speaks Italian perfectly, and gave
me a great deal of information and asked such intelligent questions. She
ruled the house but had no children, so he had married a fair,
gentle-looking Arab woman who had six children, and all lived in perfect
harmony. Omar's wife is a tall, handsome girl of his own age, with very
good manners. She had been outside the door of the close little court
which constituted the house _once_ since her marriage. I now begin to
understand all about the _wesen_ with the women. There is a good deal of
chivalry in some respects, and in the respectable lower and middle
classes the result is not so bad. I suspect that among the rich few are
very happy. But I don't know them, or anything of the Turkish ways. I
will go and see the black woman again and hear more, her conversation was
really interesting.

May 12, 1863: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

ALEXANDRIA,
_May_ 12, 1863.

DEAREST ALICK,

I only got your letter an hour ago, and the mail goes out at four. I
enclose to you the letter I had written to my mother, so I need not
repeat about my plans. Continue to write here, a letter comes as soon
and safer. My general health is so much stronger and better--especially
before I had this last severe attack--that I still hope, though it is a
severe trial of patience not to throw it up and come home for good. It
would be delightful to have you at Cairo now I have pots and pans and all
needful for a house, but a carpet and a few mattresses, if you could camp
with me _a l'Arabe_.

How you would revel in old Masr el-Kahira, peep up at lattice windows,
gape like a _gasheem_ (green one) in the bazaar, go wild over the
mosques, laugh at portly Turks and dignified Sheykhs on their white
donkeys, drink sherbet in the streets, ride wildly about on a donkey,
peer under black veils at beautiful eyes and feel generally intoxicated!
I am quite a good cicerone now of the glorious old city. Omar is in
raptures at the idea that the Sidi el Kebir (the Great Master) might
come, and still more if he brought the 'little master.' He plans meeting
you on the steamboat and bringing you to me, that I may kiss your hand
first of all. Mashallah! How our hearts would be dilated!

May 21, 1863: Mrs. Austin