OF A CAIRO CAFé AND OTHER MATTERS
I HAD not far to go along the filled-in canal before a partly pulled down housefront enabled me to see the court of a once important dwelling. It was similar in plan to many I have seen; but it was the only instance I have met of a vaulted takhtabosh. A wooden screen partly shut it off from the yard, and an opening in one of the panels served as a doorway. Whether this screen belonged to the original building I cannot say; but it certainly added greatly to its picturesque appearance. The recess was now converted into a coffee-shop, while the rest of the house was let out in tenements to poor people.
It is never safe to leave a good subject to a later period, if it can possibly be helped. Some arrangement of line or colour, often hard to define, may be just what gives the subject its charm. Something may have disturbed this, or some touch of colour may have gone, before a second visit, and it leaves the painter wondering as to what he could have seen in the place to have made him wish to paint it. I started sketching in the café at once, hoping that some customers might arrive to suggest a grouping of figures. Should these customers be queer ones, I could trust to Mahmood to keep them from disturbing me at my work.
I had not long to wait before a half-dozen men79 came in. They seemed sufficiently interested in something not to take much notice of me. They squatted down on their heels, forming a ring, and two of them each pulled a game-cock from under their cloaks and pitched them on to the ground. The Cairene is usually very noisy during his entertainments; but in this case few words were spoken, though the men watched the varying success of their birds with intense interest. I was too occupied in taking notes of the men and the action of the cocks to feel any interest in the sport, and by the time one of the birds was at its last gasp, and lay bleeding on the ground, I felt a sufficient disgust for the whole thing to decide me not to make it the subject of a picture.
I saw them refer to Mahmood as to who I might be, for Koranic law forbids all betting, and I believe cock-fighting is contrary to police regulations. They seemed satisfied that I was harmless enough, and they departed as quietly as they had come.
The sport must be a very popular one, for these birds, with their combs closely cut and with plucked necks, may be seen in almost any street in the poorer parts of the town. Whether the ancient Egyptians indulged in cock-fighting, I have never been able to ascertain. I can recall no wall inscriptions depicting the sport, neither does Wilkinson refer to it in his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. It was probably introduced into Egypt during the Ptolemies or, at the latest, during the Roman occupation. Quail-fighting is common in Upper Egypt, though I have personally never witnessed it.
80 The sun soon made my place untenable, so I decided to return in the afternoon, when I might also expect to find more customers to suggest some figure arrangement suitable to my picture. It was a grand place for Mahmood—cups of coffee at two for a penny. I could treat him to as many as he liked, and please the Kahwegee at the same time. I confess to a good many cups myself, for coffee made in Turkish fashion is most seductive. The cups are very small, and there is only a sip of liquid before reaching the grounds, which are allowed to settle at the bottom. But it is a delicious sip, and it is also very stimulating. The habit of afternoon tea acquired in England is hard to break, and to make a journey into the modern quarters to indulge it would have cut seriously into my work, and I found in one of these little cups of coffee an excellent substitute. Paint where one wishes, a coffee-shop is sure to be within easy reach, and the Kahwegee will always for a trifle bring coffee, a chair, and a glass of water, and place them next to one’s easel. Now that the native quarters are supplied with pure water, one can drink the latter with safety. Coffee drinking is often carried to excess in Egypt, with deleterious effects to nerves and digestion; but its victims are less objectionable neighbours to the sketcher than the fuddled European, who may bore him with questions and breathe on him the odour of his complaint.
It is said that drunkenness is on the increase amongst the natives, and it is true that tipsy men are occasionally seen. They are chiefly the loafers who hang about the European quarters, where modest coffee-shops hardly exist, and where nearly every other house retails some or other intoxicant. Beer or spirits are hardly obtainable in the purely native parts of Cairo.
Page 80
A CAIRENE CAFé
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81 Towards evening this quaint little café would liven up. The wooden bench which served as a mastaba might seat an álim (as any one who can read is often called), who would drone out the news from the daily paper to a group of listeners, and the sound of the chequers slammed on a backgammon-board would make an accompanying click, click, from inside the recess. This game has been borrowed from the Firangi, and is still called by its French name of ‘tric-trac.’ It is immensely popular amongst the effendi class, and is gradually being adopted by those of a humbler station. The more primitive mankaleh is still played in Cairo, and is still universal in the villages where tric-trac has not yet found its way. I have been shown how to play it, but space will not allow of a lengthy description of its details. It is played on an oblong board with twelve hollows in two rows of six each, each row forming an opposing camp. There are seventy-two cowries, or, failing these, small pebbles, and it is according to the manner in which these are distributed into the hollows that makes the game. An elaborate account of the various modes of playing it is given in Lane’s Modern Egyptians. It is reported as having obtained in Pharaonic times, but this has never been satisfactorily confirmed.
Turkish draughts is also a popular game, and to my thinking much more amusing than the way we play it in England. That this game was known (or a form of it) amongst the ancients is certain, and most visitors82 to Medinet Habú will have been shown the presentment of Rameses III. playing it with his queen.
Games of chance, as well as betting, are forbidden by the Koran. A point is, however, usually stretched in allowing the loser to pay for the cups of coffee. In mankaleh the player backs his skill more than his luck, whereas in backgammon the throw of the dice brings in a large element of chance. A strict Mohammedan will therefore abstain from the latter game.
As the day declined, more customers would drop in, and by the time the lamps were lit I often regretted that my hotel table d’h?te called me away to the Ismaeliyeh quarter.
The light from the primitive lamps piercing a blue atmosphere of smoke, and falling on the groups of figures intent on their games, left a picture in my mind which I hoped might not be dimmed by the more commonplace aspect of an up-to-date hotel.
Perhaps, after all, it is as well that circumstances oblige me to reside away from that part which I regard as the true Cairo. Putting aside matters of health, it is a loss to be cut off from one’s countrymen, or those of other countries whose mode of life resembles one’s own. Unless a man can take his wife with him, he may pass months without seeing a woman’s face, or exchanging a word with one of his opposite sex. This has been my experience in Upper Egypt and while camping in the desert, where the woman will hide away from a strange man, and where her voice will never be heard except she be screaming at one of her children, or in altercation with a neighbour. The servants are83 always males, and the food bought in the villages is always sent by a man or a boy. If I strolled in to see the Omdeh or the village sheykh, I should have to wait till his women-folk were well out of the way. Their conversation might not have been edifying; but was that of the men always so? Life in a purely Mohammedan country, if separated from wife and family, is a one-sex existence.
I have met cultured men in the Near East, who for long periods had had little intercourse with those of their own nationality, and I noticed how ill at ease they seemed when brought in contact with European ladies and gentlemen. Life was strange enough away from the European settlements in Japan, but it was a more complete life. Though I might not understand a word spoken by the Okosan or the mousume, their smiles of welcome were perfectly understandable.
The hotel Villa Victoria, which I have of late made my headquarters in Cairo, is out of the general rush of tourists, and is frequented by many who are at times engaged in excavating, or are in some way connected with the Antiquities Department. There are also permanent guests in various Government Offices, as well as others whose business brings them in contact with things Egyptian. I was here long enough for acquaintance with my fellow-lodgers to ripen into ............