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In the tribune itself the cries of the water-sellers were incessant as they offered filtered Nile water and fruit syrups for sale.
The water-sellers were garnering a harvest; fruit- and sweetmeat-peddlers were dreaming of open-fronted shops and how to defeat the tax-collector.
There were white-robed Arabs of the desert, mounted on their grumbling camels; caravans of merchandise from Egypt or elsewhere; asses laden with firewood or the grey, prickly growth of the wild thyme for the bakers' ovens; water-sellers with their goatskin bags and chinking brazen cups; vendors of birds or sweetmeats; women going to the bath in closed and curtained litters, escorted by the eunuchs of their households; great lords riding on their Arab horses and preceded by their runners, who thrust the crowd asunder and beat the poor with rods; beggars, halt, maimed, and blind, beseeching alms; lepers, from whom all shrank away, who wailed their woes aloud; stately companies of soldiers, some mounted and some afoot; holy men, who gave blessings and received alms; and so forth, without number and without end.
Sherbet- and water-sellers pervaded the scene, and added the chatter of their voices and the clatter of their brass cups to the already indescribable din.
Conjurors proclaimed the merits of their miracles, bawling in the faces of the curious. Dwarfs went to and fro, dressed in bright colours with green and yellow turbans on their enormous heads, tapping with long staves, and relating their deformities. Water-sellers sounded their gongs.
In many of the garden plots at the rear of the low-roofed dwellings were dug wells which provided water for the family; and the visitor, before he left the town, would be likely to meet with water-sellers calling out their ware.
In the tribune itself the cries of the water-sellers were incessant as they offered filtered Nile water and fruit syrups for sale.
The funeral processions to the great cemetery beyond the Ilissus seemed in constant motion, and the water-sellers drove a brisk trade in the water of a noble spring under Hymettus. At the next municipal election the mayor was reëlected triumphantly! The ministry was less fortunate, a dissolution resulting in a majority for the opposition, and Tricoupi came into power.
The Alcazar, the cigarette-girls, the Gipsy dancers of Triana, the old brown ruins to which they rode, the streets, and the square with its grave talkers sitting on benches in the sun, the water-sellers and the melons; the mules, and the dark ragged man out of a dream, picking up the ends of cigarettes, the wine of Malaga, burnt fire and honey! Seville had bewitched them they got no further.
And now, having noticed our café and our host, let us sit comfortably and try and distinguish the various types which go to form the crowd which from dawn to dark throngs the thoroughfares. First of all it will be noticed how many different trades are carried on in the streets, most prominent of all being that of the water-sellers, for Cairo is hot and dusty, and water is in constant demand.
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