It Happened in Egypt — 16 - Chapter XV, part 1

THE DESERT DIARY TO ITS BITTER END

_Tuesday_: The principal water-cask has leaked; consequently not enough water to go round.

Chêf said it was a question of baths, or soup.

Considering the cold, most of the people voted for soup.

Some washed in Apollinaris.

Others douched with soda siphons.

We can get more water to-night.

Can't think why the north wind doesn't stop and warm itself while traversing the Mediterranean or the hot sands!

It seems to be in too fierce a hurry and consequently cuts across the desert, like a frozen scythe, the moment its rival the sun has gone to sleep.

I hear that Miss Hassett-Bean cried with cold as she dressed, and put on two of everything; but she is luckier than the younger women.

Monny and Mrs. East, though warned that nights would be chill, have come clothed in silk and gossamer, and have brought low-necked nightgowns of nainsook trimmed with lace.

This was confided to me soon after sunrise by a blue-nosed Biddy, hovering over the kitchen fire and --incidentally--ingratiating herself with the cook.

It wouldn't be Biddy if she weren't ingratiating herself with some one!

Nobody yearned to get up early (I speak for others, as _I_ passed my night in the attitude of a suspension bridge between two folding chairs); but in camp where sleep is concerned, men may propose, camels dispose.

Their nights they spend in a ring of camelhood, huddled together for warmth; and if they do not have nightmare or bite each other in their sleep, mere humans in neighbouring tents may hope for comparative silence in the desert, if not near a village full of pi-dogs.

At sunrise, however, a change comes o'er their spirit.

They are given food, and made as happy and contented as it is their nature to be, which apparently is not saying much.

Judging by the strange, inarticulate oaths they constantly mutter, they are equally accursed in their sitting down and their getting up.

It is only when they are actually "on the move," floating and swaying through the air--legs, tail, neck, jaws--that they have nothing disagreeable to say.

Immediately after dawn this morning, our camels began to imitate every animal they could have met since the days of the Ark, when one had to know everybody.

They mewed like cats, hissed like snakes, bleated like sheep, roared like toy lions, grunted like pigs, barked like dogs, squawked like geese, and bellowed like baby bulls.

Also they gargled their throats like elderly invalids.

It was useless trying to sleep;

and when I had accomplished such bathing as the chêf permitted, I went out to see what was the matter.

Nothing was the matter, except that the creatures had the sunrise in their eyes, and could see the camel-boys preparing their loads; but I was glad I had come out, because Biddy was there and the scene was beautiful.

Shivering, we chuckled over the morning toilet of the camels, who turned their faces disconcertingly upon us, sneering with long yellow teeth, and bubbling as if their mouths were full of pink soapsuds, when they realized that we were laughing at them.

Incidentally we learned why the Baby Sphinx accompanied our caravan uninvited.

His name is Salih; and he came because there's a very important camel (the property of his father) who refuses to eat or stir without him.

It is a most original and elaborate camel.

It has a neat way of turning its ears with their backs to the wind, in order to make them sand-proof.

If any person other than Salih touches it, an incredible quantity of green cud is instantly let loose over their turbans; but at the approach of Salih it emits a purring noise, preens its head for the nose-strap ornamented with a bunch of palmlike plumes, and playfully pretends not to want the bersím which the little black Sphinx thrusts down its throat in handfuls.

This, it seems, is good camel table-manners.

And it is to the tail of this animal that Salih clings on the march.

If he is not there, the animal looks round, stops, or turns to charge at any Arab who jestingly misuses its idol.

Yesterday the miniature Sphinx was in a white robe.

To-day he is in black.

All the Arabs have changed their clothes, although they have brought no visible luggage except vague pieces of sacking.

The dragoman is exquisitely arrayed, galabeah and kaftan gray-blue, with a pink petticoat, and a white one under that.

I suspect that he sleeps beneath the dining-table--and the other Arabs among the kitchen pots--yet they are smarter than any of us Europeans, all of whom have a frayed air.

This, I suppose, would not be so in desert-fiction.

Nothing would be said about hot-water bottles leaking, or beetles beetling (one doesn't come to Egypt to see live scarabs), or draughts raging, or camels gobbling, or flags flapping all night.

(Memo: Abolish flags, even at expense of patriotism.

) Despite every desert drawback, however, Biddy and I agreed that the sunrise alone was worth the journey, and the pure air of dawn which, though cold, seemed perfumed by mysterious rose-fields.

Just at sun-up the desert was lily pale--then, as the horizon flamed, a dazzling flood of gold poured over the dunes.

The sun was a fantastic brooch of beaten copper, caught in a veil of ruby gauze, while here and there a belated star was a dull, flawed emerald sewn into the veil's fringe.

