caricaturist, they presented excellent motifs to employ. Certainly, one should not underestimate the effects of a change of climate, and the most vulgar prudence recommends a few safety precautions; but truly, they were far too ready to adopt them. Many had equipped themselves for this little four-hour train ride as for a trip on the upper Nile beyond the Cataracts, and yet the temperature was no greater than that of Marseille or Algiers at that time of year. The headgear, especially, intended to protect against sunstroke, was particularly bizarre. The most common was a kind of double-bottomed helmet, quilted and padded with white canvas, with a flap that folded over the nape of the neck like the mail of an ancient Saracen helm, a lampshade-visor lined with green and, on either side of the head, two small holes for air circulation. As if all this were not enough, a blue veil, similar to that worn by sportsmen at the races at Ascot or Chantilly, was wrapped like a turban around this helmet, ready to be deployed on occasion to protect bearded faces from the sun, faces which seemed to have no need of that refinement. I will say nothing regarding the unbleached canvas caps with appendages protecting the cheeks and collar, which were simply that; but an Indian headdress, arranged in the English style, deserves special description. Imagine a disc of white cloth, placed like a lid on top of a cap with jowls and neck guards. The gentlemen who had adorned themselves with this comfortable invention appeared to have on their heads an umbrella, whose handle had been pushed into their skulls. Some, of a more picturesque sentiment, had adopted the Syrian keffiyeh, striped in yellow, red, blue and violet, fastened about the forehead with a braided cord, and whose ends, terminating in long tapers, float carelessly over the back of the head. Those, less fond of local colour, wore a soft felt hat, hollowed at its top with a fold similar to the indentation of a twin-peaked mountain. Others, wore a Panama hat with wide brims lined with green taffeta; some, the fez of the Nizam (the Turkish army), amaranth-coloured with a long silk tuft; while one aged scientist, of the most amiable humour, whose name is one of the glories of chemistry, had retained his European stovepipe hat, black coat, white tie, and shoes with dangling laces, saying that he was so accustomed to that costume, that, dressed otherwise, he would believe himself naked, he not being the traveller who bore the fatigues of the journey least cheerfully.
One also noticed a large display of blue-tinted spectacles; spectacles with smoked lenses as if for viewing solar eclipses; spectacles with blinkers extending over their arms and shaped to the wearer’s temples, behind which it was sometimes difficult to discern a friendly glance. Ophthalmia is common and dangerous in Egypt, and the stories told about it are not reassuring. If one falls asleep with the window open, one runs the risk of waking up with blurred vision; at least that is what the author of Pierrot: Caïn (by Henri Laurent Rivière, published 1860) who is also a brilliant naval officer, told me: ‘Though, truly, it does no harm,’ he added with his characteristic and humorous sang-froid, by way of consolation.
White flannel pea-coats, with or without hoods, more or less adorned with bright colours; canvas overcoats; basin jackets or butter-fresh quilted ones, nankeen or unbleached silk waistcoats with fanciful buttons, clasped by broad, red wool belts; baggy trousers tucked into leather gaiters reaching to the knee; morocco leather travel-kits; binocular cases slung from the shoulder; hunting rifles wrapped in their scabbards, and thrown over the shoulder; Inverness capes; multi-coloured blankets, and all the annoying world of utensils that the traveller believes he must take with him, gave a rather strange appearance to that crowd of Europeans, bustling about the railway-platform and mounting an assault on the carriages, a midst men in turbans, clad in gowns like those women wear.
The carriages, of English manufacture, have bodies painted white, and bear their classification in English and Arabic. The first-class carriages are partitioned and equipped with large armchairs upholstered in green leather; they have double-ceilings, separated by a large enough gap so that the sun’s heat does not turn the interiors into baking ovens in which one might cook alive; a circular opening forms, in the centre, a sort of air-well and promotes ventilation; openings are also provided at the sides to take advantage of the slightest breeze; shutters replace the blinds on the door windows. The second-class carriages communicate with each other like those on Swiss railways; but, in a characteristic detail, at the end of the compartment, a closed area is reserved for women, like a sort of harem. We had already noticed this concession to Muslim reserve on the steamboats that serve the Levant ports. The third-class carriages, simple gondola trucks covered by a roof, were literally crammed with fellahin, Barabra (Nubians), black Africans, and common folk of all skin-colours and ages. It is they, it is said, who form the core of the railway’s revenue; they greatly appreciate this method of travel, though in the carriages reserved for them no great sacrifice has been made to comfort.
