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

THE OBJECT OF HIS DESIRES191learned that they intended to drown her in the Nile. So he dropped the chargesand let the girl go free. His own girl was bleeding profusely and a physicianworried that she might lose the eye. He delivered her to her home and gave hermoney to cover her medical expenses. She left, bawling. Cairo was an enormousvillage, with eyes everywhere. Muslim middle- and upper-class men would haveseen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such episodes that fall, which they wouldhave viewed as severe moral corruption but even worse than that, an affront totheir honor as guardians of the virtue of Muslim women.Even French attempts to find a respectable social life often looked suspiciousto the conservative Cairo middle classes, since it inevitably involved publicwine bibbing and the mixing of the sexes. European and Egyptian entrepreneurshoping to cater to the French founded cafes, restaurants, and even taverns thatoffered bootleg liquor made by illicit distilleries. Wine, however, was mainlyimported, and the British blockade made it hard to supply. The soldiers, lackingit, learned to appreciate smoking Egyptian tobacco through the bubbles of ahookah and drinking mocha coffee in small cups. Miot said they forgot the useof chairs, lounging on pillows and divans in their apartments. Narrow cuffs andtight clothing were unsuited to the hot climate, and they switched to looser pantaloonsthat let the air circulate next to the skin. 21Doguereau recalled, “Bonaparte, who was not unaware that everyone wasbored to death and that all thoughts were ceaselessly occupied with France, verymuch wanted the officers—many of whom desired to resign their commissions—tofind some means of recreation.” 22 Officers wished someone would setup a Tivoli, what we would now call an amusement park, with gardens, lights,billiards, and gaming rooms, modeled on the Tivoli Gardens of eighteenthcenturyParis. Later on, a M. Dargeaud, an employee in the civil administrationof Egypt, founded such an establishment, and for a while it was enormouslypopular. At length, Doguereau complained, it deteriorated into a dive. (The puritanal-Jabarti thought it had never been anything else.) The officers complainedbitterly about the difficulty of having a proper ball, for lack of culturedwomen with whom to dance, flirt, and engage in witty repartee. Niello Sargy remarkedof French women, “Only a few who dressed up as men got through, andthey now shone in the midst of the army, being devolved on the chiefs of the administrationand on the generals.” 23 Almost all of the three hundred or soFrench women in Cairo had come belowdecks as laundresses and food preparerson some of the ships. With 20,000 Frenchmen trapped in Cairo for the duration,their stock had risen, and they were now being invited to officers’ balls,and to officers’ mansions, despite their rough hands and rougher language.