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The Humours of the Esbekiya 59
The poor Arab tries his coat on in the street, and would
doubtless try his trousers on if he ever wore them. It would
not signify ; he would be sure to wear his other rig under-
neath. He likes his coats dark and thick and thoroughly
unsuitable to the climate. The tarb{ish-SQ\\&x pleased me
much more. He had an engaging habit of fitting fifty or a
hundred tarbfcslies, one inside the other, forming a column
several feet high, which he carried in front of him balanced
like a Highlander balancing his caber for tossing. You live
in a pleasing expectation of his throwing them over his
head to see how far they will go, like his Caledonian proto-
type. He might just as well, for all the custom he seems to
get. But perhaps he is only an advertisement.
None of the professions of the Esbekiya interested me more
than that of the fortune-tellers. Sometimes they were men.
More often they were Nubian females of uncertain age, whose
faces were closely veiled, though their hunched-up, skinny
legs were bare to the knee. They sat in the attitude of
stage witches. Sometimes they told fortunes with cards, but
more often with desert sand spread on a cloth. Perhaps it
was only street sand, but I prefered to think that it came
from the desert. Fortune-telling itself was not interesting to
those who did not understand it. The witch made cabalistic
marks in the dust with her claw of a finger till it looked as
if poultry had been walking on it. Then she shook it up
or smoothed it with her palms and began again, clawing,
muttering calculations, and staring at her handiwork in rapt
contemplation. She asked few questions, and her prophecies
were terse. If the believer, who was consulting her, was someone
as poor as herself it looked all right, but if he happened
to be an effcJidi in handsome Arab robes or a prosperous
Cairo tradesman in a frock-coat and black trousers, yellow
boots, and a tarbiish, who wished to consult the oracle before
he embarked on an important business-deal, he tempted the
humorist as he squatted like a frog on the pavement, much
in the way of bcdawins in cloaks of sacking and gorgeous
head-dresses flying past with a desert stride ; or fat-tailed
lambs for the passover, or other incidents of Cairo traffic.