All settled more or less happily. No last straggler remained stranded on the platform. The engine whistle gave that shrill cry to which the ear can never become accustomed, and which always surprises one, even though expected, and the locomotive, emitting a jet of steam, moved off, dragging the carriages behind it, which travelled the rails with a tremendous noise like the clanging of scrap metal.
I had departed, and soon a long-cherished dream would be fulfilled. When young I had longed to see Venice, Granada, Toledo, Constantinople, Moscow, Athens – and Cairo. I needed only to visit that city of the Caliphs, from which I was now separated by a journey of scarcely four hours.
Chapter 5: From Alexandria to Cairo
As one leaves the station, one crosses beneath an aqueduct pierced for the railway to pass through. Such long arcades, extending deep into the countryside, always produce a happy effect: ‘A lake is the opposite of an island; a tower the opposite of a well; an aqueduct the opposite of a bridge,’ says Gubetta to Dona Lucrezia, in antithetical style (see Victor Hugo’s play ‘Lucrèce Borgia’, Act I, Part II, Scene I). The aqueduct bears a river on its arches, the voids of which frame blue glimpses of landscape. Nothing grants the horizon a more monumental aspect. The Roman Campagna is proof of this.
The track first passes over a narrow strip of sandy land that separates Beheira Ma’adieh, or Lake Aboukir (Aboukir Bay), from Lake Mariout, the former Lake Mareotis, now invaded by salt water. As one climbs towards Cairo, one has Lake Mariout to one’s right and Lake Aboukir to one’s left. The former spreads out like a sea between banks so low that they disappear, depriving the eyes of the means of gauging the extent of the lake, which merges with the skyline.
The light fell vertically onto these flat areas of water, scattering glittering sequins of a brilliance to tire the eyes. In other places, grey water stagnated over grey sand, or took on the dull white of tin-foil. Skirting those dormant inland seas, one might have believed oneself in Holland amidst the polders. The sky was pale as a Willem Van de Velde sky, and we travellers who, taking the painters on trust, had dreamed of fiery colours, gazed with astonishment at this immense, absolutely level expanse, of a greyish tone, where nothing recalled Egypt, at least as one had imagined it to be.
On the far side of Lake Mariout, amidst gardens of luxuriant vegetation, rose the pleasure houses of the city’s wealthy merchants, officials and consuls, painted in cheerful colours, sky-blue, pink or yellow, with white highlights; and, from time to time, the large sails of the canges (sailing-boats) travelling to Fouah (Fuwwah) or Rosetta along the Mahmoudiyah Canal, showed their triangular shape above the line of crops and appeared to be traveling over open ground. This bizarre effect, which always surprises the eye, is often encountered around Leiden, Dordrecht and Haarlem, and in those marshy regions where the water surface is level with the land, or sometimes, contained by dikes, exceeds it by several meters. The course of the Mahmoudiyah Canal is a winding one, the Turkish engineer who excavated it finding it necessary to create his canals as Allah did rivers.
Where the salt-water ends, the aspect of the country changes, not by gradual transitions, but suddenly: here absolute aridity, there exuberant fertility. Wherever irrigation can bring a drop of water, vegetation is born. The infertile dust becomes productive soil. The contrast is most striking. We had passed Lake Mariout, and on either side of the railway stretched fields of dura, wheat, and cotton plants in various stages of growth, some opening their pretty yellow flowers, others shedding the white silk of their hulls. Gutters full of muddy water, fed by wider canals derived from the Nile, traced lines on the black earth, and gleamed, here and there, in the light. Small dikes of beaten earth, easily opened with a pickaxe, held back the water until it was time to irrigate and, to raise it to higher levels, the crude wheels of the saqiyahs (shadufs) turned, set in motion by buffaloes, oxen, camels or donkeys. Sometimes, two sturdy, naked fellows, tawny and shining like Florentine bronzes, standing on the edge of a canal, swung, with astonishing dexterity, a basket made of waterproof esparto-reeds, suspended from two ropes whose ends they held, skimming the surface of the water, and sending the contents flying into the neighbouring field. Fellahin, in short blue tunics, tilled the earth, gripping the handle of a primitive plough pulled by a camel and a humped ox from Sudan. Others were picking cotton and wheat husks, or digging ditches, or dragging tree branches employed as harrows over the furrows, barely left intact by the flood. Everywhere there was a degree of activity that scarcely fits one’s ideas of traditional Oriental nonchalance.