Shadows swept westward across the desert like blue water, showing a glitter of drowned jewels underneath; and though last night it had seemed that we were alone in a vast wilderness, now there were signs that a village lay not far off.

A group of children in red and blue, staring avidly at the camp, were like a bunch of ragged poppies in the sand.

Their mangy pi-dogs had ventured nearer, to smell sadly at the meat-safes hanging outside our kitchen-tent.

A gypsy-woman with splendid eyes and a blue tattooed chin, breakfasted on an adjacent dune with her husband.

Men like living hencoops passed in the distance.

Patriarchal persons blew by, in that graceful way in which people do blow in Egypt, driving a flock of sheep, with a black lamb "for luck."

These men were dressed as their ancestors had dressed in the time of Abraham, and Biddy and I envied them.

How nice, said she, to wear the same clothes for a hundred years if you happened to live, and never be out of fashion.

If a few of your things dropped off by degrees, you were still all right, and nobody would be rude enough to notice!

Our faded family revived after breakfast, and even those who vowed they hadn't closed an eye all night enjoyed the scene of striking camp.

The big white tents fell to the ground like pricked soap-bubbles; whereupon their remains were deftly rolled up and tied on to the backs of bitterly protesting camels.

Beds, mattresses, tables, chairs ceased to be what they had been and became something else.

Camels made faces and noises.

Arabs tore this way and that, doing as little work as possible.

The cook fluttered about in his blanket, brandishing a saucepan.

Yusef the dragoman made noble gestures of command, and our little desert city ceased to exist except on camels' backs.

It was shaved off the surface of the earth, and went churning and swaying along toward the next stand; the procession rising and falling among swelling dunes, under a sky which seemed to trail like a heavy blue curtain, where at the horizon it met the gold.

We travelled over pebbly plateaus, scattered with jewel-like stones.

Sand-pyramids rose out of the glistening plain.

Here and there were rocks like partly hewn sphinxes pushing out of the sand to breathe;

other rocks like monstrous toads; and still others dark and dreadful in the distance as ogres' houses.

Altogether the desert gave us a truly Libyan effect, which made the Set feel that after all they were getting what they had paid for, with an introduction to a beauty and heiress thrown in.

But apropos of this latter boon, it is dawning upon me that Rachel Guest is receiving more attention than Monny.

This strikes me as inexplicable.

There are more men than women in our party, all young except Sir John Biddell, General Harlow, and Mills of Manchester, a soft, fat sort of fellow whose first name you can never remember.

It occurred to me on starting, that the desire of so many unattached young men to spend a week in the desert and the Fayoum, might not be unconnected with Miss Gilder's intention to join the party.

Not being jealous, I expected to see a little fun, and laugh over it with Biddy, who is a heavenly person with whom to share a joke.

But if there is a joke, I haven't seen the point yet, nor has she.

There's no disputing the fact that Miss Guest, the poor, brave school teacher on holiday, is the belle of the desert.

Of course, if Monny had stopped in Cairo, Rachel's success with our men wouldn't be astonishing.

As Brigit and Monny warned me in their letters to the _Candace_, she grows better looking every day; but though she is distinctly of Monny's type, despite those slanting eyes, she will never be a real beauty, or a Complete Fascinator, like our Gilded Girl.

Besides, Monny has millions, and Rachel hasn't a cent.

Yet there it is!

Miss Guest is having the "time of her life" in spite of leaky water bottles and bumping camels, while Miss Gilder might be an old married woman, for all the attention she gets from any man on this trip except me.

What can be the explanation?

Even those two exaggerately German-looking men with Bedr stared at Rachel from their respectful distance.

It turns out that they camped not far from us last night.

Yusef heard this from one of our camel-boys.

But they kept to themselves, and didn't come within a mile of us, so there's nothing to complain of.

Every one except Sir John delighted with to-day's desert.

He can't see anything beautiful in yellow lumps that keep you sawing up and down, though he has no doubt the desert is full of other fools doing what we're doing; and we could all see each other doing it if it weren't for those darn dunes.

_Later_: Adventure for sandcart on one of the biggest plateaus.

Looked all right from the top; but a shriek from Mrs. East put me to the dire necessity of sliding off Farag and running to the rescue.

The plateau was broken off in front and became a precipice which, Cleopatra seemed to think, would not have existed had "Antoun" arrived in tune to arrange it.

Great wind came roaring up again about noon.

Feared to learn that it had been impossible to get luncheon-tent in position.

But when the time came to find it, there it was with its back to the blast, and its shady open front, of tile-patterned appliqué, offering the hoped-for picture of white table and smiling brown waiters.

While we lunched, the fierce gusts striking the back canvas wall were like the frightened flappings of giant wings, and the beating of a great bird's heart.

