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13^ Oriental Cairo
even try to dance :
the only thing I ever saw a snake try to do
in these performances was to sneak back into his bag when his
master wasn't looking. Only a mongoose can lend him any
animation, and the mongoose has to be carefully watched
lest he should eat the poor seven-foot cobra. The mongoose
would make short work of these formidable-looking cobras
without their poisoned fangs. The Egyptian snake-charmers
generally use the cobra-naja, about six or seven feet long and
as thick as your wrist.
A European misses the best part of the snake-charmer's
performance, which is his conversation. He talks incessantly,
and almost as incessantly passes the tambourine round for
piastres.
It is only now and again that he remembers that he has any
snakes, and picks them up from where they are lying trying
to get to sleep in the sand. So convinced are the crowd that
the snakes have had their fangs extracted and will not do
any harm that the charmer often has considerable difficulty in
preventing the crowd from encroaching. I wonder shall I
ever see snakes swaying their bodies gracefully and manifesting
signs of pleasure when the charm.er pipes to them. It may be
that the music is at fault, and that the snakes would do more
if the charmer had a piano-organ and played two-steps.
The favourite gambling games they used to play at the
Market of the Afternoon were a game which needed a board
with squares marked on it— their roulette or fantan, I suppose
—and a game played with sticks. There were four small flat
sticks about eight inches long and not quite an inch broad,
with one side white and the other side dark, and a board with
four rows of squares on it ; the sticks were thrown against a
wall or a tree or anything handy, and something happened
according to the number of them which turned up white. The
dark side didn't seem to count unless they turned up all dark,
which was the best throw, like zero at roulette. According
to the throw the players move their bits of brick and red tile,
a sort of beggars' draughts. It is dreadfully dull to watch, but
the Arabs find it absorbing to play.
One sunny Tuesday morning I went to the cattle-market at