CHAPTER IX

THE LOAFER’S PARADISE

He who travels à force de bras may regulate his sight-seeing as exactly as the moneyed tourist by clinging to one fixed plan—to fall penniless and be forced to seek employment only in those cities with which he would become well acquainted. In all north Africa no spot offered more attractions for an extended stay than Cairo. Once arrived there, whatever the fates had in store for me, I should be on chosen ground. At all hazards I must reach Cairo before I “went broke.”

On my second morning in Alexandria, I repaired to the railway station, only to find that I had delayed my departure a bit too long. The third-class fare to the capital was low, but, unfortunately, just three piastres more than I possessed. Should I take train as far as possible and finish the journey on foot and penniless, or should I save the money on hand for food en route and tramp the entire distance?

Pondering the question, I dropped into a bench on the Place Mohammed Ali, and fell to whittling a stick. A countryman, strolling by, paused to stare, and sitting down on the far end of the bench, watched me intently. Now a Frank is no more of a novelty in Alexandria than in Kansas City, even though in ragged garb; for, given a great port anywhere on the earth’s surface, you will find Jack Tar, at least, rambling penniless and forlorn through her streets. Either the native was astonished to see a man work, even with his hands, when he was not paid to do so, or the knife had attracted his attention. Inch by inch, he slid along the bench.

“Very good knife, kwice cateer,” he murmured.

Two months in the Arab world had given me vocabulary enough for simple conversations. “Aywa,” I answered, tossing away the stick and closing the knife.

The fellah gave a gasp of delight.

“But it shuts up, like a door,” he cried.

I opened and closed it several times for his edification; then slid down in my seat, my thoughts elsewhere.

“You sell it?” grinned the Arab.

“Eh!” I gasped, straightening up in astonishment, “you—”

“I’ll give you five piastres,” wheedled the peasant, “gkamsa tarifa.”

“Take it!” I cried, and, grasping the coin he held out to me, I dashed away to the station.

A half-hour later I was speeding southward across the fertile delta of the Nile. What a contrast was this land to that I had so lately left behind! Every few miles the train halted at a bustling city; between them mound-like fellaheen villages and well-cultivated fields raced northward. Inside the car—of American pattern—prosperous, well-groomed natives perused the latest newspapers and smoked world-famous cigarettes with the blasé air of Parisian commuters. Even the half-blind victims of ophthalmia leaned back in their seats in the perfect contentment of well-fed creatures. An eyeless pre-adamite in one corner roared with laughter at the sallies of his companions. Far more at ease was he, for all his affliction, than I, with neither friend nor acquaintance in the length and breadth of the continent.

The Oriental panorama grew dim. One could with difficulty distinguish in this ultra-flat country, where every object stood out sharply against the horizon, between a distant village and a reclining water-buffalo, nearer at hand. The western sky turned ruddy a moment, dulled to a brown, and the darkness that falls so quickly in tropical countries left me to stare at my own face beyond the window. An impressive reflection indeed! A figure to inspire prospective employers with confidence! The lights that were springing up across the plain were of no village where inhabitants welcomed strangers with open arms. Every click of the wheels brought me nearer the metropolis of Africa, a great city, of which I knew little more than the name, and where I should soon be set adrift in the darkness with the ludicrous sum of ten cents in my pocket! Perhaps in all Cairo there was not another penniless adventurer of my race? Even if there were, and a “vagabond’s retreat” somewhere among these long rows of streets that flashed by as those of London in approaching St. Pancras, small chance had I of finding it. For, were my Arabic as fluent as my English, no policeman could direct me to so unconventional a quarter.

The train halted in a vast, domed station. A mighty press of humanity swept me through the waiting-rooms and out upon a brightly-lighted square. There the screaming throng of hackmen, porters, donkey boys, and hotel runners drove me to take refuge behind a station pillar. I swung my knapsack over my shoulder and gazed, utterly undecided, across the human sea.

