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CHAPTER IV
The Approach to the Native City : The Ataba-el-
Khadra and the Musky
WHEN
the kodakcr goes to the Ataba-el-Khadra he
finds a fresh lot of subjects. All Egypt seems to
be eating sugar-cane, while there is any, and nowhere is
one more conscious of this than in the Ataba-el-Khadra,
where any Egyptian pauper, who isn't munching it, is
selling it.
The Ataba-el-Khadra is the epitome of the unmedlsval
and unlovely native life. Here, instead of spending their
lives in doing next to nothing for next to nothing in a
dignified and picturesque way, every one is hurrying or tout-
ing. There arc a few immense shops kept by German Jews,
which tempt the native issuing from the Musky with
resplendent European hosiery ; a jostle of nearly all the trams
and
in Cairo—this being their chief starting-point ;
arabealis and donkeys ;
a
crowd of
an ever-changing crowd of
natives trying to sell European articles to each other, or to
clean each other's boots.
Here the real native life begins. Women in black,
showing hardly anything of themselves except their ankleted
legs, are getting in and out of absurd native omnibuses ;
here
the pedlars are more numerous than the pedlars in front
of the Continental, but they cater for a different class.
Stuffed crocodiles would be no use to Egyptian paupers
with only small piastres in their pockets. Here they are
more practical. You see a man looking like a human
hedgehog, with bristles of brushes and combs and hat-racks
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