The street and the neighbours would divert you.  Opposite lives a Christian dyer who must be a seventh brother of the admirable barber.  The same impertinence, loquacity, and love of meddling in everybody’s business.  I long to see him thrashed, though he is a constant comedy.  My delightful servant, Omar Abou-el-Hallaweh (the father of sweets)—­his family are pastrycooks—­is the type of all the amiable jeune premiers of the stories.  I am privately of opinion that he is Bedr-ed-Deen Hassan, the more that he can make cream tarts and there is no pepper in them.  Cream tarts are not very good, but lamb stuffed with pistachio nuts fulfils all one’s dreams of excellence.  The Arabs next door and the Levantines opposite are quiet enough, but how do they eat all the cucumbers they buy of the man who cries them every morning as ’fruit gathered by sweet girls in the garden with the early dew.’

The more I see of the back-slums of Cairo, the more in love I am with it.  The oldest European towns are tame and regular in comparison, and the people are so pleasant.  If you smile at anything that amuses you, you get the kindest, brightest smiles in return; they give hospitality with their faces, and if one brings out a few words, ’Mashallah! what Arabic the Sitt Ingleez speaks.’  The Arabs are clever enough to understand the amusement of a stranger and to enter into it, and are amused in turn, and they are wonderfully unprejudiced.  When Omar explains to me their views on various matters, he adds:  ’The Arab people think so—­I know not if right;’ and the way in which the Arab merchants worked the electric telegraph, and the eagerness of the Fellaheen for steam-ploughs, are quite extraordinary.  They are extremely clever and nice children, easily amused, easily roused into a fury which lasts five minutes and leaves no malice, and half the lying and cheating of which they are accused comes from misunderstanding and ignorance.  When I first took Omar he was by way of ‘ten pounds, twenty pounds,’ being nothing for my dignity.  But as soon as I told him that ’my master was a Bey who got 100 pounds a month and no backsheesh,’ he was as careful as if for himself.  They see us come here and do what only their greatest Pashas do, hire a boat to ourselves, and, of course, think our wealth is boundless.  The lying is mostly from fright.  They dare not suggest a difference of opinion to a European, and lie to get out of scrapes which blind obedience has often got them into.  As to the charges of shopkeepers, that is the custom, and the haggling a ceremony you must submit to.  It is for the purchaser or employer to offer a price and fix wages—­the reverse of Europe—­and if you ask the price they ask something fabulous at random.

I hope to go home next month, as soon as it gets too hot here and is likely to be warm enough in England.  I do so long to see the children again.

October 19, 1863:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon