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Cairo at Night 109
and their huge forms are arrayed in cheap and tawdry
finery and sham jewellery. They are everything that is
repulsive to an Englishman, and they live in the most
horrible little dens, some of which have cage fronts like
similar quarters in Japan.
Among the Levantines you see occasionally much more
attractive women, wild-eyed, lithe creatures—human leopards,
who sit on the ground outside their houses with their straight
strong legs, locked in heavy anclets, thrust out of their robes
without shoes or stockings.
They all solicit you, and pluck you by your clothes in
the most impudent way. Indeed it would be hardly safe to
go down these streets after nightfall without a dragoman,
for they are full of night-birds seeking whom they may
devour. They are the kind of creatures you see in the cafes
chantants, to which you are taken to witness the celebrated
danse a ventre, which is an intolerably tiresome performance.
The musicians tum-tum on native drums and drawl out
a monotonous sing-song, and the women stand in front of
the footlights and wriggle their bodies in the most ungainly
attitudes. It is difficult to imagine how they prove alluring
to any one.
The other notorious quarter in the Sharia Wagh-el-Birket
and the Sharia Bab-el-Bahri is far more entertaining, and
really pretty in its way. The former leads from the Hotel
Bristol to the square by Cook's offices, and the latter
runs at right angles to it, connecting it with the Esbekiya
Gardens.
In the Sharia Bab-el-Bahri are the principal Arab theatre,
and other places of amusement, and there are always piano-
organs or bands playing the latest music-hall or comic-opera
airs. The whole street is a blaze of electric light. Its ends
are taken up with cafds, and its pavements are crowded with
vendors of tartlets, sweetmeats, meat on skewers, and sago in
teacups ; while the cigarette-sellers have stalls that are works
of art.
The scarlet British uniforms of Tommy Atkins recall you
to a sense of reality. Tommy is for the most part behaving