Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1891-12-11
LIFE In CAIRO.
OD2 SCENES IN AN EGYPTIAN
APARTMENT HOUSE.
Some Things of Interest Described
BY an American Lady-Two
Oriental Studcnts--Thc
Chess Players

tributes an article on "Cairo in 1890" to
Harper's Magazine. The following in an
interesting extract:
Inc Two rooms dearest Us belonged to
Ell Azhar students, so Mustapha said !;
he could speak no English, but he i'm
parted the information in Arabic to our
dragoman. Seeing that we werc more
interested in the general scene than in
his red jugs, Mustapha left the Assiout
ware to its fate, and, lighting cigar
cite, seated himself on the railing with
disengaged air, as much as to say:
"Two moro mad women! But it's moth
ing to me-" One of the students was
evidently as ascetic; his room contained
piles of books and pamphlets, and al.
most nothing else, his one rug was
spread out close to the front in order to
get the light, and placed upon it we saw
his open iakstank, his pens and page
of freshly copied manuscript. When
we asked where he was, Mustapha re-
piled that no had gone down to the
fountain to wash himself, so that he
could say his prayers. The second
chamber belonged to student of another
disposition; this extravaganza young man
had three rugs; clothes hung from pegs
upon his walls, and he possessed an extra
pair of lemon-colorcd slippers; in ad-
dltion we saw cups and saucers upon a
shelf. Only two books wero visible, and
these were put away in corner; instead
OF books he had flowers; the whole place
was adorned with them; pots containing
plants in full bloom were standing on
the floor round the walls of his largely
exposed abode, and were also drawn
up In two rows IN the passageway out.
side, where he himself, sitting on mat,
was sewing. His blossoms were so gay
that involuntarily we smiled. Where
upon he smiled too, and gave us salam.
Opposite the rooms of the students there
was larger chamber, almost entirely
filed with white bales, like small cotton
bales; in niche between these high
piles, an old man, kneeling at the thresh-
old, was washing something in large
carthen-ware tub of pink tint. His
body was bare from the waist upward
and ms he bent over his task, his short
chest, with all the ribs clearly visible,
his long brown back with the vertebrn
of the spine standing out, and his lean
seesawing arms, looked skelton-likc,
while his head, supported on a small
wizencd throat, was adorned with such
an enormous bobbing turban, dark green
in hue, that it rcsembled vegetation of
some sort-a colossal cabbage. Direct.
ty behind him, also on the threshold,
squatted large gray baboon, whose
countenance expressed fixed misan-
thropy. Every now and then this crea-
ture, who was secured by long loose
cord, assembled slowly to the top of the
bales and came down on the other side,
facing his master. He then looked deep
ly into the tub for several minutes,
touched the water carefully with his
black hand, withdrew it, aud inspected
the palm, and then returned gravely and
by tho Same roundabout way over the
bales, to resume his position ut the door
sill, looking as if he could not under
stand the folly of such unnecessary and
silly toll
In another chamber very large black
negro, dressed in pure white, was seated
upon the floor, with his feet stretched
out in front of him, his hands placed
stiffly on his knees, his eyes staring
straight before him. He was motionless;
he seemed hardly to breathe.
''What is he doing?" 1 said to tho
dragoman.
''He3 Oh, he berry good man: he
pray"
In chamber next to the negro two
grave old Arabs were playing chess.
They were perched upon one of those
Cairo settees which look like square
chicken coops. One often sees these
seats in the streets, placed for messcn-
gers and porters, and for some time I
took them for actual chicken coops, and
wondered why they were always empty.
Chickens might we'll have inhabited the
one used by the chess players, for the
central court upon Which all these cham
bers opened was covered with layer of
rubbish and dirt several inches thick,
which contained many of their feathers.