orientalcairocit00sladuoft

78 Oriental Cairo
There were odd little restaurants in these bazars, with two
or three of the grand brass jugs, holding three or four gallons
each, which they use for hot water. These form a sort of
sign-manual of the bazar restaurant, and are about all you see,
except richly worked brass urn-stands. From time to time
their servants hurried past, carrying coffee in glasses with
enamelled knobs to some merchant who was doing a deal
with foreigners, and the sun filtered through the boards above.
This part of the bazars was always Oriental, always full of
subjects for the kodaker whose lenses were strong enough to
take things in the shade.
To go into the bazars at Cairo is as good as going to
Japan. They are topsy-turvy land ; they are a paradise for
kodakers ; they are as exciting to a woman as the summer
sales. The whole district between the Citadel and the driedup
canal is called loosely the Bazars. This is the chief
commercial part of the Arab city; here are the best mosques
and baths and the most unspoiled old houses and streets.
This is the best place for seeing the natives at their trades
and for picking up bargains, and it is excellent for seeing
native life.
The travellers who divide their time between expensive
hotels and the Khedivial Sporting Club, and only go to the
bazars to buy the stereotyped curiosities, see little beyond
the Turkish Bazar and the Scentmakcrs' Bazar. These pay
the dragoman best ; but they are among the least interesting,
for the scentmakers have nothing to show, and the others
are too cosmopolitan in their shops and their ways and their
wares.
You feel the glamour of the Orient when you only drive
down the Musky to the Turkish Bazar, in charge of the
hotel dragoman. There is nothing really Turkish about
it. Hardly any of the shopkeepers are Turks and hardly
any customers are Turks, and not many of the wares are
Turkish. But from the time that you enter the Musky
you arc impeded by a crowd of Orientals so thick that
your carriage can hardly plough through them—blue-gowned
porters carrying prodigious burdens, and black-robed women