Heliopolis
Like the pyramids, Heliopolis belongs to Cairo. On the way thither, one first traverses the pleasant suburb of Abbasieh. How one traverses it depends upon his taste. The most enthusiastic pedestrian soon gives up walking in the city of the Khedive save in the broad streets of the new quarter. The English ride, one meets every day their gallant mounted bands; but these are generally residents and their visitors, and the horses are their own; for the traveller there are only the street carriages and the donkeys. The carriages are dubiously loose-jointed, and the horses (whose misery has already been described) have but two gaits—the walk of a dying creature and the gallop of despair; unless, therefore, one wishes to mount a dromedary, he must take a donkey. But the “must” is not a disparagement; the white and gray donkeys of Cairo—the best of them—are good-natured, gay-hearted, strong, and even handsome. They have a coquettish way of arching their necks and holding their chins (if a donkey can be said to have a chin), which always reminded me of George Eliot’s description of Gwendolen’s manner of poising her head in Daniel Deronda. George Eliot goes on to warn other young ladies that it is useless to try to imitate this proud little air, unless one has a throat like Gwendolen’s. And, in the same spirit, one must warn other donkeys that they must be born in Cairo to be beautiful. Upon several occasions I recognized vanity in my donkey. He knew perfectly when he was adorned with his holiday necklaces—one of imitation sequins, the other of turquoise-hued beads. I am sure that he would have felt much depressed if deprived of his charm against magic—the morsel of parchment inscribed with Arabic characters which decorated his breast. His tail and his short mane were dyed fashionably with henna, but his legs had not been shaved in the pattern which represents filigree garters, and whenever a comrade who had this additional glory passed him, he became distinctly melancholy, and brooded about it for several minutes. There is nothing in the world so deprecating as the profile of one of these Cairo donkeys when he finds himself obliged, by the pressure of the crowd, to push against a European; his long nose and his polite eye as he passes are full of friendly apologies. The donkey-boy, in his skull-cap and single garment, runs behind his beast. These lads are very quick-witted. They have ready for their donkeys five or six names, and they seldom make a mistake in applying them according to the supposed nationality of their patrons of the moment, so that the Englishman learns that he has Annie Laurie; the Frenchman, Napoleon; the German, Bismarck; the Italian, Garibaldi; and the Americans, indiscriminately, Hail Columbia, Yankee Doodle, and General Grant.
In passing through the Abbasieh quarter, we always came, sooner or later, upon a wedding. The different stages of a native marriage require, indeed, so many days for their accomplishment that nuptial festivities are a permanent institution in Cairo, like the policemen and the water-carts, rather than an occasional event, as in other places. One day, upon turning into a narrow street, we discovered that a long portion of it had been roofed over with red cloth; from the centre of this awning four large chandeliers were suspended by cords, and at each end of the improvised tent were hoops adorned with the little red Egyptian banners which look like fringed napkins. In the roadway, placed against the walls of the houses on each side, were rows of wooden settees; one of these seats was occupied by the band, which kept up a constant piping and droning, and upon the others were squatted the invited guests. Every now and then a man came from a gayly adorned door on the left, which was that of the bridegroom, bringing with him a tray covered with the tiny cups of coffee set in their filigree stands; he offered coffee to all. In the meanwhile, in the centre of the roadway between the settees, an Egyptian, in his long blue gown, was dancing. The expression of responsibility on his face amounted to anxiety as he took his steps with great care, now lifting one bare foot as high as he could, and turning it sidewise, as if to show us the sole; now putting it down and hopping upon it, while he displayed to us in the same way the sole of the other. This formal dancing is done by the guests when no public performers are employed. Some one must dance to express the revelry of the occasion; those who are invited, therefore, undertake the duty one by one. When at last we went on our way we were obliged to ride directly through the reception, our donkeys brushing the band on one side and the guests on the other; the dancer on duty paused for a moment, wiping his face with the tail of his gown.
The road leading to Heliopolis has a charm which it shares with no other in the neighborhood of Cairo: at a certain point the desert—the real desert—comes rolling up to its very edge; one can look across the sand for miles. The desert is not a plain, the sand lies in ridges and hillocks; and this sand in many places is not so much like the sand of the sea-shore as it is like the dust of one of our country roads in August. The contrast between the bright green of the cultivated fields (the land which is reached by the inundation) and those silvery, arrested waves is striking, the line of their meeting being as sharply defined as that between sea and shore. I have called the color silvery, but that is only one of the tints which the sand assumes. An artist has jotted down the names of the colors used in an effort to copy the hues on an expanse of desert before him; beginning with the foreground, these were brown, dark red, violet, blue, gold, rose, crimson, pale green, orange, indigo blue, and sky blue. Colors supply the place of shadows, for there is no shade anywhere; all is wide open and light; and yet the expanse does not strike one in the least as bare. For myself, I can say that of all the marvels which one sees in Egypt, the desert produced the most profound impression; and I fancy that, as regards this feeling, I am but one of many. The cause of the attraction is a mystery. It cannot be found in the roving tendencies of our ancestor, since he was arboreal, and there are no trees in the strange-tinted waste. The old legend says that Adam’s first wife, Lilith, fled to Egypt, where she was permitted to live in the desert, and where she still exists:
“It was Lilith, the wife of Adam;
Not a drop of her blood was human.”
Perhaps it is Lilith’s magic that we feel.
Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, the On of the forty-first chapter of Genesis, is five miles from Cairo. Nothing of it is now left above ground save an obelisk and a few ruined walls. The obelisk, which is the oldest yet discovered, bears the name of the king in whose reign it was erected; this gives us the date—5000 years ago; that is, more than a millennium before the days of Moses. At Heliopolis was the Temple of the Sun, and the schools which Herodotus visited “because the teachers are considered the most accomplished men in Egypt.” When Strabo came hither, four hundred years later, he saw the house which Plato had occupied; Moses here learned “all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Papyri describe Heliopolis as “full of obelisks.” Two of these columns were carried to Alexandria 1937 years ago, and set up before the Temple of Cæsar. According to one authority, this temple was built by Cleopatra; in any case, the two obelisks acquired the name of Cleopatra’s Needles, and though the temple itself in time disappeared, they remained where they had been placed—one erect, one prostrate—until, in recent years, one was given to London and the other to New York. One recites all this in a breath in order to bring up, if possible, the associations which rush confusedly through the mind as one stands beside this red granite column rising alone in the green fields at Heliopolis. No myth itself, it was erected in days which are to us mythical—days which are the jumping-off place of our human history; yet they were not savages who polished this granite, who sculptured this inscription; ages of civilization of a certain sort must have preceded them. Beginning with the Central Park, we force our minds backward in an endeavor to make these dates real. “Homer was a modern compared with the designers of this pillar,” we say to ourselves. “The Mycenæ relics were articles de Paris of centuries and centuries later.” But repeating the words (and even rolling the r’s) are useless efforts; the imagination will not rise; it is crushed into stupidity by such a vista of years. As reaction, perhaps as revenge, we flee to geology and Darwin; here, at least, one can take breath.
Near Heliopolis there is an ostrich yard. The giant birds are very amusing; they walk about with long steps, and stretch their necks. If allowed, they would tap us all on the head, I think, after the fashion of the ostriches in that vivid book, The Story of an African Farm.