Cairo to Kisumu : $b Egypt—The Sudan—Kenya ColonyCarpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
History
Cairo to Kisumu : $b Egypt—The Sudan—Kenya Colony
Carpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Egypt -- Description and travel; Kenya -- Description and travel; Sudan -- Description and travel
The Moslems have many doctrines worthy of admiration and the morals of
the towns of Egypt which have not been affected by European civilization
are, I am told, far better than those of Cairo or Alexandria. A traveller
to a town on the Red Sea, which is purely Mohammedan, says that the place
has had no litigation for years, and there is no drunkenness or disorder.
The people move on in a quiet, simple way, with their sheik settling all
their troubles. Mohammedan Cairo is quite as orderly as the part in which
the nobility and the Europeans live. It contains the bazaars and the old
buildings of the Arabian part of the city, and is by all odds the most
interesting section.
CHAPTER VII
IN THE BAZAARS OF CAIRO
Cairo is the biggest city in Africa. It is larger than St. Louis and one
of the most cosmopolitan cities in the Orient. The Christians and the
Mohammedans here come together, and the civilizations of the East and the
West touch each other. The modern part of Cairo has put on the airs of
European capitals. It has as wide streets as Paris, and a park, full of
beautiful flowers and all varieties of shrubs and trees, lies in its very
centre. Here every night the military bands play European and American
airs, and veiled Mohammedan women walk about with white-faced French or
Italian babies, of which they are the nurses. People from every part
of the world listen to the music. The American jostles the Englishman
while the German and the Frenchman scowl at each other; the Greek and
the Italian move along side by side, as they did in the days when this
country was ruled by Rome, and now and then you see an old Turk in his
turban and gown, or a Bedouin Arab, or a white-robed, fair-faced heathen
from Tunis.
The European section of Cairo now has magnificent hotels. It is many
a year since the foreign traveller in Egypt has had to eat with his
fingers, or has seen a whole sheep served up to him by his Egyptian
host as used to be the case. To-day the food is the same as that you
get in Paris, and is served in the same way. One can buy anything he
wants in European Cairo, from a gas-range to a glove-buttoner, and from
a set of diamond earrings to a pair of shoestrings. Yesterday I had a
suit of clothes made by an English tailor, and I drive about every day
in an American motor car. There are, perhaps, fifty thousand Europeans
living in the city, and many American visitors have learned the way
to this great winter resort. The bulk of the Europeans are French and
Italian, and the Mouski, one of the main business streets, is lined for
a mile with French and Italian shops. There are thousands of Greeks,
and hundreds of Jews from Palestine, the states of southern Europe, and
Asia Minor. One sees every type of Caucasian moving about under dark red
fezzes and dressed in black clothes with coats buttoned to the chin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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