The first fellahin villages one comes across, to right and left of the path, create a strange impression. They are clusters of huts made of raw brick, sealed with mud, and with flat roofs sometimes surmounted by a sort of lime-plastered turret for pigeons, and whose sloped walls vaguely recall the shape of a truncated Egyptian pylon. A low door like that of a tomb, two or three holes pierced in the wall, these are all the openings to these huts, which seem more the work of termites than of men. Often half the village, if one can give that name to a pile of earth, has collapsed, dissolved by the rain, or undermined by the flood; but little harm is done: with a few handfuls of usable rubble drenched with mud the house is soon rebuilt, and five or six days of the sun’s heat are enough to dry it and make it habitable.
This description, while scrupulously accurate, gives no very attractive idea of a fellahin village. Yet, plant a clump of date-palms next to these cubes of grey earth, have one or two camels kneel in front of the doors, similar to the entrances to burrows, bring forth a woman draped in her long blue shirt, holding a child by the hand, and carrying an amphora on her head, and let a shaft of sunlight light the scene, and you will have a subject full of charm and character, which painted by Prosper Marilhat’s brush would delight all.
A thought that comes to the mind of the least attentive traveller, from their very first step in this Lower Egypt where, since time immemorial, the Nile has accumulated silt in thin layers, is the deep intimacy which the fellah has with the earth. The adjective ‘autochthonous’ (indigenous) is truly one that suits him: he derives from the clay he treads: he is kneaded by it, and only barely frees himself from it. Like a child at his nurse’s breast, he manipulates it, he presses it, to make the milk of fertility gush forth from its dark nipple. He sinks halfway into this fertile mud, he digs at it, stirs it, waters it, dries it, as needed; he marks canals, raises causeways, draws from it the rammed earth with which he builds his ephemeral house, and with which he will cement his tomb. Never has a respectful son cared more for his aged mother; he never leaves her, as do those vagabond children who abandon their native roof to seek adventure; he always remains attentive to the slightest need of his ancient ancestor, the black earth of Kemet. If she is thirsty, he gives her something to drink; if an excess of moisture troubles her, he diverts her; and so as not to harm her, he works her almost without tools, with his hands, his plough only skimming her telluric skin covered each year with a new epidermis by the flood. Watching him walk back and forth over the soggy ground, one feels he is in his element. With his blue garment, resembling a pontiff’s robe, he presides over the union of Earth and Water. He unites the two principles which, heated by the sun, make life bloom. Nowhere is the harmony of man and soil more visible; nowhere is the earth itself more important. It extends its colour over all: the houses take on its hue, which the bronzed complexions of the fellahin also approach; and the trees, sprinkled with fine dust, the waters, laden with silt, conform to this fundamental harmony. I reflected thus, as I sped across the vast brown plain, in a carriage drawn by a locomotive, and said to myself that, to paint it, the artist would only need on his palette the one pigment, which is precisely the colour called ‘Mummy brown’, with a little white, and cobalt blue, for the sky. The animals themselves wear this livery: the tawny camel, the grey donkey, the slate-blue buffalo, the grey pigeons and the reddish birds fit the general tone.
What is equally surprising is the activity that reigns in the countryside. On the roads that border the canals and cross the flooded sections, one sees a whole world of travellers and passers-by. No road in France, even on the outskirts of a populous city, is as busy. Orientals rarely stay at home, and the slightest pretext is enough for them to set off, especially since there is no need to worry, as with us, about the weather. The barometer is fixed at ‘fine’, and rain is such a rare occurrence one would be happy to be wetted.
Nothing is more amusing, more varied and more instructive than this procession of folk going about their business, viewed, one after another, in the carriage-window, as in a picture-frame whose engravings or watercolours are constantly being replaced.
Firstly, here are camels, advancing, with a resigned and melancholic air, with ambling steps and swaying necks, strange animals, whose awkward forms seem like first attempts at a long-lost original. On the hump of the first the driver in a turban is perched, one leg crossed over the other, as majestic as Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, off to Mesopotamia to seek a wife for Isaac. He abandons himself with nonchalant flexibility to the unsteady, but regularly repeated action, of the animal, sometimes smoking his chibouk (a long-stemmed tobacco pipe) as if he were sitting at the door of a café, sometimes hastening the slow pace of his mount.
