World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Turkey -- Gallipoli Peninsula; World War, 1914-1918 -- New Zealand
The New Zealanders were ordered to march through Cairo three days after
the coronation. Leaving the camp early in the morning, the parade moved
down the beautiful asphalt roads; past processions of camels laden
with sugar-cane; past old women with their herds of predatory flocks
of sheep and goats; past Pont Limoun and Bab-el-Hadid barracks to the
Opera Square, where the General Officer Commanding His Majesty's Forces
in Egypt took the salute. This far was plain sailing, but presently
the head of the column dived down a narrow bazaar where four men could
hardly ride abreast. Into this dark slum went the mounted men; the
glistening guns of the artillery; the collapsible boats of the Field
Troop; the cable waggons of the signallers; then the long line of
desert-trained, sun-tanned infantry, with the ambulance and some more
mounted men bringing up the rear. In the bazaars it was almost dark,
and in the narrower streets, where the projecting balconies seemed
to meet overhead, it was not much better. It was a relief to get to
wider streets and less foul air. Lining the streets were thousands of
people, all seemingly in a good humour. In the open workshops, old men
working at primitive loom and lathe never even looked up. Down past the
schools and colleges, where hot-headed young Nationalists were wont to
air their grievances, the cavalcade clattered on its noisy way; here,
perhaps, there was a little scowling. The common people--the men clad
in their many-coloured robes and each wearing the red, flat-topped fez
worn by every male from the Sultan to the donkey driver--made quite a
splash of colour as they crowded on the sidewalk in the shade of the
trees and cheered and clapped with apparent earnestness. Even as the
fellaheen appreciates the fact that under British rule he has to pay
his taxes only once, so the poor and working class of Egypt recognized
that since these bloodless conquerors arrived from overseas, even the
beggar and the seller of Turkish delight had accumulated a little hoard
of piastres. The disturbances of 1919, however, show that the Egyptian
of the cities is a very gullible person.
[Illustration:
[_Photo by the Author_
AN EGYPTIAN PLOUGHMAN.
The wooden plough is shod with a metal point. The furrow is not turned
over. The earth is merely broken and pushed aside.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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