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The Humours of the Esbekiya S5
desert from flowering as a rose. Once a week an Egyptian
regimental band plays in the Esbekiya. An Egyptian
regimental band is like a very bad German band, who have
forgotten the rules of the European music which they play.
But more nursemaids pay their penny-farthings when the
band is there ; and Greek tradesmen take their wives to it,
and expand like dusty frogs in front of the bandstand,
where Pharaoh's Guards play T/ie Geisha in Koran time.
The Esbekiya has its inspired moments, in the very early
morning, when only nice natural natives as simple as wild
animals are about, and the big falcons sail over it with
their musical twitter of pree-o-lo, pree-o-lo, and the Egyptian
doves coo in the tops of the palm-trees.
But I love the Esbekiya—the outside of it ; its pavement
and its park railings, as exhibitions of native life rank
next to the bazars. The primitive native employed in the
European city loves them. He can do all his little foolings
and shoppings there, except on the side which faces the
Continental Hotel. For some reason that is almost deserted.
His favourite piece faces the street called in Cairo Directories
the Sharia el-Genaina. You could write a whole book
about the sights of this two hundred yards of pavement if
you had rooms opposite, as we once had.
It begins with a donkey-boys' stand opposite the American
Mission depot. Perhaps the donkeys consent to stand there,
so that their masters, when they don't need them, may step
across and study English. Donkey-boys always go to the
American Mission school, where, I fancy, they must be
taught free. They do it without any view of improving
their future state. Most of them remain unbaptised. There
is little traffic in the street, or it would be seriously incommoded.
The donkey-boys treat it as their own. The
forage camels dump huge stacks of green berseeni on to the
road for the asses' dinners ; the asses lie about the road and
the pavement ; or stand with two feet on the curbstone
and two in the gutter, showing their contempt for any one
who might be inclined to hire them ; and the people who
subsist on the patronage of donkey-boys, such as peripatetic