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Letters from Egypt by Lady Lucie Duff Gordon
page 88 of 412 (21%)
you;' and she did. The man must provide all necessaries for his Hareem,
and if she has money or earns any she spends it in dress; if she makes
him a skullcap or a handkerchief he must pay her for her work. _Tout
n'est pas roses_ for these Eastern tyrants, not to speak of the unbridled
license of tongue allowed to women and children. Zeyneb hectors Omar and
I cannot persuade him to check her. 'How I say anything to it, that one
child?' Of course, the children are insupportable, and, I fancy, the
women little better.

A poor neighbour of mine lost his little boy yesterday, and came out in
the streets, as usual, for sympathy. He stood under my window leaning
his head against the wall, and sobbing and crying till, literally, his
tears wetted the dust. He was too grieved to tear off his turban or to
lament in form, but clasped his hands and cried, 'Yah weled, yah weled,
yah weled' (O my boy, my boy). The bean-seller opposite shut his shop,
the dyer took no notice but smoked his pipe. Some people passed on, but
many stopped and stood round the poor man, saying nothing, but looking
concerned. Two were well-dressed Copts on handsome donkeys, who
dismounted, and all waited till he went home, when about twenty men
accompanied him with a respectful air. How strange it seems to us to go
out into the street and call on the passers-by to grieve with one! I was
at the house of Hekekian Bey the other day when he received a parcel from
his former slave, now the Sultan's chief eunuch. It contained a very
fine photograph of the eunuch--whose face, though negro, is very
intelligent and of charming expression--a present of illustrated English
books, and some printed music composed by the Sultan, Abd el Aziz,
himself. _O tempera_! _O mores_! one was a waltz. The very ugliest and
scrubbiest of street dogs has adopted me--like the Irishman who wrote to
Lord Lansdowne that he had selected him as his patron--and he guards the
house and follows me in the street. He is rewarded with scraps, and
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