Camels have the taste for, and habit of, travelling in single file, and five or six, or even more, are usually roped together in series. The caravan travels in this manner, in strange silhouette against the flat line of the horizon, and appears, for lack of an object of comparison, to be of enormous size. On the flanks of the caravan, trot three or four young agile boys armed with sticks, for in the Orient beasts of burden never lack grooms and squires. Among these camels, there are red, coffee-coloured, brown, and even white ones, but fawn is the most common colour; they bear stones, wood, grass held by esparto-netting, bundles of sugar-cane, chests, furniture and everything that might be loaded onto carts at home. Just now I said I thought I was in Holland, travelling between its vast stretches of submerged land; but the camel, passing along the bank of the canal, soon dispelled the illusion. I felt I was approaching Cairo, not Amsterdam.
Then, then are horsemen riding lean but fiery beasts, and herds of little donkeys carrying, on the end of their rumps, almost on their very tails, their masters, whose legs trail on the ground, ready to regain their footing in case of a fall, or a rebellion on the part of the malicious creature, who, on a whim, often rolls in the dust in the middle of the road. Donkeys, in the East, are neither despised nor ridiculed as they are in France; they have retained a Homeric and Biblical nobility, and all ride them, without shame, the rich and poor, the old man and the adolescent, and women as well as men.
But here is a charming group, progressing beside the canal. A young woman, wrapped in a long blue cloak, the folds of which drape chastely around her, is mounted on a donkey guided with care by a still vigorous man, but one whose beard is already mixed with grey and a little white. In front of the mother, and supported by her with one hand, sits a naked child, of exquisite beauty, very happy and amused by the journey.
It was a scene ready-made for a Flight into Egypt, the figures lacking only the thin gold halos above their heads. The Virgin, the Christ Child, and Saint Joseph are supposed to have looked thus, and travelled this way, in actual and naive reality, their equipment revealing no greater wealth. What a pity that some great painter, a Perugino, Raphael, or Albrecht Durer, was not present!
Wilhem Meister, in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, has a similar encounter (see Book I) which inspires him with similar reflections, but I doubt the mountain-travellers resembled their divine prototypes so nearly.
Damenhur, which the railway passes, has an appearance that can differ little from that of the ancient cities of Egypt now submerged beneath the sand, or simply fallen to dust. Tall embankment walls, made of raw bricks or rammed earth retaining the colour of the earth, surround it, like the foundations of a temple. The houses, ending in terraces, rise one above the other like a pile of cubes punctuated by small black openings. A few dovecotes, with whitewashed domes, and minarets striped in red and white, alone give this city of ancient appearance an Islamic flavour. From the summits of the terraces, women, squatting on mats or standing in their long draperies of brilliant hue, gazed on, no doubt attracted by the train’s passage. Silhouetted against the sky, they took on a rare elegance and slenderness. They looked like statues planted on the roofs of buildings, or the pediment of temples.
The train, which stopped here, was immediately invaded by a group of women and children offering the travellers fresh water, sweet and bitter oranges, and honeyed pastries, and it was a pleasure to see these dark figures appear at the carriage door, showing their white teeth in broad smiles. The locomotive whistle blew a piercing note, and we set off again. I would have liked to stay a while in Damenhur, but a journey, like life, is composed of sacrifices. How many charming things, if one wishes to reach one’s destination, one is forced to leave by the wayside! To see all? God alone can do so; human beings must be content to see a little! I was obliged to leave Damenhur, and contemplate the dream from afar without wandering its depths.
As far as sight could reach, aided by a telescope, the countryside extended, cut by canals, criss-crossed by channels glittering with puddles of water, dotted with clumps of sycamores or date-palms, striped with crops, dotted with saqquias, and animated by the perpetual to-ing and fro-ing of workers and passers-by, following on camels, horses, donkeys, or on foot, the narrow reed-lined roads. From time to time, in the shadow of a mimosa, rose the white dome of a marabout (the Muslim shrine of a hermit or holy man). Sometimes a naked child stood motionless at the water’s edge, in a pose of unconscious reverie, letting himself be penetrated by mighty Nature, and not even turning his head to watch the convoy fly past at full speed. Such deep displays of gravity in childhood seems specific to the Orient. What thoughts occupied this child’s mind, as he stood on his mound of earth like a stylite on his column?