Suddenly a voice sounded above the roar:—“Heh! Landsmann, wohin?” I stared eagerly about me, for this simple greeting, properly accented, is the password of the German tramp wherever he wanders. Under a neighboring arc-light stood a young man of ruddy, sunburned countenance, in a stout, if somewhat ragged, suit and a cloth cap. At my sign of recognition, he dived into the crowd and fought his way to my side.

“Ah!” he shouted, in German, “I knew only one of the boys would blow in with a knapsack and a corduroy suit! Where are you turning up from? Just got in from Zagazig myself. Been down there grubbing up some cash. How long have you been away? Business any good down at the coast? Don’t believe it is. Cairo’s the place for easy winnings. Bet you blew in without a piastre? Give ’em the stony face on the train? I did, though a fellow down in Zagazig ticketed me. Gave me the cash, the wise one, and of course I planted it and stared them off.”

Had I not already served an apprenticeship in German slang, I should have come off with a very indistinct notion of the recent activities of my new acquaintance. I broke in as soon as possible to assure him that I had never dared to hope that civilization was so up-to-date in Egypt that one could “beat his way” on the railroads, and to protest that I could doubly deny his charge of having “eingeblasen” without a piastre.

“It’s my first trip to Cairo,” I concluded. “I bought my own ticket—”

“What!” roared the German, “Ticketed yourself! Lieber Gott, aber du bist roh! Tick—But then,” he continued, in a hushed voice, “now I think of it, so did I! Schafskopf, ja! I paid good money to come to Cairo the first time! Höllespein, what a greenhorn I was!”

As he talked, we had left behind the howling throng. No need to ask where he was leading me.

“There’s an Asile in Cairo,” he put in, “but you’re too late to-night. You’ll meet all die Kamaraden where we’re going, for they’re most of them ausgespielt with the churchman and can’t talk the Asile tickets out of him.”

We crossed a rectangular square where street cars clanged their way through a multitude, and turned down a street flanked by brightly-lighted shops.

[Illustration: A winged dahabiyeh of the Nile]

[Illustration: Sais or carriage runners of Cairo, clearing the streets for their master]

“It’s the Moosky,” said the German. “Good old lane. Many a piastre I’ve picked up in her.”

He dodged into a side alley, jogged over a street, and entered the headquarters of “die Kameraden.” It was a wine shop with connecting kitchen, on the lower floor of a four-story building; just such a rendezvous as one finds in Germany. A shuffling Jew was drawing beer and wine for several groups of noisy faranchees at the tables, to the accompaniment of a continual jabber in Yiddish to which the tipplers replied, now and then, in German. A long-unwashed female wandered in from the back room with a steaming plate of meat and potatoes.

“Der Jude has lodgings,” said my companion, pointing at the ceiling. “Three small piastres. You can still eat a small piastre worth.”

Great impression two and a half cents would have made on an all-day appetite! Almost before I realized it, I had called for a supper that took my last copper.

By the time I finished eating, the “comrades” were demanding the biography of “der Ankömmling.” As all the party spoke German, I gave an abbreviated account of myself in that language.

“And what countryman are you?” asked a youth at a neighboring table.

“Ich bin Amerikaner.”

The entire party, the Jew included, burst into uproarious laughter so suddenly that two black urchins, peering in upon us, took to their heels.

“Amerikaner! Ja! Ja!” shrieked the merrymakers, “Freilich! We are all Americans. But what are you when you tell the truth to your good comrades? Amerikaner! Ha! Ha!—”

The cane of the first speaker beat a tattoo on the table and the mirth subsided. Plainly, he was a man of authority in the gathering.

“Now, then,” he cried, as though I were entitled by the rules of “the union” to enter two answers, “what country _are_ you from?”

I repeated my first assertion.

“So you are an American, rheally?” he demanded, suddenly, in clear English, though with a marked accent.

A long reply in my own tongue upset his conviction that I should not be able to understand him. The others, however, grinned skeptically and fell to chattering again, glancing up from time to time to mutter, “Amerikaner! Ja, gewiss.” I scraped up a half-pipe of tobacco from the corners of a pocket, and fell asleep over the fumes.

