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WEST
CHAPTER XIII
The Old Arab Streets of Cairo
of Suez no city has more interesting streets
than Cairo. They are as distinguished by mediccval
buildings as Venice, mosques taking the place of palaces,
and they are full of the coloured life of Africa. In Kyoto,
of course, every house is Oriental and the temples are very
ancient, though mostly isolated in gardens. In Tokyo the
great temples of Shiba, Ueno and Asakusa are in parks
on the outskirts, nor is Buddhist architecture as noble as
Saracenic. It is to India that one must go for buildings
which are more sublime, with a population which is more
Oriental.
Even the Street of the Camel, the Piccadilly of Cairo, is
gay with native life. I have elsewhere described its picturesque
parasites, who make a living out of selling Oriental
trash to glorified American shopkeepers, the herdsmen
herding, the porters carrying cart-loads, the bedawin villages
on the march, the buses without roofs or sides, which carry
dumpy native women like carboys on their floors. The
Street of the Camel is also a favourite one for the pageants
of pilgrims returning from Mecca, for weddings, and for
funerals, diversified occasionally by the rapid passage of
the Khedive to the railway station from his chief palace
on the Abdin Square. Here, too, the charging white horses
of the arabeah, and the Sheikhs pattering along on white
saddled asses are most in evidence.
Here the Ismailiya quarter, the Parisian part of Cairo, ends
at the Esbekiya Garden. It has not a single Arab building
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