Otherwise we might have forgotten the elements as we ate, save for a slight powdering of sand on our food.

But even that wasn't bad, if we selected only the port side of our bread and chicken, leaving windward bits to the Arabs.

Our night camp was in shelter of the two vast dunes which hide the ancient city of Bacchias, now called Um-el-Atl, where we found "Antoun" awaiting us.

He had started from Cairo in the morning on a coastguard camel, coming quickly along the camel route between Bedrashen and Tomieh, and the extra few miles to our encampment.

Before we arrived he had sent the camel back with the mounted Arab who accompanied him; and somehow the camp seemed all the smarter and more ship-shape for the presence of the handsome Hadji, in his green turban.

The Set are all extremely interested in him; and on hearing my version of his history, sketchily told, have taken to calling him "the prince."

Enid and Elaine almost fawn upon him, in their admiration of so romantic and splendid an addition to our party: a real, live Egyptian gentleman, with enough European blood in his veins to justify nice-minded maidens in cherishing a hopeless love for him, when he has safely vanished out of their lives.

Mrs. East made Anthony pick up pre-historic oyster shells in the desert, between flaming sunset and twilight, when the sky became a vast blue tent hung with a million lamps.

And at dinner she was not nice to Enid and Elaine who admired her hero too frankly.

She has developed an embarrassing clearness of vision as to other people's former incarnations, especially their disagreeable or shocking ones.

"Ah, it has _just_ come to me!"

she exclaimed, her elbows on the table, looking dreamily into Elaine Biddell's face.

"You were _Xantippe_.

I knew I'd seen you somewhere."

As for Enid, it seems that she was Charmian or Iris, Cleopatra can't be sure which; but the girl has come to me saying that, if Mrs. East doesn't stop calling her "My dear handmaiden," one or the other of them will have to give up starting on the Nile trip next week.

_Wednesday_: We had lobster á la Newburgh for dinner, in mid-Libyan desert, and drank the chêf's health in champagne.

I don't know which was to blame, or whether it was the combination; but in the windy middle of the night when tent flaps stirred like a nestful of young birds, there were demands for ginger and for peppermint.

Now, ginger and peppermint happened to be the only two medicaments in the whole pharmacopoeia left out of the medicine chest.

But nothing else would do.

The more the things weren't there, the more they were wanted; and all the people who had made notes to remember me in their wills, scratched me out again.

Then, to pile Ossa on Pelion, the dogs of Tomieh arrived to pay a visit.

They barked, of course; but they barked so much that the noise was like a silence, and nobody minded after the first half hour.

The worst was, that they did not confine their demonstrations to barking.

In order to signify their disapproval of our stingy ways, they took the boots we had confided to the sand in front of our tents to be cleaned, and worried them at a considerable distance.

Some of the boots were past wearing when found, and some were not found.

Judging from cold glances directed at me by those obliged to resort to pumps or bedroom slippers, one would imagine me the trainer of this canine menagerie.

It has been hinted, too, that a conductor worth his salt would have filled up interstices of the medicine chest with toothbrushes.

Several members of the party forgot to pack theirs in moving camp and they are now the property of jackals.

A stock of toothbrushes is the one other thing besides peppermint and ginger and hot-water bottles that Slaney and I left out of our calculations;

still, I do think bygones ought to be bygones.

Anthony is the hero now, because it occurred to him to buy in Cairo flannelette nightwear, male and female, of the thickest and most hideously pink description.

Had these horrors been suggested at the start, they would have been rejected with fury, in favour of lace and nainsook; but the contribution has made a _success fou_, at a crisis when vanity has been forgotten, and the girls are employing their prettiest frocks as bed covering.

_Another Day:_ Have now forgotten which, or how many we've had.

This is Anthony's hour--but he may take such advantage of it as he chooses--I'm indifferent.

On top of my troubles I've contracted Desert Snivels.

Whether the habit of using sand for snuff has produced the malady, or whether I've caught something (despite the tonic air) from nomads or oasis-dwellers, all of whom emit a storm of coughs and sneezes, I do not know.

All desire to use this grand opportunity of taking Cleopatra's advice and winning Monny's love while for once she's neglected by others, has died within me.

My one wish is to keep away from her and the rest, except perhaps Biddy, and suffer alone, like a cat.

Biddy has got Desert Snivels, too.

It makes another link between us, like the memories of our childhood.

We swop stories of symptoms.

Both feel that sense of terrible resignation which desert babies have when their eyes are full of flies and no one takes them out.

The sky lowers.

Big black birds flap over our heads like pirate flags that have blown away.

They are the vultures which used to be sacred to Egyptians, and seem to labour under the delusion that they are sacred still.

The sand blows into our back hair, and the Arabs make scarves and veils of their turbans.

