IN CAIRO

CHAPTER XI

CAIRO AS THE ANNUAL STAMPING GROUND FOR AMERICANS AND WHY THEY MAKE THE TRIP

"It's a small world."

This is one of the overworked phrases of the globe-trotter. It is used most frequently by those who follow the beaten paths. In other words, we find it difficult to get away from our acquaintances. Not that we wish to get away from them; on the contrary, when we are stumbling along some unfamiliar thoroughfare six thousand miles from home and b.u.mp into a man with whom we have a nodding acquaintance in Chicago, we fall upon his neck and call him brother. It must be very annoying to criminals and celebrities who are trying to hide their ident.i.ties, but to the ordinary traveller it is always a glad surprise to find a friend coming right out of the ground in a corner of the world supposed to be given over to strangers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Very annoying to criminals and celebrities_]

There are certain spots on the earth which may be cla.s.sed as definite headquarters for wanderers. It is said that in the summer season any person of any nationality who seats himself in front of the Cafe de la Paix in Paris may confidently gamble on hailing an acquaintance in less than fifteen minutes. Trafalgar Square, in London, is called by the Britishers the actual kernel of civilisation. The long corridor of the Waldorf is the temporary abode of folks from almost everywhere. The big "front porch" here at Shepheard's Hotel, in Cairo, will surely have two or three friends waiting for you when you arrive. The Grand Hotel, in Yokohama, has been for many years a sort of clearing-house for travellers--circ.u.mnavigators moving aside to let the other crowd pa.s.s.

Then there is (was, alas!) the Palace, in San Francisco, and the Auditorium, in Chicago--definite rallying points for mortals who move about.

It is when we meet our long-lost friend in the remote by-way that we are induced to throw up our hands and exclaim, "The world is small."

For instance, before the German steamer left Naples for Alexandria a launch load of new pa.s.sengers came aboard. As we were heading out of the bay and almost under the shadow of Capri I glanced at the man in the adjoining steamer chair and recognised the banker from Tien-tsin.

He was just as much surprised as I was.

About a year ago we parted at San Francisco after a long and pleasant voyage from Shanghai--he to continue a leisurely trip around the world, I to carry my priceless treasures of Oriental art and shattered letter of credit back to Indiana. When we parted there was the usual stereotyped remark about meeting again, but neither of us believed that there was one chance in a million of our paths crossing, it being a far cry from Tien-Tsin to Terre Haute. I don't know what a "far cry" is, but I have come across it in some of our most opaque dissertations, and accordingly I welcomed the opportunity to use it.

The man from Tien-Tsin had loitered in Europe and was now heading straight for China. I had made up my mind in a hurry to go to Egypt to help 10,000 other students investigate the tombs, and here we were, side by side, in the Mediterranean.

A few minutes after colliding with him I had the pleasure of meeting a young woman who said that she was the sister of Henry Billkamp, of Chicago. She asked me if I remembered the circ.u.mstances under which I met Henry, and I told her that I couldn't very well forget them.

A few years ago in Chicago I resided in a large establishment which had as an auxiliary feature a fine Turkish bath. Many of our best people would come to the bath every afternoon, first steaming themselves in the vapour room, then scrubbing themselves, then a shower, and after that a plunge--by which time most of the coal dust could be removed.

Henry Billkamp came to the bath one afternoon and brought with him a suit case containing his evening clothes and accessories. Henry was to be married the next day, and that evening he and the bride elect were to be guests at a large dinner party on the south side. Henry looked at his watch and found that he could loll around the bath for an hour before jumping into his evening clothes. So he put his suit case over in one corner of a dressing-room, and in a few minutes had joined the informal circle which was commonly known as the "Perspiration Club."

It may be said in pa.s.sing that Henry was a very estimable young man of first-cla.s.s abilities and that he was built on the general outlines of a flagpole. He pierced the atmosphere for a considerable distance, in an up and down direction, but he never blocked the view of any person who chanced to be standing behind him.

While Henry Billkamp was in the steam chamber engaged in the superfluous task of further reducing himself, Bob Grimley came into the bath department carrying a suit case. The suit case habit is very strongly intrenched in busy towns. To go all the way out home and then come back would use up two hours.

Bob Grimley was a short man, weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds, and shaped like an olive. He wanted his vapour in a hurry, because he had to grab a train and go away out to Oak Park and then dress in a hurry and have a bite of dinner and play poker. So he made a running splash and jump through the bath department, came out, hopped into his garments, picked up Henry Billkamp's suit case, and rushed away to Oak Park.

It was half past six when Henry Billkamp arose from the plunge and hurried to the dressing-room. The dinner was to be at seven. He opened the suit case and began to take out balloon-shaped garments, and then he shrieked for an attendant. Where was his suit case? No one seemed to know. Oh, yes; Mr. Grimley had come out of that room with a suit case and had gone--no one knew whither. Henry stood there with a huge article of raiment clutched in each hand and slowly froze with horror as a full understanding of the situation grew upon him. In less than a half-hour he must join them--bride, relatives, friends. The lights were already up, the flowers on the table, the wine cooling, the carriages beginning to arrive. It was to be the night of his life.