From time to time, flocks of pigeons, busily pecking, took to sudden flight as the train passed, to land a little further away on the plain; aquatic birds flew through the rushes, their legs stretched behind them; gentle wagtails hopped, tails flickering, on the crest of the embankments, and in the sky, at great heights, sparrowhawks soared, and kites, and bearded vultures traced immense circles; buffaloes wallowed in the muddy ditches, and flocks of black sheep, ears drooping almost like goats, hurried along before the staves of their shepherds. These youths, dressed in short white, or sun-faded blue tunics, their legs bare, their feet covered in grey dust, with their felt caps, and their curved shepherd’s crooks, made me think, given the ancient simplicity of their costume, of patriarchal scenes from the Bible.
Our breakfast coffee and tea had long been digested when the good news spread through the carriages that, at the next station, lunch, a mark of the Khedive’s hospitality awaited us. Indeed, the train halted, and everyone disembarked before invading the banquet hall. With a seat already allocated beside my friend, who was kind enough to offer to cut the pieces of food on my plate, an operation impossible one-handed, I wandered about, while waiting to be served, observing the landscape around the station.
I had hardly taken a few pace when a magical spectacle surprised my astonished eyes: I had before me the Nile, the ancient ‘Hapy’ or ‘Iteru’, to grant it its ancient Egyptian names, the inexhaustible fount of water, the mysterious river, the liquid enigma, whose secret so many travellers, from antiquity to the present day, have vainly sought to penetrate, its problematic sources receding further, beyond the marshes and lakes, towards the Mountains of the Moon (the Rwenzori Mountains, source of the White Nile) in the very heart of this unfathomable African continent, known only to elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, lions, monkeys and its dark-skinned inhabitants. By one of those involuntary physical impressions which come to dominate the imagination, the word ‘Nile’ awakened in my mind the idea of that colossal marble god, nonchalantly leaning on his elbows, in a room of the Vatican, allowing himself with paternal gentleness to be clambered over by little cherubs, representing the different heights, in cubits, of the various phases of the Nile flood.
Well! It was not in its mythological aspect that the sacred river first appeared to me. It flowed, at full breadth, widely spread, like a torrent of silt, reddish in colour and barely having the appearance of water, with an irresistible swollen rapidity. It was almost like a river of mud, with a few rare touches of pale azure, here and there, as reflected rays of light from above gleamed from its tumultuous waves. It was then at the height of its inundation; yet its flow possessed the tranquil power of a beneficent and regular phenomenon, not the convulsive disorder of a torrent. The immense sheet of water, laden with fertile silt, produced, in its majesty, an almost religious impression. How many vanished civilisations have been reflected, for an instant, in that flood which forever repeats! I stood there, pensively, forgetting about eating, absorbed, and feeling that vague anguish one experiences when a wish has been fulfilled, and reality replaces the dream. What I saw before me was indeed the Nile, the real Nile, this river that I had so many times sought to discover with the eye of intuition. A sort of stupor nailed me to the bank: what could be more natural however than to encounter the Nile, in Egypt, in the midst of the Delta. But the mind meets with such moments of naïve astonishment!
Dahabeeyahs (lateen-sailed passenger boats) and canges, their large sails forming scissor-like shapes together, tacked along the river, or crossed from one bank to the other, while recalling the form of the mystical baris, of the days of the Pharaohs (see Herodotus, ‘Histories’, 2.96. and the example of a ‘baris’ vessel discovered in the waters around the ancient submerged port of Thonis-Heracleion, in Aboukir Bay).
Chapter 6: From Alexandria to Cairo - Continued
When my eyes were sated with this grandiose spectacle, my stomach, which had proved so deferential as to remain silent, out of respect for poetry, prosaically reclaimed its rights, and drove me back, dying of hunger, to the station’s dining-room. My good friend Auguste Marc obligingly cut the pieces of food on my plate, and served me left-handedly, that day, as throughout the rest of the journey, with a loyalty and patience that never wavered. This temporary one-handed motion, led me to the conclusion that the right hand is, at heart, nothing more than a schemer, a troublemaker, who takes all the glory for herself and unjustly relegates to the shadows her humble sister, whose very designation is a kind of insult. Yet the right hand can do virtually nothing without the help of the left; reduced to itself, it is as if paralyzed. It resembles those famous playwrights whose name is written in large letters on a poster, while the name of the obscure collaborator who actually did three-quarters of the work is omitted.
