This year’s Id was made gloomy, comparatively speaking, by the state of politics.  Report of war with Russia, with France, with England, who was going to land three million men at Suez, and with Infideldom in general, rang through Egypt, and the city of Mars[FN#5] became unusually martial.  The government armouries, arsenals, and manufactories, were crowded with kidnapped workmen.  Those who purposed a pilgrimage feared forcible detention.  Wherever men gathered together, in the Mosques, for instance, or the coffee-houses, the police

[p.118]closed the doors, and made forcible capture of the able-bodied.  This proceeding, almost as barbarous as our impressment law, filled the main streets with detachments of squalid-looking wretches, marching to be made soldiers, with collars round their necks and irons on their wrists.  The dismal impression of the scene was deepened by crowds of women, who, habited in mourning, and scattering dust and mud over their rent garments, followed their sons, brothers, and husbands, with cries and shrieks.  The death-wail is a peculiar way of cheering on the patriot departing pro patria mori, and the origin of the custom is characteristic of the people.  The principal public amusements allowed to Oriental women are those that come under the general name of “Fantasia,"-birth-feasts, marriage festivals, and funerals.  And the early campaigns of Mohammed Ali’s family in Syria, and Al-Hijaz having, in many cases, deprived the bereaved of their sex-right to “keen” for the dead, they have now determined not to waste the opportunity, but to revel in the luxury of woe at the live man’s wake.[FN#6]

Another cloud hung over Cairo.  Rumours of conspiracy were afloat.  The Jews and Christians,-here as ready to take alarm as the English in Italy,-trembled at the fancied preparations for insurrection, massacre, and plunder.  And even the Moslems whispered that some hundred desperadoes had resolved to fire the city, beginning with the bankers’ quarter, and to spoil the wealthy Egyptians.  Of course H.H.  Abbas Pasha was absent at the time, and, even had he been at Cairo, his presence would have been of little use:  the ruler can do nothing

[p.119]towards restoring confidence to a panic-stricken Oriental nation.

At the end of the Id, as a counter-irritant to political excitement, the police magistrates began to bully the people.  There is a standing order in the chief cities of Egypt, that all who stir abroad after dark without a lantern shall pass the night in the station-house.[FN#7] But at Cairo, in certain quarters, the Azbakiyah[FN#8] for instance, a little laxity is usually allowed.  Before I left the capital the licence was withdrawn, and the sudden strictness caused many ludicrous scenes.