Could he appear at this glittering function as a chief attraction in an eight dollar sack suit and make some lame explanation about losing his other things in a Turkish bath? He had an old suit at home, but he was miles from home. The carriage man sent in word that Mr. Grimley and suit case had gone to a railway station. That settled it. Henry decided to jump into the plunge and end it all.

While he was lamenting, a friend came in from another dressing-room to find out what was the matter. Henry, scantily attired, leaned against the wall and in a voice choked with sobs and cuss words outlined his frightful predicament. The friend, listening, suddenly emitted a glad shout.

"I have it!" he exclaimed. "There's only one man in all the world with a figure anything like yours, and he happens to be right here in the building. Come! Get into a dressing gown. We have twenty minutes!

We can make it. Come!"

A few seconds later two agitated persons, one attired and the other semi, burst into my room. It was a long story, but could they borrow an a.s.sortment of evening clothes? Could they? I was delighted to know that someone in the world wanted to wear that suit.

No fireman going to a fire ever dressed himself with such rapidity as we dressed the hysterical Henry. Everything fitted him perfectly.

Shirt, collar, trousers, waistcoat, swallowtail, opera hat, tie, gloves, studs, b.u.t.tons--everything just his size. Nothing in the outfit had ever fitted me, but when we got through with Henry he was beyond criticism. He actually wept with joy as we ran him out to the carriage and boosted him in and started him southward, with eleven minutes to spare. He arrived on the dot. For weeks afterward he would sit down every day and write me a letter of thanks and declare that he would never forget me and the service I had done him. Of course, it would have been impossible for me to forget anyone who had looked well in my evening clothes, and it was a positive pleasure to meet Henry's sister. She said she had long desired to have a look at me. She had not believed it possible that there was another living mortal whose clothes would fit Henry, but now she saw that she had been mistaken.

It is flattering to learn that people we have never met have been interested in us for a long time. Continuing the same line of thought, it is often disappointing to learn that the people most deeply interested in us are those who have never met us. For fear of getting mixed up, let us return to the boat.

Our princ.i.p.al cargo was honeymoon. We had six newly married couples, who were advertising to all the world the fact of their sudden happiness, and three other couples were under suspicion. The men lounged in the smoking-room, as if to give the impression that they were hardened in matrimony, but they peeked out through the portholes too often and made many trips to the deck.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Three other couples under suspicion_]

One German couple was the most newly married team that any of us had ever seen. I don't think they knew they were in a boat. They may have suspected, but it really didn't make any difference. They were in a trance, riding on a cloud of incense, saturated with bliss. He was middle aged, with red flaring whiskers, and a nose showing an angular break in the middle. She was short and plump, with a shiny, oil-finish countenance. Neither had been constructed according to the plans and specifications of Love's Young Dream, and yet the devouring adoration which played back and forth between Romeo and Juliet was almost icy compared with this special brand of Teutonic love. They were seldom more than three inches apart, he gazing into her eyes with a yearning that was unutterable (even in German) and she gazing right back at him in blushing rapture and seeming to say to herself:--"Just think! He belongs to me, whiskers and all!" It was almost enough to induce one to get married.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_--Whiskers and all_"]

They were drifting so far above the earth that they forgot to be seasick. The other honeymooners took to their cabins.

Is there anything so perverse, so whimsical, so tantalising, and so full of surprises as our old friend the weather? When the warm sunshine trickled down our backs in Naples we rejoiced and said, "At last we have found summer." We looked forward to three balmy days on the blue Mediterranean, and even began to remember where we had packed the summer clothes at the bottom of the trunk. During the first night out we pa.s.sed between Scylla and Charybdis. They sound like a team of acrobats, but really they are the promontories guarding the narrow Strait of Messina. It was pitch dark when we pa.s.sed, and we had turned in, but we read about them in Baedeker next morning and were much gratified to know that we had been so near them. Not that we can describe them, but hereafter we can refer to them.

After we rounded the south coast of Italy and pointed for Alexandria, we ran into a mess of weather that had lost its bearings and wandered down from the north Atlantic. The wind blew a gale. We sat huddled in our heaviest wraps. The good ship pitched and pitched, and then pitched some more. And this was the Mediterranean! We had promised ourselves to lie basking in the gentle warmth and count the lateen sails as they went drifting by. We had expected to see the whole surface of the Mediterranean almost as busy as State and Madison, or Broadway and Forty-second--craft of all descriptions criss-crossing the blue ripples, a continuous aquatic bioscope. As a matter of fact, we rode for three days across waters as lonesome and empty as those of the north Pacific, where the course is so clear that the captain, after putting to sea, can tie the wheel and go below and play dominoes.