One might also compare the roles of our two hands to those of Martha and Mary in the Gospels (see Luke 10: 38-42). Mary poured perfume on the Lord’s feet, Martha attended to the household chores, and, although Jesus said that Mary played the best part, we must not disdain Martha who modestly took care of the cooking. Justice having been rendered to the left hand, to which not enough importance is granted, let me return to our lunch which was abundant and delicious, well-served, and washed down with everything that can be drunk, from Château Laffitte to pale ale, from soda-water to Nile water filtered and freshened in Theban jugs; the finest water in the world, to which only the water from the well of the Plaza de los Aljibes (the Square of the Cisterns), in the Alhambra, I find comparable.
Despite its excellence, I am forced to admit that most travellers seemed to prefer Sauterne or Saint-Emilion, not being of the opinion of those Caliphs who had Nile water carried to them, at great expense, as far as Baghdad, placing that vintage above all others. After drinking coffee, we set off again. The appearance of the country was much the same. The cotton, wheat, and dura crops stretched as far as the eye could see; here and there shone areas covered by the flood; bluish buffaloes rolled about in the pools, and armoured themselves with mud; water-birds stood at the edge of puddles, sometimes taking flight as the train passed, as families of fellahin, squatting on the edge of the ditches, watched it go by. On the road, paraded that interminable procession of camels, mules, donkeys, oxen, black goats, and pedestrians, which gives such extraordinary animation to the level and placid landscape. I had noticed in Holland, formerly, the importance that figures take on in flat country. The absence of any uneven terrain grants them dominance, and, as they are usually silhouetted against the sky, they take on greater grandeur. It seemed to me that I was gazing at those same areas of coloured bas-relief, representing agricultural scenes, which sometimes decorate the chambers of ancient Egyptian tombs. From time to time a village appeared, or a species of farm, whose grey earth walls, sloped in embankments, that recalled, in their beautiful lines, the shape of the base of ancient temples. A few groves of trees, sycamores or mimosas, enhanced by a clump of date-palms, highlighted the soft hues, by contrast with their vigorous greenery. At other times, fellahin huts, topped with dovecotes plastered with lime, were sited next to one another like beehives, or the minarets of a miniature mosque arose. We soon arrived at the station serving Tanta, a fairly important town, where the beautiful mosque of Ahmad Al-Badawi (founder of a thirteenth century Sufi order) attracts pilgrims, three times a year, and where markets are held frequented by caravans.
Tanta, seen from the railway station, since the length of the halt is not sufficient for one to visit the town, presents a lively and picturesque aspect. The Arab-style houses, with their moucharabiehs and their awning-shaped ventilation shafts, are mixed with buildings in the Orientalised Italian style, favoured by the supporters of progress and new ideas but the despair of artists, displaying facades whitewashed in soft colours, ochre, salmon or sky-blue, and adobe huts with flat roofs, all being dominated by the minarets of the mosque, and the white domes of various marabouts (shrines); add to this the obligatory accompaniment of Pharaoh fig trees, and palm-trees rising above the low walls of the gardens. Between the town and the station stretches a wasteland, akin to a sort of fairground occupied by camps, with huts made of reeds or date-palm branches, and tents made of old scraps of canvas and sometimes even the unfurled material of a turban.
The domestic life of these frail dwellings is performed in the open air. On a small fire of camel droppings, coffee is made, cup by cup, in a small yellow copper kettle, and thin cakes of dura are cooked on sheet-metal plates. Sugar canes are cut into pieces, from which the fellahin suck the sweetish juice, and sliced watermelons reveal their bright pink entrails, pitted with black pips beneath the green skin. Women pass to and fro, clasping the end of their veil in their teeth, so as to hide half their face, carrying Theban jugs or copper vases on their heads, with the elegance and contours of statues, while the men, squatting on the ground or on strips of carpet, knees to chin and bent at an acute angle like the joints of grasshoppers, a well-nigh impossible pose for a European, and one which recalls those judges of the Amenti (the ancient Egyptian underworld of the dead) arranged in rows one behind the other on the papyri depicting funerary rituals, maintain that dreamy immobility so dear to Orientals, when they have no task to do, since movement, with no other purpose than to exercise oneself, as Christians understand it, seems to them pure madness.
