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Updated: June 6, 2025
And he welcomed with a strong sense of relief and expectation the long- looked-for evening of the Princess's "reception," to which many of the visitors in Cairo had been invited since a fortnight, and which those persons who always profess to be "in the know," even if they are wallowing in ignorance, declared would surpass any entertainment ever given during the Cairene season.
Further refreshed, they meandered homewards, attempted vainly to maintain a comparatively straight line while they were dismissed by an amused sergeant-major, and retired to their lines to prepare for a Cairene evening. Mac firmly resolved things had come to a pass when something dire had to be done. He adjourned to the lines of another regiment, and consulted, nay, intrigued, with his cobber.
Out of the crowded Mograby he made his way on foot to the Esbekeyih quarters where the streets were wider and emptier of Cairene traffickers and shrill itinerates and laden camels and jostling donkeys. It was a glorious day, a day of Egypt's blue and gold. The sky was a wash of water color; the streets a flood of molten amber.
The study to which the Professor led the way was built out at the back of the house, and crowded with Oriental curios of every age and kind; the furniture had been made by Cairene cabinet-makers, and along the cornices of the book-cases were texts from the Koran, while every chair bore the Arabic for "Welcome" in a gilded firework on its leather back; the lamp was a perforated mosque lantern with long pendent glass tubes like hyacinth glasses; a mummy-case smiled from a corner with laboured bonhomie.
It had not the grand proportions or elaborate decoration of some of the Cairene mosques, neither was the pulpit as handsomely carved or the hanging lamps and ostrich-shells as numerous. The coolness of the thick-walled, domed building was, however, most grateful, for the heat in the streets was by this time almost insufferable, and the smells awful.
She also appointed him her guardian to consent to her marriage with the Cairene, to whom he gave the Jew's palace and all its contents, saying, "Ask a boon of me." Quoth Ali, "I beg of thee to let me stand on thy carpet and eat of thy table;" and quoth the Caliph, "O Ali, hast thou any lads?" He replied, "I have forty lads; but they are in Cairo."
Then they sat, drinking and talking, till the end of the day, when each returned home. But as for Ali, the Cairene, he was giddy with wine and in this plight went in to his wife, who said to him, "What aileth thee that thou art so changed?" He said, "We were making merry to-day, when one of my companions brought us liquor; so my friends drank and I with them, and this giddiness came upon me."
When the Turks came in against us, and the ex-Khedive, safe among his new-found friends, threw off the mask, the Cairene effendis became tremendously active. Forgetting how they had disliked Abbas II and called him a huckstering profligate, they mourned for his deposal by wearing black ties, especially the students. The ex-Khedive did not share their patriotic grief.
I come from the west, the deserts. I have seen the world: Men men, I know ... I danced before them, not the dances of the Cairene cafés," she uttered with swift scorn, "but the dance of the two swords, the dance of the serpents.... Men threw the gold from their turbans about my feet when I had danced to them ... And others, English, French " She broke off, but her eyes told many things.
The bright Cairene sun starkly glittering on the French chandeliers and Viennese mirrors, and beating on the brass trays and braziers by the window, irritated him.
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