RARE FUN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 221, 17 September 1940, Page 6

RARE FUN.

WITH BARREL ORGAN. IT HAPPENED IN CAIRO. (By R. T. MILLER.) (By Air.) CAIRO, August 27. I'm sure a fellow can turn his hand to anything. . . Like climbing Mount Everest, being a military policeman, washing dishes— or even "doubling" for a barrel organ monkey. I'm especially sure about the monkey idea. Last night I carried it through. Hard to believe? I think so, too. But I was wide awake and dead, cold sober, and I'm absolutely certain it really happened. I'm pretty sure, too, it could not have happened anywhere except in Cairo. Maybe it's something in the air here that gets into my blood; maybe it's because there are no neighbours to gossip over back yard fences about the crazy things "that boy M—" does. No, I don't know just why, but it was a wonderful night all the same. I had never b-'ou a benefactor before. It was a fine feeling to have my friend Sayit, who owns the over-sized musical box, press upon me his gratitude in the form of a cup of native tea, countless cigarettes and a huge dish of watermelon. And one-eyed Mike, as I knew Sayit's assistant, trotting along behind us like a faithful dog, bowed down by the weight of the organ on his back, will stay in my memory as long as I have one. In two hours I earned them more than 50 piastres; it doesn't sound so much when I translate it to ten shillings, but it was a higher figure than they usually net in a week. "Dream Boat." When it first swam into my ken, I would have let the hollow tinkle of the organ swim on over my head, had not Mike, who was turning the handle, pulled a knob and changed the tune from a gipsy air to "When My Dream Boat Comes In." The sudden switch to modern syncopation seemed to jar my senses, and I crossed the street to see what was what. Mike, after an uneasy glance at Sayit, who was banging a tambourine some distance off, let me take over the handle for a while. That would have satisfied me, but I noticed that the cafe outside which we stood had become filled with wide grins and pointing lingers—grins and fingers whose lines of fire converged on me. I grinned back, and kept grinding the handle. The crisis, the climax, the turning point was at hand. Sayit now threaded his way between the tables, with actions strongly suggesting that the audience should throw into his tambourine some email tokens of its appreciation— circular, metal tokens, please, and not things like the toothpicks and potato

chips which those unmannerly sokliprn aro heaving from a far corner of the room. I could see that Sayit Nvas receiving small change, but not in the literal sense, from the customers. I grabbed the tambourine from his hands, turned on my best smile and schoolday French: "S'il vous plait, m'sieur, demi-piastre pour les pauvres musiciene!" I got the amused "Ali-these-New Zealanders" look from every civilian in the room—and talk about pennies from heaven! Sayit seemed almost scared when I tumbled the silver into his hands. Showers of Peanuts. There was no stopping us now. With this fixed routine—l turning the handle for a while to attract notice, then "taking the hat round"—we went from bar to bar, from cafe to cafe, from restaurant to restaurant, climbing ever upwards in the social scale until we reached the heights from which generosity clattered into our tambourine in the shape of shilling pieces. Wives and sweethearts nudged their escorts, hands dipped deep into pockets and purses. I smiled on through the showers of pickled onions, peanuts and used matches that came my way at times. 1 was daunted not by the frigid backs of some people who, as I explained to one particularly liberal benefactor, did nJt understand such "plaisanteries." I joined in the joke when I found I had wasted my halting French oh perfectly English Englishmen. I grew nobly indignant at an unsentimental soul, who asked me what was my "percentage." Sayit soon came out of his trance, and we made a strictly business-like trio as we moved from place to place. Mike's one good eye was shining. We were all, in fact, very happy. Halfway through our pleasant labours we paused in a native teasliop, where we chatted until my three words of Arabic and Sayit's three words of English began to sound rather aimless. Time flew by, and midnight reminded me I was still in the army and a fairly long way from home. Sayit insisted on further refreshments, and the watermelon was delicious. My last act in the organ-grinding business was to promise Sayit and Mike that I'd be on the job again in a week's time. And perhaps I shall, but . . . well what would you dot