Dromedaries, isolated or grouped in a circle, kneeling beneath their loads, stretched their long necks on the sand, motionless under the baking sun; donkeys, some coquettishly harnessed with a red-morocco saddle raised in a hump behind their withers, and a babyish headstall, others with a pack-saddle made from a piece of carpet, awaited the railway passengers lodging at Tanta, to transport them from the landing-stage to the town. The donkey-drivers, in short blue or white tunics, with bare legs and arms, wearing felt caps, a stick in their hands, and resembling those slender figures of shepherds or ephebes, so lightly drawn, encircling the bellies of Greek vases, stood beside their donkeys in an indolent pose which they soon abandoned if a possible fare wandered from the station and advanced in their direction; then there were frenzied gesticulations, guttural cries, and a competitive jostling in which the unfortunate tourist seemed likely to be torn to pieces, or leave the best part of their clothes behind. A few stray dogs, tawny-coated, and with the ears of jackals, fallen from their former state, and seeming not to remember that they counted among their ancestors ‘barking’ Anubis, ‘latrator Anubis’ (see Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ VIII, 698), loped between the groups, but without taking the slightest interest in what was happening.
The ties that bind dogs to humans in Europe do not exist in the Orient. Their social instinct remains undeveloped, their empathetic feelings unelicited: they are masterless, and live in a wild state, amidst civilisation. They are not required to serve, but nor are they cared for. They have no home, and live in holes that they dig, or they settle in the depths of some half-open tomb. No one worries about feeding them, and they provide for themselves by gorging on carrion, and nameless detritus. There is a proverb that claims that wolves do not eat each other: dogs in the Orient are less scrupulous; they devour their sick, wounded, or dead colleagues very readily. It seems strange to us to see dogs that make no advances, seek no caresses, and keep to themselves with melancholic pride.
Little girls in blue dresses, and little black Africans in white tunics, circulated through the carriages offering pastries, cakes, bitter oranges, lemons and apples. Yes, apples: in the East, one is served a great deal of the sour fruit of the North which, along with wretched, chewy pears, form part of all desserts, in which, of course, neither pomegranates, bananas, dates, oranges, nor Barbary figs, nor any of the native products, abandoned no doubt to the common folk, ever appear.
The locomotive whistle blew its high-pitched rattling note, and the power of steam carried us back across the ever-damp, ever-green Delta. However, as we advanced, areas of pink soil appeared on the horizon from which plant life had disappeared completely. The desert sand, eternal plaything of the winds, advances in sterile waves like those of the sea, gnawing away at the strip of cultivated ground, surrounded and beaten with a dusty foam, like a reef that it strives to cover. In Egypt, everything beyond the level of the flood is as if struck dead. There is no transition; where Osiris ends, Typhon begins. Here the most luxuriant vegetation flourishes; there, not a point of grass, not a patch of moss, not a single one of those wild plants that exist in solitude and abandonment; all is crushed sandstone without admixture of soil. And yet! Allow a drop of water from the Nile to fall there, and the arid sand will immediately turn green. These zones, the colour of pale salmon, made a happy contrast of tone with the vigorous hues of the great plain of verdure spread out before our eyes.
Soon we met another branch of the Nile, the Phatnitic branch (Damietta branch), which flows into the sea near Damietta. The railway crosses it, and on the other side are the ruins of ancient Athribis, on which a fellahin village (Banha) has been superimposed. The train moved briskly, and soon, to the right, above a line of vegetation, almost black in the dazzling light, the triangular silhouette of the pyramids of Cheops (Khufu) and Chephren (Kafre), far off and tinged with azure, stood forth, like a single mountain, notched at the summit, when seen from that angle and distance. The perfect transparency of the air brought them nearer, and it would have been difficult, if I had not known its extent, to appreciate, accurately, the interval that separated us. To see the pyramids while approaching Cairo, what could be more natural? I should have expected the sight, and I did expect it; and yet I experienced an extraordinary degree of emotion and surprise. One cannot imagine the effect produced by that vaporous outline, so light in tone that it almost merged with the colour of the sky, and which, not having been alerted to, one might have missed. Neither the years, nor human barbarity, have had the power to overthrow these artificial mountains, the most enormous monuments, after the Tower of Babel perhaps, that mankind has erected in the last five thousand years, once claimed, according to the Bible, as well-nigh the age of the world; our own civilisation, despite its energetic means of destruction, would scarcely succeed in doing so.
