From Cleopatra’s Capital To The City of Arabian Nights

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 62, 4 June 1927, Page 21 (Supplement)

From Cleopatra’s Capital To The City of Arabian Nights

(Written for THE SUN by

E. S. HARSTON.)

WHAT first brought Egypt to my attention was a song called “Egypt My Cleopatra,” with a picture of May Beatty in boyish costume on the cover. The combination gave the impression that Egypt was a good spot. A personally conducted tour under the auspices of the New Zealand Government broadened this impression, but left it essentially undisturbed. I waited, therefore, as the “Champollion” approached the former capital of Cleopatra, to discover how these ideas had stood the test of time.

As we drew near the quay a flotilla of small craft gaily decked with flags and rowed by stalwarts in variegated jerseys came rapidly towards us. Leather-lunged, brass-bound commissionaires, with the unnecessary aid of megaphones, could be seen bawling something of urgent importance. When they arrived alongside we had Qo difficulty in gathering the purport of their message. When they came aboard and clamoured through the passage ways, in and out of cabins Dud through decks and smoking rooms, the difficulty was not to find out what the hullaballoo was about but to avoid it. They were the adv *nce agents of various hotels and travelling agencies throughout Egypt. They were passionately searching for business ... After various effendis and bimbashis stamped our passports and given ds in exchange for money slips of Caper which their colleagues took away from us, we found ourselves on tie quay, having left our baggage trustfully in the charge of the most bather-lunged of the agents and his Diotley army. Everybody was bawling, some because they had some pup they wanted t 0 sell and the others because they have felt out of it had they i;e Pt silent. Others, sitting in row's cn the empty carts banging their unsprung w'ay over the uneven cobbles, mellowed from sheer joy of being alive. And when the fat old chieftain w'ho jas rushing rapidly up and down the in i!’ rotati ng on his axis and yelllike a fiend, fell into the w’ater, Q 6 acclamation w'as titanic. ,: n Alexandria cars keep to both ° f the roa( * as well as tlie ii an( * sound their horns inces- . hi k even if there is no one about, lnri * s nbsurd. Everybody is about, fcuh oll t* 16 road instead of the footm n - Even bicyclists blow', with their nths, motor horns minus the bulb, h ow Perfectly well that we ho t 0 ave seen the sights, but we i ipr *ke sounds and after that sights | C i ® Bu Perfluous. We had only suffi- j ' left to get tea. Alp» j ere is much to be seen in a * catacombs and tombs for Dev’a * iice them, mosques. Pomend- p hlar, old forts, and the nevert»m_s lQ terest of the crow r ded streets. DUepD^ n^ Alexander the Great conbuild kj gyPt he chose this site to devein S «i new . capital. The Ptolemies into a great citv contained* library, which affpoti’ predecessor in the stroyed llß Cleopatra, totally de- • lib ra r An - on y gave her another! strovpd the Christians de-; built /,«i another library was to fall into the hands of j

the Arabs. Omar, in reply to a question about the books, said: “If what is written in them is consistent with the Koran, then they are not wanted; if they be opposed theret® they are not wanted. Therefore destroy them.” And for six months they were used as fuel in the bath furnaces of Alexandria. An Irishman —he said he was Irish —in a brown skin and white robes, and christened, so he said, Ma Honie Gallagher, took us to a bookshop; and after that sole adventure in the city of the Ptolemies we made for the station, found our tattered army and vociferous commander a little subdued

after their exertions, but with the baggage intact. We sped through the night towards Cairo and bed. We could see nothing, even of Tantah, where some of the most fanatical festivals in Egypt are held round the tomb of Ahmed :il Badawi who used to see visions and took a vow of silence in consequence. He spent his days and nights on a roof gazing fixedly at the heavens, till the pupils of his eyes turned from black to fiery red. He had to wear two veils to prevent the passers-by from being killed by his death-dealing glances. Only one man ever looked at his face, and he dropped dead at once. They say Ahmed had thick legs and two black spots, one on each side of his nose. Altogether he made such an impression on the Mohammedan world that pilgrims, even to this day, come from miles away to his tomb for healing. We reached city of the Arabian Nights about ten o’clock and were met by a black bishop in the uniform of Mena House. With ponderous dignity he ushered us into a bus and we swung between bronze lions on to the 1200 ft Kasr el Nil bridge, crossed the pleasant island of Gazirah, and set out, under the black lobbek trees, along Ismail’s Road to Mena House. The old Australian headquarters had taken on the garb of peace. Soft voiced Berbers showed us to our rooms. Opening the long French door

we went out on to the balcony. On each side was the cool, silent desert. In front of us, clear cut with an extraordinary distinctness and gleaming golden in the moonlight, were the two greater Pyramids of Giza. A few twinkling lights far away showed where Cairo lay, and a dim glow flickered in the Bedouin camp. From below came the soft sound of bare feet on the sand. A hooded figure with a formidable blunderbuss in the hollow of his arm, the ghaffir of the night guard, was making his rounds. At first it seemed as if the provision of a ghaffir was a little theatrical. But reflection showed its necessity. If

the arcliu^-ogists are to be believed, the people inhabiting the valley of the Nile have hardly changed their characteristics or their physical appearance during seven thousand years. During this span how many conquerors have marched along this famous river? Arabs, Romans, Greeks, Syrians, Abyssinians. Turks, Nubians, French and English—bringing with them their gods, their customs, their knowledge and their characters. And what remains of it all? Only the fellah, the Egyptian peasant, unchanged through the ages, and of the conquerors themselves only the old tombs, temples, and monuments, their mummified bodie~ and the writings by which they sought to perpetuate the memory of their greatness. How deep an impression can a chain of Swiss hotels hope to make? No wonder they guard their hotels. Vigilance is the price of their existence. And what do the Egyptians think of it all? I have often wondered as I sat and watched the silent-footed, courteous Berbers in their red-sashed white robes, passing deftly from table to table, handing foods, which their religion forbids as unclean, to people whom their religion condemns as infidel dogs. Probably they don’t think about it at all, beyond thinking about baksheesh: and that thought is inborn. For the rest their fatalism tells them there is no need to worry. All will be as Allah wills.