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The water-carrier, with his goatskin filled and swung across his back, divides the way with the itinerant cook and his portable kitchen. In short, it is the ideal city of the Arabian Nights. The Esbekyeh is the Broadway of Cairo, and its contrast to the mass of narrow lanes and passages where the native bazars are located, as well as the dingy houses of the populace, only adds to its brilliancy.
This fact was emphasized by a long afternoon drive, beginning in the native quarter with its attendant bazars and ending with a long country tour for at least an hour through a forest of palms of many varieties, the tall talipot towering high higher even than the fruit-laden cocoanut palm, while bread-fruit trees, jack-fruit trees, and bananas made a pleasing variety.
Unlike the bazars previously described, this was a large, high building, filled with aisles and furnished with long tables, at the back of which sat the saleswomen; all the business of the bazar is carried on by women. There was a great variety of silk weaving of every conceivable shape and style, the sarong being prominent.
After a time the news spread through the bazars that Tods had got the Bill recast in the tenure-clause, and, if Tods' Mamma had not interfered, Tods would have made himself sick on the baskets of fruit and pistachio nuts and Cabuli grapes and almonds that crowded the verandah. Till he went Home, Tods ranked some few degrees before the Viceroy in popular estimation.
Hence many dealers in the bazars have secured the deserted Oriental homes, and now live in comparative luxury, showing that conditions and residential centres change in the Old World as well as in the New. But note how much more attractive the original home must appear to native eyes.
Turbaned Turks, mosques and minarets, muftis and cadis, veiled eastern ladies, Mohammedains and muezzins, Arabian Nights and attar of roses, bazars, dogs, and donkeys these, I suppose, are what Constantinople suggests whenever its name is mentioned to any girl or boy of to-day, the capital of modern Turkey, the city of the Sublime Porte.
Especially is this the case as to courtesy and civility, qualities which cost nothing, but which buy everything. A visit to the curiosity bazars, or curio-shops, as they are called, is one of the first excursions of the newly-arrived tourist. The Japanese have quickly discovered to what European and American tastes run, and they can manufacture antiquities as rapidly as purchasers can be found.
Burrell, were all that morning governed in some degree by Roland's evilly spent sovereign; and he far off in London was in the hey-day of his honeymoon with Denas. They were so gay, so thoughtless and happy that people turned to look at them as they wandered through the bazars or stood laughing before the splendid windows in Regent Street.
I can only say in conclusion that there were also the bazars for sweetmeats, most delectable; for coffee, of which one never tastes the like out of Damascus; and every kind of bric-a-brac. No account of Damascus, not even a bird's-eye-view, would be complete without some mention of the great Mosque, whither I was wont now and again to repair.
He would then dine with the Officer Commanding, and insult him, across the Mess table, about the appearance of the troops. That was Benira's way. He turned out troops once too often. He came to Helanthami Cantonment on a Tuesday. He wished to go shopping in the bazars on Wednesday, and he "desired" the troops to be turned out on a Thursday. On a Thursday.
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