’Are there any more ideas, then, that are going
to be tried on this country?’
‘Two or three,’ he replied placidly.
’They are all generous; but they are all ridiculous.
Egypt is not a place where one should promulgate ridiculous
ideas.’
‘But my shares—my shares!’
I cried. ’They have already dropped several
points.’
‘It is possible. They will drop more.
Then they will rise.’
‘Thank you. But why?’
’Because the idea is fundamentally absurd.
That will never be admitted by your people, but there
will be arrangements, accommodations, adjustments,
till it is all the same as it used to be. It will
be the concern of the Permanent Official—poor
devil!—to pull it straight. It is
always his concern. Meantime, prices will rise
for all things.’
‘Why?’
’Because the land is the chief security in Egypt.
If a man cannot borrow on that security, the rates
of interest will increase on whatever other security
he offers. That will affect all work and wages
and Government contracts.’
He put it so convincingly and with so many historical
illustrations that I saw whole perspectives of the
old energetic Pharaohs, masters of life and death
along the River, checked in mid-career by cold-blooded
accountants chanting that not even the Gods themselves
can make two plus two more than four. And the
vision ran down through the ages to one little earnest
head on a Cook’s steamer, bent sideways over
the vital problem of rearranging ‘our National
Flag’ so that it should be ’easier to
count the stars.’
For the thousandth time: Praised be Allah for
the diversity of His creatures!
DEAD KINGS
The Swiss are the only people who have taken the trouble
to master the art of hotel-keeping. Consequently,
in the things that really matter—beds,
baths, and victuals—they control Egypt;
and since every land always throws back to its aboriginal
life (which is why the United States delight in telling
aged stories), any ancient Egyptian would at once
understand and join in with the life that roars through
the nickel-plumbed tourist-barracks on the river,
where all the world frolics in the sunshine.
At first sight, the show lends itself to cheap moralising,
till one recalls that one only sees busy folk when
they are idle, and rich folk when they have made their
money. A citizen of the United States—his
first trip abroad—pointed out a middle-aged
Anglo-Saxon who was relaxing after the manner of several
school-boys.
‘There’s a sample!’ said the Son
of Hustle scornfully. ’Tell me, he
ever did anything in his life?’ Unluckily he
had pitched upon one who, when he is in collar, reckons
thirteen and a half hours a fairish day’s work.
