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The Bazars of Cairo 77
Turkish town, with a few Tunisian drums, tambourines, and
gourds.
But there was a worker in the inlaying of mother-of-pearl
here whom it was interesting to watch. I did not see him
cutting his disks of pearl, but I imagined that he did it with a
fret-saw. The dark wood-work of Cairo inlaid in this manner
is very effective.
I will not describe the effect of the great mosque here. I
will leave that to its own chapter ; but the book market
beyond was worth a visit, though its merchants were so
fanatical. Once I saw a Koran there whose cover attracted
me. It was not antique, but it was very Oriental. I told
Ali, my interpreter, to ask how much it was. The shop-
keeper flatly refused to sell it to a Christian.
Not far from here is the back entrance to the Turkish
Bazar, passing the great modern mosque of Hoseyn, to which
no one but a Mussulman is supposed to gain admittance.
It is fortunately not worth seeing, being quite modern, with
Tottenham Court Road carpets, and "nothing to it" but an
uncorroborated assertion that it holds the skull of Hoseyn,
son of Ali, nephew and heir of the Prophet. The Turkish
Bazar is described in this chapter ; it is the most vulgarised
and Europeanised of all.
But into the Silk and Scentmakers' Bazar I often went. I
liked those little dark cupboards, six feet high and six deep
and four feet wide, with the owners filling up their fronts like
idols in niches. The way the narrow lanes were boarded
over from the sky had something delightfully Oriental about
it. I liked the large brown bottles criss-cro.ssed with gold in
which the scent-sellers kept their perfumes ; I liked the rows
of foolish otto-of-roses bottles, cut and gilt, but with hardly
more inside than a clinical thermometer. Unsophisticated
Arabs used to come to these bazars with things to sell in
camel-bags and donkey-bags, and all the time the proprietors
squatted on their counters, with their legs crossed underneath
them, smoking cigarettes and never seeming to be doing
anything, whether they were pretending to be awake or
frankly asleep.