Queer Things About Egypt

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1911. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... lord was not in the city, and the landlady would not come out of the harem. But with fine illogic she allowed her daughters to come out, one of whom spoke a little German and the other a little French. We interviewed them in a large room surrounded by mastabas. The daughters were closely veiled, and sat, with their legs under them, on the mastabas while we discussed terms. The Bey had to show us the rooms, and was bursting with pride because each had a toothcomb. The various drawbacks of that hotel I have dwelt on in my chapter on the humours of Egyptian hotels. It was no blow to us to be told that we could not have anything to eat or drink in the hotel. There we left the various packages, which the Bey had been carrying for us, and went off to see Damietta. I never saw such a tumbly place. All the houses are being pulled down, or look as if they ought to be, though some of them are so picturesque that they might well be made national monuments to preserve the tradition of Damietta architecture. Damietta is all front, like the Palazzata of Messina after the earthquake. If you go behind the splendid sweep of Venetian-looking palaces fringing that elbow of the Nile, you see nothing but ruins and hovels. The architecture of Damietta is as perishable as that of Rosetta is permanent. Instead of good fire-baked bricks to defy the moisture of the climate, and loggias of antique columns, Damietta houses are built of wood. At a glance one can see that woodwork is the speciality of Damietta. Instead of ordinary meshrebiya, some of the houses had massive lattices of carved hard-wood like the screens of the fourteenth century mosques in Cairo. And the ceilings and eaves, supported on heavy brackets under the harem windows, were of specially handsome applique wood-w...