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Updated: May 3, 2025
A one-eyed man with a stuffed crocodile upon his head paused before the steps of Cairo's gayest hotel and his expectant gaze ranged hopefully over the thronged verandas. It was afternoon tea time; the band was playing and the crowd was at its thickest and brightest.
For two days I hunted, and while I hunted she must have gone down to Jaffa or departed for the overland trip to Syria. I was sitting on the terrace at Shepheard's Hotel on the evening of my arrival there. I was finding life flat, as one must who can discover no fascination in Cairo's appeal to the eyes, nostrils and ears.
The Rolls Royce containing representatives of the Savoy and Shepherds in the shapes of beautifully gowned, handsome, placid, somewhat dull, the Honourable Mary Bingham, pronounced Beam, her friend Diana Lytham, and the rotund personalities of Sir Timothy and Lady Sarah Ann Gruntham, drew up behind the menacing hand of a policeman alongside a limousine containing representatives of Shepherds and the Savoy in the shapes of two rotund-to-be daughters and one thin son of the race of Gruntham, and the Honourable Mary's faded mother, who were all racing home in the search of cool baths, or cooler drinks, or a few moments' repose in a darkened room in which to forget the stifling half hours of a series of social functions, given in honour of Cairo's most festive week of the season, before starting on a dressing campaign against the depredations made upon the skin by flies, heat, sand, wind, and cosmetics.
So now, no duty upon them, Ryder led them past the Citadel, up the Mokattam hills behind it, to that hilltop on which stood the little ancient mosque of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy, where the sunset spaces flowed round them like a sea of light and the world dropped into miniature at their feet. Below them, in a golden haze, Cairo's domes and minarets were shining like a city of dreams.
We hurried out into the corridor, and descended by the lift to the lobby. M. Samarkan, long famous as mâitre d'hôtel of one of Cairo's fashionable khans, and now principal of the New Louvre, greeted us with true Greek courtesy. He trusted that we should be present at some charitable function or other to be held at the hotel on the following evening.
"When you've smelled Cairo, Wynne, old boy, you'll come skulkin' home with your tail between your legs. A 'rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but Cairo parts of it mind you well, Cairo's the stinkin'st rose I ever put my nose into, that's all!"
You aren't much used to the river, and I'll suggest that when you drop down you land in eddies sheltered from the west and south winds. They sure do tear things up sometimes. I've had the roof tore off a boat I was in, and I saw sixty-three boats sunk at Cairo's Kentucky shanty-boat town one morning after a big wind."
It was above all else the rivalries of Popes and Anti-popes that precipitated the Catholic Reformation. This too was written before the events of September, 1881. These have immensely added to the chance of Cairo's becoming once more the seat of the Caliphate, though not perhaps of Mohammed Towfik's being the Caliph elected.
Behold the king of the feast, his serene and mighty oh extremely mighty! highness Prince Dacre Wynne, world explorer and soon to be lord-high-sniffer of Cairo's smells! Don't envy him the task, do you?" He bowed with a flourish to the doctor who chuckled and his keen eyes, fringed with snow-white lashes, danced.
So he put out his hand through the hole in the side-door and Ali laid the purse in it; whereupon Zurayk took it and going forth, as he had come in, returned to the wedding. Ali stood for a long while at the door, but none opened to him; and at last he gave a thundering knock that awoke all the men and they said, "That is Ali of Cairo's peculiar rap."
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