Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

176 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTDoguereau described the African slaves as decorated with tattoos (he calledthem “scars”) and said the women often wore nose jewelry. They were sold forbetween 40 and 150 piasters, depending “on their age, beauty, and strength; theyoungest are eight or nine.” Other Frenchmen did not tire of their female slavesthe way Doguereau had, but rather took them as mistresses for the rest of theirtime in Egypt. The young zoologist Saint-Hilaire revealed that at least one ofhis slaves was a black concubine, and he took care of another for his brother,who was stationed at Salahiya. 24 Keeping household slaves was inconvenient forthose French, like Saint-Hilaire, who traveled. The biologist acknowledged thathe resolved his own problem by leaving his slave in the harem of an Egyptiannotable. At one point, he wrote, “I got my negress back out of the harem of thegreat Sheikh Sulayman al-Fayyum[i], who, because of his friendship for me, hadkept her there.”As Norry admitted, Saint-Hilaire was no aberration. Many Frenchmen inEgypt purchased slaves, maintaining them for domestic service or sexual favors,or both. As we have seen, some officers took as their mistresses the formerharem women of the deposed beys, many of them slave girls. Adm. Jean-BaptistePerrée wrote back to a friend in France, “The beys have left us some prettyArmenian and Georgian wenches, whom we have confiscated to the profit of thenation.” 25 Although he used the diction in jest, his phraseology underlines howthe officers entertained a highly masculine conception of the French nation, andhow they viewed Egyptian women as commodities to be sequestered, like somany bags of rice.The officers at least said that they regretted the inability of local women toplay a role in French social life, for lack of linguistic skills and training in Frenchetiquette. Although they could be had for a reasonable price, Niello Sargylamented, “They could not ornament our festivals or in any case supply the charmand amiability of our French women, who issued from the ranks of society.” Althoughhe put the blame on the Caucasian women for their lack of social skills,there is evidence that French racism helped exclude them from this role. 26 Bonaparte,having been betrayed by Josephine, had reason to revert to his bachelorhabits and engage in a series of liaisons himself. It is also possible that the Ottoman-Egyptiancustom of polygamy among great military leaders influenced hisnotions of sexual propriety, since until then he had been from all accounts exclusivelydedicated to Josephine once he married her. He at first tried his luck withGeorgian women of the harems. Despite their relative powerlessness, NielloSargy hinted that they were capable of conveying to Bonaparte their true senti-