orientalcairocit00sladuoft

230 Oriental Cairo
added something in Italian. I replied, " That won't help you,
for I can speak Italian." And I repeated what I had said in
his own language. He at once became all smiles. " So
few Englishmen who come here speak my language," he said.
" Stand where you like, and I'll move up beside you !
At first I rather shielded myself behind his horse and took
my pictures with as much appearance of inadvertence as
possible, but I was cured of that when the men from a pro-
cession, which had already passed, came back to know if I
would not photograph their procession also. My commandant
translated for me. I secured some photographs which I value
very much. It took me right back to the Crusades to see
these hundreds, and I suppose thousands, of splendid banners
sweeping round the great square with such barbaric music,
and chanting which seemed to carry the name of Allah right
up to heaven.
I should have felt profoundly affected, if it had not been
for the little interludes of comedy, as when a baker carrying
a Greek laundry-basket full of bread-rings, or a Greek lady
in her Sunday best of flaming silk and white kid, or a performing
troupe with snakes or monkeys cut in between two
processions.
I took my photographs as quickly as possible, and sped
back to the Prophet's tent, where the notables of Egypt, the
great Riaz Pasha among them by this time, sat with a background
of tall Mrsiy tables inlaid with pearl, and superb
crystal chandeliers. I made my way to my editor to tell him
of my good fortune. " I should not have believed it," he
said. He explained to me that these guilds, who were filling
the square with the text-broidered banners of Islam, were
half religious, half civil ; that they were generally Sufists who
had taken a certain text or a certain sentence to follow.
Their banners were simply wonderful ; they were so enormous,
so gloriously gay with brass-work and inscriptions and
arabesques in red, yellow, green, and black. But some of
the men who carried the banners reminded me of the tag-rag
and bob-tail, who put on the livery and carried the insignia
of a Chinese Taotai or city Governor, when he was going to
"