Our chilly voyage from Naples to Alexandria has suggested a few reflections on travel in general. Why the Anglo-Saxon pa.s.sion for gadding about? Cairo to-day is absolutely congested with Americans.

The continent of Europe is two days away by speedy boat; Paris is two days more, and London less than a week by ordinary modes of travel.

America lies three thousand miles beyond the most remote European city and across stormy waters, and yet America seems to claim a plurality of all the transients. If an Egyptian began to pack up his things to take a four thousand mile jump to look at the stock yards of Chicago or the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, his friends would have him consigned to some Mohammedan inst.i.tution for the treatment of those mentally deranged.

But the Americans are here in flocks, droves, coveys--decrepit old people; blooming debutantes, boys just out of college, tired-out business men, women who have been studying Egypt at their clubs, and, of course, the 8000 (more or less) newly married couples. And most of them are working like farm hands to generate some real enthusiasm for tombs and hieroglyphics. Hard pulling, but they will make it if their legs hold out.

What is the charm--the siren call of Egypt--that has lured these thousands so far away from home and friends? It is not climate, for we have a better climate of our own. If the traveller seeks merely warmth and sunshine, he can find them in Southern California, the West Indies, or at Palm Beach. It is not a genuine and deep-seated interest in ancient records, inasmuch as ninety per cent. of the fresh arrivals from America do not know the difference between a cartouche and a scarab. I know, because I looked it up yesterday. It is not a sn.o.bbish desire to rub up against the patchouli and rice powder of European hothouse aristocracy, because nearly all of the Americans flock by themselves and make disparaging remarks about other nationalities, and vice versa.

No doubt the one great reward of the persistent traveller is to find new varieties of his fellow man. Cairo is the _pousse cafe_ of humanity--probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world. The guide books talk about rock tombs and mosques, but the travellers find their real enjoyment in the bazaars and along the crowded streets and on the sheer banks of the Nile, which stand out as an animated panorama for hundreds of miles. The first hour in Cairo is compensation for many an hour of tedious travel. Once more in the sunshine, the soft but gamey flavour of Orientalism soothing the nostrils, a lively chatter of unfamiliar languages; an interweaving throng of turbans, gowns, fezes, swarthy faces; the pattering hoof-beats of spangled donkeys and the stealthy sweep of dignified camels--so much to see that one needs four pairs of eyes to catch all parts of the picture and at least a half-dozen fountain pens to keep score of the attractions.

The first hour in a new land! It is that which repays the patient traveller. It gives him the gasping surprises and the twinges of delight which are not to be found in southern California or at Palm Beach. And it is the very first hour which is memorable and crowded with large emotions. Because, after about two hours, the American has adapted himself to his new environment, and is beginning to be blase.

Along about the second day, when the guide attempts to dazzle him by showing another variety of bazaar he murmurs "Chestnut" and suggests going back to the hotel.

It may afford consolation to the large number of people who remain at home to know that only about five per cent. of foreign travel is really worth while. Mr. Emerson's beautiful law of compensation holds true in regard to travel just as it applies to all other things that are coveted by mortals. You must pay for what you get, not in money alone, but in hardships, annoyances, and long periods of dumb, patient waiting.

The better half of one of the honeymoon combinations that came with us from Naples told a plaintive story. She had been travelling for three weeks in weather that had been a _crescendo_ of the disagreeable. All the way across the Atlantic she had been desperately ill in her cabin.

In London they found fogs. In Paris it rained. And now they were fighting their way through a storm in the Mediterranean.

Notwithstanding all this, she was trying to be cheerful, for she believed that she would like Egypt.

The blessedness of travel is that when the sun comes from behind the cloud and a new city begins to arise from the sea, we forget all the gloomy days on board ship, all the crampy rides in the stuffy railway compartments, all the overcharges and vexations and hara.s.sments and get ready to tear ash.o.r.e and explore a new wonderland.

Who can forget the first hour of the first railway ride through rural England? The storybook pictures that you have seen all your life come true at last.

Or the first hour in London? That tall thing looming right in front of you is really the Nelson monument and not a papier mache deception put up for the entertainment of tourists.

In the first hour of 'rickshaw riding in j.a.pan I saw so much that was funny and fantastic and nerve kinking that at the end of the ride I wanted to pay the coolie for a year instead of an hour.

And how about the first hour up the Grand Ca.n.a.l in Venice? Or the first hour in the tangled bedlam of Canton? Or the first hour in front of Shepheard's Hotel, here in Cairo, when it really seems that a wonderful pageant has been ordered for your special joy? With bulging eyes and reeling senses you view the changing kaleidoscope and ask, in the language of Mr. Peasley, "Is this on the level?"

Yes, travel is hard work, and your true traveller is a mighty grumbler, but he goes on buoyed always by the hope of another "first hour."