A whining voice sounded in my ear:—“H’raus, Hop! Will mich einschliessen!” I opened my eyes to find the Jew bending over me. The room was nearly empty. Of the few “comrades” who remained one was the youth who had addressed me in English. I caught up my bundle and turned towards the door.

“Du bist, aber, ganz kaput?” demanded the young man, “have you no money?”

“No.”

He rose and followed after me.

“If you are ein richtiger Amerikaner,” he said, “I can show you where to pick up the price of a lodging.”

I nodded. The youth called to the Hebrew to leave his door unlocked, and led the way down the Moosky, across the square, and along a street that flanked a wooded park.

“Esbekieh Gardens, those,” he said. “I’m taking you to the American Mission Hospital. There are eight American preachers there, but your best chance now is Reverend ——. He lives in the third story, first door to the right of the stairway. You will find him studying. He studies until two in the morning. Knock on the door once. He won’t answer; but push it open and begin a hard-luck story right away. Now don’t tell him that you’ve just come to Egypt, nor that you’re a sailor; and, if he asks you if you speak German, say no. Tell him you are a civil engineer, or a plate-layer, or a mason, and that you’ve just walked down from Central Africa—your clothes fit that—and that you could get no work there, or—or that you got sick; yes, that’s better, for he’s an old wise one and knows there’s plenty of work up the river. Tell him you speak only English and that you are an American—that is if you _are_—and he will give you ten piastres. If you’re not sure you can talk English without a foreign accent—I can’t tell whether you do or not—well, I wouldn’t disturb the old man. He doesn’t like Germans.”

The youth pointed out a door of the Mission and slipped into the blacker night of one of her pillars. I stepped inside, and, mounting to the first landing, sat down to think matters over. The night air of January was too cold to sleep out of doors even should I succeed in hiding where the patrol could not rout me out. But to come at midnight to disturb an aged missionary with a stereotyped tale of woe! Yet I knew the bitter hopelessness of looking for work after a night in the streets, and “a deep breath for breakfast.” Work? Why, of course! Just the point! I must find work before I left Cairo; why could I not ask for a small loan and pay it back?

I continued up the stairs and knocked on the door that had been indicated. There was no response, but a tiny thread of light showed on the threshold. I stepped inside. In the far corner of a small room, a white-haired man closed, over a finger, the book he was reading, and turned the light of a student lamp full upon me. I began my story—not the one the German had plotted—and stated my case briefly. To my dismay, the word “borrow” fell flat.

“I rarely,” said the old man, in a voice that would have chorded well with the last key of a piano, “I rarely give money to a man who has just come to the country. What business has he here without sufficient funds to establish himself? I have never given money to sailors. I know their ways too well. But after long months of daily visits from ‘Americans’ who speak English as if they had learned it in the slums of Berlin, I am glad to see a real American again; though sorry to find that he is without money, and still more so that he is a sailor. Here is a half-dollar”—handing me a ten-piastre piece—“I hope you will not drink quite all of it up. What state are you from?”

“Michigan. You understand I am only borrowing this until I can find work—”

“Young man,” said the missionary, rising to his feet, “you already have the money—the amount I give, if I give at all. No additions to your tale will cause me to offer more. Why, then, attempt to raise false hopes within my breast? So you are from Michigan? I am from Pittsburg. Good night,” and without giving me time for reply, he sat down and lost himself in the pages of his book.

“You were gone a long time,” said the German, as I emerged from the doorway. “You couldn’t show _him_ you were an American?”

I held out the coin in my hand.

“Ei! Gott!” cried my companion, “you got it? You are an American, then, a genuine American! It’s the test I always apply. He can tell an American at his first three words.”

“But why didn’t the crowd believe me?” I demanded.