Apparently these Moslems never say any prayers, and the _Candace_ people feel they've been cheated of a promised sensation of desert life.

The only religious thing the men do is to bawl "Allah!"

when they lift the heavy, rolled up tents onto the camels.

People are beginning to grumble about their meals, which at first seemed to them miracles of culinary art.

"Same old desert things we've been eating ever since Moses," I heard Harry Snell mutter.

And Sir John Biddell is sick of h. b. eggs.

I suppose he means hard-boiled.

I should like to feed him on soft-shell scarabs!

Tea is the only incident in the desert which has palled on no one yet.

Very jolly, having finished the day's exertion, and sitting on folding chairs inside tent door, teacup in hand, watching the winged shadows sweep across the dunes!

One feels like Jacob or Rebecca or some one.

There may be a fine saint's tomb standing up, marble-white, against the rose-garden of a sunset sky, but one doesn't bother to walk out and examine it at close quarters.

There's nothing like sitting still after a windy day on camel back.

We lack interest in history ancient and modern, although Egypt is the country which ought to make one want to know all other history.

There may be a European war or an earthquake.

We don't care what happens to any one but ourselves.

It is all we can do to keep track of our own affairs.

As for ancient history, we content ourselves with wondering if Anthony and Cleopatra, when picnicking in the desert, dropped orange peel and cake to feed the living scarabs of their day.

We seem to be lost to the world, yet now and then we're reminded that we have neighbours in the desert.

We've had glimpses of a distant caravan which must be Bedr's; and when we came in sight of our own camp last evening, we were just in time to catch a party of Germans being photographed in front of it, with our things for an unpaid background.

Ever beauteous picture, by the by, your own encampment!

White tents blossoming like snowy flowers in a wilderness; a dense black cloud, massed near by on the golden sand, which might in the distance be a plantation of young palms, but is in reality a congested mass of camels.

You sing at the top of your voice "From the desert I come to thee, on a stallion shod with fire!"

hoping to thrill the girls.

But they are thinking about their tea.

Girls in the desert, I find, are always thinking about their tea, or their dinner, or their beds.

You would like (when your Desert Snivels improve) to walk with a maiden under the stars; but no, she is sleepy!

She wants to get to bed early.

Even the camels are most particular about their bed hours.

It would be irritating, if you didn't secretly feel the same yourself.

But what a waste of stars!

_Some old Day or Other:_ Interesting but dusty dyke road into the Fayoum oasis.

Every one enraged with Robert Hichens because "Bella Donna's" Nigel recommended The Fayoum.

"No wonder she poisoned him!"

snarled Mrs. Harlow.

Our Arabs riding ahead look magnificent, seeming to wade through a flood of gold, the feet and legs of their camels floating in a rose-pink mist.

But alas, the flood of gold and the rose-pink mist are composed of dust--that reddish dust in which presumably the boasted Fayoum roses grow; and it blows into our noses.

This upsets our tempers, and prevents our enjoying the pictures we see in the sudden transition from desert to oasis.

Biblical patriarchs on white asses, disputing the high, narrow "gisr" or dyke road; women with huge gold nose rings; running processions of girls, in blowing coral and copper robes, large ornamental jars on their veiled heads, thin trailing black scarves and slim figures dark against a sky of gold.

Blue-eyed water-buffaloes--gamoushas--and exaggerated brown-gray calves, with wide-open, boxlike ears in which you feel you ought to post something.

Canals stretching away through emerald fields to distant palm groves; here and there a miniature cataract; children playing in the water, imps whose red and amber rags ring out high notes of colour like the clash of cymbals; now and then a jerboa or a mongoose waddling across the path; travelling families on trotting donkeys or swinging camels who pass us with difficulty.

Camels everywhere, indeed, on dyke or in meadow; even the clouds are shaped like camels who have gone to heaven and turned to mother o' pearl.

There are horses, too; not little sand stallions like ours, but ordinary, plodding animals whose hoofs know only Fayoum dust or mud.

Our desert creature, however, does not spurn them.

On the contrary, though he pretends not to notice camels, cows, or buffaloes, he whinnies and prances with delight when he meets anything of his own shape, and assumes hobby-horse attitudes, much to the alarm of Cleopatra and Miss Hassett-Bean.

Also, just to remind everybody that sand is his element, he shies at water, and almost swoons at sight of the Fayoum light railway.

Much wind again.

But thank goodness out of Fayoum dust, and in desert sand for lunch!

Prop up tent with our backs, leaning against the blast.

However, we have now a special clothes-brush for the bread, and a moderately clean bandanna for the fruit.

Plates, we blow upon without a qualm.

Scarabei gambolling in the sand around our feet we pass unnoticed.

This is the simple desert life!