Pyramids of Giza, from the Nile. (1846-1849)
David Roberts (Scottish, 1796-1864)
Artvee
The Pyramids, on their broad bases, have watched the centuries and dynasties pass like waves of sand, and the colossal Sphinx, stern of face, at their feet, still smiles with its ironic and mysterious smile. Disembowelled, they have kept their secret and have yielded only ox-bones, beside an empty sarcophagus. Eyes, sealed so long ago that Europe had perhaps not yet emerged from the flood when they were open to the light, had gazed at them from the place where I sat. They were contemporary with vanished empires, with peoples swept from the earth. They have seen civilisations we know little of, heard the language we seek to divine from their hieroglyphics, known customs that would seem to us as chimerical as a dream. They have been there for so long, that the stars have changed places; and their summits retreat into a past so prodigiously fabulous that it seems we see the light from the first days of the world shining behind them.
While reflecting thus, I was rapidly approaching Cairo, that Cairo which I had so often discussed with my poor friend Gérard de Nerval, with Gustave Flaubert, and with Maxime Du Camp, who, in retelling the stories of their visits, excited in me a feverish curiosity. We create, for ourselves, fanciful ideas of those cities we have wished to see since childhood, and have long inhabited in our dreams; ideas which are most difficult to erase, even when we find ourselves face to face with the reality; the sight of an engraving, or of a painting is often the starting point. As for myself, my Cairo, built with material derived from the Thousand and One Nights (see Antoine Galland’s twelve-volume ‘Les Mille et Une Nuits, Contes Arabes Traduits en français’, 1704-1717), clustered about the scene depicted in Prosper Marilhat’s Vue de la Place de L’Esbekieh et du Quartier Copte, au Caire (1833, currently in private hands) that singular and striking painting the artist sent from Egypt to one of the first exhibitions that followed the July Revolution. If my memory does not fail me, that was my primary source; and, despite whatever degree of perfection he may have subsequently achieved, I cannot believe he ever painted a stranger, more vivid, or more original, picture. His Esbekieh Square made a fresh and deep impression on my mind. I returned to the Salon twenty times to see it; I could not take my eyes from the work, which exercised on me a sort of nostalgic fascination.
The painting, which eclipsed the canvases around it of a more sober nature, was of an incredible fierceness of colour. Against a sky of a raw blue, whose ultramarine shaded to indigo, rose two immense trees of the species Mimosa Nilotica, with a monstrous base that one would have thought made of a bundle of twisted columns, and branches that were themselves enormous trunks forming bizarre bends and bearing masses of foliage to cover a forest. These two trees alone occupied almost the entire frame and, beneath the shade they projected, one could glimpse, in the bluish darkness, an apparently-idle saqiyah (water-wheel), a woman with a jug of water on her head, various crouching figures, and an Arab perched on a camel. Further away, towards the left, leaning against each other, in all their Oriental carelessness, were the Arab houses that lined the square, with their moucharabiehs, their overhanging floors, their corbels supported by beams, and all the characteristic details that progress, lover of straight lines and flat surfaces, had not yet pruned away. A palm-tree raised its plume of leaves above the houses, and behind the trees, beneath the canopies of their foliage, one could glimpse another row of buildings forming the rear of the square and topped by a minaret. To the right, serving as a background to the line of okels (caravanserais), the escarpments of Mokattam were outlined. A terrible, blinding light poured like spoonfuls of molten lead over the entire foreground.
It was from that scene that my dreams departed on fanciful tours through the narrow streets of ancient Cairo, once frequented by the Caliph Haroun al Raschid (Harun al-Rashid), and his faithful vizier Giaffar (Ja’far al-Barmaki), disguised as slaves or commoners. My love for this painting was so well known that, after the death of the famous artist, the Marilhat family, with whom I had been friendly, gifted me his pencil drawing, made on the spot, which served as a study for the painted canvas.
Ezbekiyah Street in Cairo (1833)
Prosper Marilhat (1811–1847)
Wikimedia Commons
We arrived: a prodigious tumult of carriages, donkeys, donkey-drivers, porters, domestic servants, and dragomans raised something akin to a riot in front of the railway platform, the line terminating at Boulaq a short distance from Old Cairo. Once the unloading of our luggage was complete, and I had been installed with my friend in a splendid open carriage preceded by a sais, it was with secret delight that I heard the Egyptian Providence which was watching over us, in the uniform of the Nizam and wearing an amaranth-red fez, declare to our coachman: ‘Shepheard’s Hotel, Esbekieh Square.’ I was to be lodged at the heart of my dream!
The End of Part II of Gautier’s ‘Egypt’