“Ach!” burst out the youth, “Here in Cairo all the boys are Americans. We have Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Norwegians, all sorts in the union, and everyone is an ‘American’—except among the comrades. And not three of them ever saw the United States! It is because, of all the foreigners in Egypt, the Americans are the easiest and the most generous. Then you know what a bad reputation Germans have as beggars—all turning out on their Wanderjahre? The Germans here will help us. Yes! But how? By giving us a loaf of bread, or an old pair of shoes, or two piastres. Bah! But the Americans! They give pounds and whole suits, and they don’t ask to hear the whole story of your past life. Americans? Why, there are dozens of American missionaries, judges, merchants, engineers, and ei! Gott! the tourists! There’s your rich harvest, mein Freund! Why, a year I’ve been in Cairo learning English and picking the roosters. I’ve been up to see that greybeard four times! I dressed differently every time and practised every story for weeks until I got the accent right. Three times I got ten piastres, but the fourth he asked me questions, and, as I hadn’t practised the answers, I talked wild English and tangled myself up. Then I tried to get out of it by saying I was a Pennsylvania Dutchman. The old man started in on geography, and when I told him Pennsylvania was on the Gulf of Mexico he took his cane and chased me out. I’ve studied maps of the United States since then, though. He couldn’t catch me again. I know every city.”

“Yes,” he went on, as we turned into the now deserted Moosky, “all die Kunde try to be Americans. Aber Gott! The fools! They are too pig-headed ever to learn to talk English with an American accent. But you! Du glücklicher Kerl! You can live in Cairo until you grow a beard!”

I paid my lodging and followed the German up a narrow, winding stairway at the back of the shop. On the third story he pushed open a door much like the drop of a home-made rabbit trap, which gave admittance to a small room where four of six beds were already occupied. It needed only one long-drawn breath to prove that the “bedclothes” had not seen the washtub during several generations of “the boys,” and that a can of insect powder could be used to great advantage. But he who is both penniless and hypercritical should remain at home. I took the bed beside that of the German and was soon asleep.

I awoke next morning to find my guide of the night before sitting on his bed at a dry-goods box before the single window, sipping black coffee from a tin can and eating a boiled egg and a slab of bread with one hand, and slowly penning a letter with the other. Having seen enough of him already to be convinced that he was a man of considerable education, I was surprised to find that he wielded a pen with such apparent difficulty.

“It’s this English script that troubles me,” he remarked, as if in answer to my unexpressed question. “When you have written all your life in German script, it is hard to change.”

“Then you’re writing English?” I cried.

He motioned to the letter before him as he swallowed the last of the coffee:—“Of course! A man can’t eat if he doesn’t work. There’s a New York millionaire just come to town. His name is Leigh Hunt, and I’m writing to ask him for employment. He won’t have any, of course, but he may send me a pound or two. I found it too hard to learn to speak English without a foreign accent, so I write instead.”

He reached inside the box that served as table and tossed a dozen unstamped letters on my bed. All were addressed to Englishmen or Americans, among them people of international reputation.

“Read them according to the dates,” said the youth, “and see if my English hasn’t improved. I copied them all and sent out the copies. All but two sent me money. One wrote me to come and see him to-day. The other I haven’t heard from. You don’t spell ‘poverty’ with a capital, do you?”

As he had spoken but one sentence in English since our meeting, I was surprised to note the fluent use of that language in his letters. None of them contained actual errors; and only a peculiar turning of a phrase, here and there, which a reader off his guard might easily have overlooked, betrayed the nationality of the writer. The stories they told were proof of an inventive imagination. A dozen “hard-luck tales,” no one of which resembled the others, were all signed by different Americanized names, over different addresses. Here a youth from Baltimore, who had come to Egypt to open a store, had been robbed of all he possessed. There a civil engineer from New York had been forced to leave his work on the Berber-Suakim line and hasten down to Cairo to attend a sick wife and four small children. An aged stone mason, who had been injured while working on the barrage at Assuan, prayed for assistance to get back to his home in Cincinnati. A California prospector, just returned from an unsuccessful expedition into the Uganda protectorate, was lying ill and penniless in a miserable lodging-house.

Nor did the resourc