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The Entertainments of the Arabs 117
my friend there " to-morrow night," but to-morrow night
invariably fell through on some pretext. "The chief per-
former was ill," or anything else that was necessary when the
actual time came to go. There cannot be anything about
them to make them more immoral than hashish dens, and
the love-shops of the Fishmarket, and the gambling hells
kept by Levantines. I don't know how much of a gambler
the Arab is. Cairo swarms with gambling dens kept by
Levantines, who change their nationality like a chameleon,
when they are raided, so as to involve proceedings in one
consular court after another. All sorts of swindling goes on,
the favourite games being baccarat and, save the mark ! backgammon.
It seems clever to gamble over backgammon ; it
must be so hard to get a run for your money.
Of still more concern to the police are the hashish dens
and houses of ill-fame. The use of hashish is prohibited
with savage earnestness, but it is not prevented if an
important personage is giving a dinner-party. The highest
compliment he can pay his guests is to take them to hashish
afterwards, instead of a theatre or music-hall, as he would in
England. And he can get served without difficulty. But
it is almost impossible for an Englishman, in the ordinary
way, to get served at a hashish den ; he is at once suspected
of being in league with its suppressors. Much
caution is preserved with any customer. There are various
doors to pass, with little wickets in them, through which the
porter can survey the intruder. The keepers of hashish
dens are more often raided and change their nationality
oftener than any other servants of the devil, though there
was a famous member of the demi-monde, living opposite
Shepheard's Hotel, who almost established a record for the
number of nations to which she had belonged.
One is impelled to the conclusion that the Egyptian
seeks entertainment for his body rather than his mind. In the
evening, which he devotes to amusement, his ordinary
recreations are talk, drink, and vice. To do him justice, he is
mean about his vices. If he drinks the forbidden stimu-
lants of the foreigner, he does not spend much on them.