Round the Wonderful World. Mitton Geraldine Edith
gentry. They go on at it hard for about five minutes, our stony silence in no way diminishing their enthusiasm, and then from the corner of my eye I see a tall man, with an exceptionally handsome face, clothed in a beautiful long coat of blue cloth cut away to show a great orange sash underneath.
"You want guide?" he says, hastening to the fray and sending the other men flying with "Imshi, imshi!" "Me good guide, beest guide in Cairo, show you Pyramids, all-a sights, verry cheap, sirr, me show you, only ten shillings, citadel and – "
"I don't want a guide, thank you."
The gentleman's knowledge of English is limited apparently, for he doesn't understand that. In exactly the same tone in which he has just spoken he begins again, "Me good guide, showing you all sights, cheap, verry cheap, Pyramids, telling you all things, bazaar, only eight shilling – "
By the time he has worked himself through all the grades down to two shillings, his eye falls on two other newly arrived tourists, evidently Americans, and he rushes upon the fresh prey. Luckily our car comes in sight just then, for a second dragoman, as these guides are called, has just caught sight of us and is racing across the street as fast as his legs will carry him.
As the tram starts we hear his desperate "Me verry good guide, best – bazaar – " He is quite willing to risk his life in jumping on to the moving tram at the smallest sign from us, so we simply hold our breath and resolve not to wink an eyelid until the danger is past.
So those are the Pyramids!
We have arrived after a very cold and rather monotonous run of about an hour.
Was there ever a time when one had not heard of the Pyramids and pictured their vast triangles rising out of the desert? But for my part, I had always imagined them set far off in solitude so that one came upon them gradually, seeing them first as mere hillocks in the immensity of the sand. Instead of that they spring upon us suddenly, rearing up on a height as the tram speeds toward them along a tree-shaded road across a vast artificial lake.
The lake is picturesque, studded with little islands and promontories covered with houses and palm trees, so also are the groups of donkeys and camels with their attendant men waiting at the terminus for tourists, but these things disperse the mystery to which we had looked forward. The large and comfortable hotel at the foot of the white winding road which leads up to the Pyramids is doubtless useful, but —
As we approach on foot we experience surprise to see that the blocks of which the largest Pyramid is composed are so small they look almost like bricks. Pictures show them as gigantic blocks up which stout ladies are being "boosted" – sorry, but there is no other word – by heated dragomans. As we draw near we see that the blocks are fairly big. Nearer still – what is that crawling about on the edge of the great cone? Hullo, it's a man, and there is another and another. They do look small. Why, there is one who has reached the top; he is not to be compared with a fly so much as a midge – who would have thought it? We are close under now and I find that the block by which I am standing is the height of my shoulder, and I am fairly tall. This must be an exceptional one, but – it isn't! They are all the same! Watching the men clambering up above, – men who we now see are English soldiers dressed in khaki, – we can understand why they seem to find the ascent so difficult – each block is shoulder high and requires much strenuous exertion to surmount. They cannot stride from one to the other as on a flight of stairs. One man is exhausted and gives up half-way, and a cheerful Cockney voice comes down from above telling him to "put his beck into it!" He'll need it. Standing thus and looking up we get some idea of the enormous size of the Pyramid, which makes its blocks look small by contrast. It is bigger, far bigger than one expected. This is the largest of all, built anything between 5000 and 6000 years ago, as the tomb of King Cheops. He built it for himself by cruel forced labour crushed out of starving men; he intended that his body should lie like the kernel of a nut in this mighty shell.
As we pass beyond it we see another, farther off in the desert sand, and yet another. We are accustomed to speak of the Pyramids as if these few at Gizeh were all, but there are others scattered about Egypt, though they are less known and visited.
Then, quite unexpectedly, we come upon the Sphinx. It is in a hollow in the sand like the nest children scoop out for shelter on the seashore, only vastly greater. As we struggle round the yielding rim, with the powdery sand silting over our boot-tops, we feel something of the wonder of it thrilling through us. Let us sit down here facing it by these broken stones, where we can be a little sheltered from the chilly wind and gritty sand. We are looking at the oldest thing in Egypt. You will see farther south many splendid examples of amazing age but nothing to equal the Sphinx. When Abraham came down into Egypt the Sphinx was old beyond the memory of man! When King Cheops built his Pyramid the Sphinx sat with his back turned to it wearing the same inscrutable smile that it has to-day. It has watched kings succeed and die, it has watched empires spread and collapse, it has watched civilisations ripen and wither away. All the known history of mankind has unrolled before it, not the short history of a few trifling centuries which we call ours, but the history of the world.
The crouching figure is lion-like in attitude, but how human of face in spite of its broken nose. It was carven of the solid rock and fashioned with its face to the sunrise and its back to the desert. No one knows the thought in the mind of the puny artist who brought it into being and then shrivelled beside it like a blade of grass. Was it intended to be a god? It has been silted up by sand and unburied again; it has been worshipped and hated. It has been reverenced and shot at, so that its face is chipped and its nose broken away, and still it smiles with fierce serenity.
Sit silently.
"Poste-carte – "
"Imshi, imshi."
That Arabic word, picked up at hazard from the dragoman, has acted like a talisman – the pest has actually gone!
There creeps up beside you, very slowly and determinedly, an old, old man. "Fortune told," he says almost in a whisper, groping for your hard boyish hand. So be it! He at least does not send the spirit of the place flying away. Nonsense it may be, but these fellows do know something —
Give him that five piastre piece that looks like a large shilling and listen to his quaint expressive English.
"Clever head, head very much good, gooder than many men, but an enemy inside there. You see a long, long road, and you go that road, then coming hills and that road grow tiresome and you stop and say, 'Not worth it, I don't care,' an enemy here – slay him!
"Much work lies to your hands to do when they grow large. In many lands I see them plucking down cities and raising ships from the depths of the sea. Strange things be waiting for those hands in all the world. Many tongues you speaking, and many things you gain. But the hand not opening easily. What it gains it grips, hard and tight; it is a close hand, and that which comes thereout drops slowly between the fingers to friends also as to foes. Riches and work and honour hold the hands, and only death will tear them away. With them all is a bitterness and a glory greater than the shine of what men count joy. But in that day when you eat with kings the desire of life shall pass from you!"
Hullo, old boy! He gave you a good shilling's worth, anyhow! Though it was rather a nasty hit that at your Scottish national character! You don't believe it surely? Look at the Sphinx and laugh. What does it matter if we two midges, among all the midges that have crawled about his paws, don't exactly enjoy ourselves the whole of our brief day?
What is that? How you start! No, it's not a lion roaring, though it's a pretty good imitation; it's only a camel cursing and snarling with all his might while his owner piles a few bushels' weight on his back. He doesn't really mind it, but it is the immemorial custom of camels to protest with hideousness and confused noise, and if he didn't do it his trade union would be down upon him.
"Poste-carte – "
Come, let us go!
CHAPTER V
THE HIGHWAY OF EGYPT
Of course you have been in a cinematograph theatre, and there, seated comfortably, have watched the various scenes pass before you. The great charm of these scenes is that the people really did do the things which we here see them doing, even down to the smallest gestures.