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The Arab and Bedawin Markets of Cairo 139
Gizeh, half way to the Pyramids. It is not only a cattle sale.
The people, I suppose, like farmers in other parts of the world,
enjoy spending their hard-gotten gains on cheap fripperies,
therefore one half of the fair is divided up into lanes of squat-
ting figures selling beads of scarlet celluloid, to suggest the
coral of bedawin heirlooms, and kohl bottles, gay cottons,
sweets, spices, and household articles like copper water-vessels
of fine fantastic shapes. But really the most interesting things
were the cheap attempts at jewellery, which were most
decorative.
The camel-market was the most fascinating part of the
cattle-fair ;
camels when they are about a day old, with white
hair as fluffy as wool and an innocent expression, are such nice
little beasts. And the people who come to sell camels are
mostly Arish men and other desert Arabs, hawk-faced, hawk-
eyed, sun-blacked, mightily picturesque in their striped head-
shawls and garments of coarse wool.
But the other country market in the village beyond the
Mena House is far and away the most striking of the three,
for it is held in a grove of palm-trees on the edge of the
inundation when the Nile is high, and the people who come to
it are chiefly bedawins of a very handsome tribe. I saw
lovelier women here than anywhere in Egypt, wearing a
striking and unusual costume with a great deal of handsome
jewellery. There was nothing for a foreigner to buy here—
nobody thought of his existence ; but there was a fascinating
row of native linen drapers sitting on the ground under cloths
stretched on sticks, and this market was primitive enough for
the natives who came to it to empty their produce—onions,
and corn or any other grain—in heaps on the ground. I
wondered how they took away what they did not sell. They
sat round their heaps in families ; there were no well-kept
lanes here—the whole thing was higgledy-piggledy, and the
only outstanding figure was the donkey -barber, who was doing
a roaring trade. The donkeys maintained their usual attitude
of indifference while they were being clipped, but the camels
grumbled and scolded and threatened the whole time.
It was really rather an extraordinary sight, worthy of the