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The Arab and Bedawin Markets of Cairo 137
squatting in their picturesque rags in the dust with their poor
little jumble-stock spread on the ground before them. The
paths between them were as regular as streets. In the
centre of the market were all manner of odd restaurants.
Some like our coffee stalls but with grand eaves, others on
the ground in front of the packing-cases in which their keepers
sat, others wandering round on trays. All very neat and
with an inordinate collection of pickles. From the relative
proportions of them which you see you would think that the
Arabs eat pickles as we eat meat and meat as we eat pickles.
And I don't blame them, considering the look of their meat.
On the further edge were the ineffable stalls of used and
abused clothes.
Not at all late in the afternoon buyers and sellers got tired
of business and went to the shows, which included a large
collection of Persian pictures in mother-of-pearl frames. I tried
in vain to buy these. The story-teller was much the most
popular of the performers. The policeman said that he was
giving them the " Life of Abu'Zeyd," who married Kar, the
daughter of Karda, the Shereef of Mecca, and had a son
called Barakat, who went through marvellous adventures. It
is always the story of Abu'Zeyd when you ask what these
people are telling. The performing monkeys were very much
like the performing monkeys are anywhere else. The snakes
were as dull as any other educated snakes. The salient
feature in nearly any snake-charming is the boredness of the
snakes. They will do anything they are told which is not
much trouble ; they don't mind lying on their backs pretending
to be dead for any length of time. A snake knows
when he has to die because his master breathes down his
throat a great puff of his malodorous breath. Some day the
master will go too far and won't be able to bring the snake
round. The moment he smells his master's breath the snake
faints and goes quite stiff and is laid on the ground, belly
upwards, like a stale eel. It is when they really are wanted
to do something more than hang from their master's nose, or
wrap round his throat like a fur boa, or stand upright to half
their length, that snakes are disappointing. I never saw one