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CHAPTER XI
The Cairo Zoo
Cairo Zoo has many things to recommend it, and
the best of all is that you only have to pay a small
piastre—an Egyptian penny—to go in. This is because the
natives would not pay any more, and it is supposed to
exist for their education.
A more futile supposition there never was. The Egyptian
mind that is to say, the mind of the Egyptian masses, has
not got beyond the afrit stage. They do not go to see the
animals as zoological specimens, which have nearly all of
them the further interest of being found in their sovereign's
dominions ; they look upon them as evil spirits whom the
Khedive has compelled to assume the form of animals and
shut up in cages. I was there one day with an Arab-
speaking friend when we came upon an Egyptian shaking
his fist at a crocodile, an innocent young thing of about
seven feet long. I asked my friend to interpret his remarks,
because I saw that he was cheeking the crocodile. " You
eat my brother," he said, " and pretended that he was
drowned." Now we have got you ! Yah ! Yah !
" That's nothing," explained my friend, to a man I saw
being hustled away by the police from the giraffe cage.
He was accused of creating a disturbance by incessantly
opening his umbrella in front of the giraffe. As every
Englishman in Egypt takes the police to task when he thinks
that they are exceeding their duty, my friend— it was Mr.
Perkins—stopped the policeman while he asked the man if
he had any explanation of his conduct to give.
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