AT ABDUL ALI’S GRAVE


Luxor, as most of those who have been there will allow, is a place of
notable charm, and boasts many attractions for the traveller, chief
among which he will reckon an excellent hotel containing a
billiard-room, a garden fit for the gods to sit in, any quantity of
visitors, at least a weekly dance on board a tourist steamer, quail
shooting, a climate as of Avilion, and a number of stupendously ancient
monuments for those archæologically inclined. But to certain others, few
indeed in number, but almost fanatically convinced of their own
orthodoxy, the charm of Luxor, like some sleeping beauty, only wakes
when these things cease, when the hotel has grown empty and the
billiard-marker “has gone for a long rest” to Cairo, when the decimated
quail and the decimating tourist have fled northwards, and the Theban
plain, Danæ to a tropical sun, is a gridiron across which no man would
willingly make a journey by day, not even if Queen Hatasoo herself
should signify that she would give him audience on the terraces of
Deir-el-Bahari. A suspicion however that the fanatic few were right, for
in other respects they were men of estimable opinions, induced me to
examine their convictions for myself, and thus it came about that two
years ago, certain days toward the beginning of June saw me still there,
a confirmed convert. Much tobacco and the length of summer days had assisted us to the
analysis of the charm of which summer in the south is possessed, and
Weston--one of the earliest of the elect--and myself had discussed it at
some length, and though we reserved as the principal ingredient a
nameless something which baffled the chemist, and must be felt to be
understood, we were easily able to detect certain other drugs of sight
and sound, which we were agreed, contributed to the whole. A few of them
are here subjoined. The waking in the warm darkness just before dawn to find that the desire
for stopping in bed fails with the awakening. The silent start across the Nile in the still air with our horses, who,
like us, stand and sniff at the incredible sweetness of the coming
morning without apparently finding it less wonderful in repetition. The moment infinitesimal in duration but infinite in sensation, just
before the sun rises, when the grey shrouded river is struck suddenly
out of darkness, and becomes a sheet of green bronze. The rose flush, rapid as a change of colour in some chemical
combination, which shoots across the sky from east to west, followed
immediately by the sunlight which catches the peaks of the western
hills, and flows down like some luminous liquid. The stir and whisper which goes through the world: a breeze springs up;
a lark soars and sings; the boatman shouts “Yallah. Yallah”; the horses
toss their heads. The subsequent ride. The subsequent breakfast on our return. The subsequent absence of anything to do. At sunset the ride into the desert thick with the scent of warm barren
sand, which smells like nothing else in the world, for it smells of
nothing at all. The blaze of the tropical night. Camel’s milk. Converse with the fellahin, who are the most charming and least
accountable people on the face of the earth except when tourists are
about, and when in consequence there is no thought but backsheesh. Lastly, and with this we are concerned, the possibility of odd
experiences. *       *       *       *       *

The beginning of the things which make this tale occurred four days ago,
when Abdul Ali, the oldest man in the village, died suddenly, full of
days and riches. Both, some thought, had probably been somewhat
exaggerated, but his relations affirmed without variation that he had as
many years as he had English pounds, and that each was a hundred. The
apt roundness of these numbers was incontestable, the thing was too
neat not to be true, and before he had been dead for twenty-four hours,
it was a matter of orthodoxy. But with regard to his relations, that
which turned their bereavement, which must soon have occurred, into a
source of blank dismay instead of pious resignation, was that not one of
these English pounds, not even their less satisfactory equivalent in
notes, which, out of the tourist season, are looked upon at Luxor as a
not very dependable variety of Philosopher’s stone, though certainly
capable of producing gold under favourable circumstances, could be
found. Abdul Ali with his hundred years was dead, his century of
sovereigns--they might as well have been an annuity--were dead with him,
and his son Mohamed, who had previously enjoyed a sort of brevet rank in
anticipation of the event, was considered to be throwing far more dust
in the air than the genuine affection even of a chief mourner wholly
justified. Abdul, it is to be feared, was not a man of stereotyped respectability;
though full of years and riches, he enjoyed no great reputation for
honour. He drank wine whenever he could get it, he ate food during the
days of Ramadan, scornful of the fact, when his appetite desired it, he
was supposed to have the evil eye, and in his last moments he was
attended by the notorious Achmet, who is well known here to be practised
in Black Magic, and has been suspected of the much meaner crime of
robbing the bodies of those lately dead. For in Egypt, while to despoil
the bodies of ancient kings and priests is a privilege for which
advanced and learned societies vie with each other, to rob the corpses
of your contemporaries, is considered the deed of a dog. Mohamed who
soon exchanged the throwing of dust in the air for the more natural mode
of expressing chagrin, which is to gnaw the nails, told us in confidence
that he suspected Achmet of having ascertained the secret of where his
father’s money was, but it appeared that Achmet had as blank a face as
anybody when his patient, who was striving to make some communication to
him, went out into the great silence, and the suspicion that he knew
where the money was, gave way, in the minds of those who were competent
to form an estimate of his character, to a but dubious regret that he
had just failed to learn that very important fact. So Abdul died and was buried, and we all went to the funeral feast at
which we ate more roast meat than one naturally cares about at five in
the afternoon on a June day, in consequence of which Weston and I, not
requiring dinner, stopped at home after our return from the ride into
the desert, and talked to Mohamed, Abdul’s son, and Hussein, Abdul’s
youngest grandson, a boy of about twenty, who is also our valet, cook
and housemaid, and they together woefully narrated of the money that had
been and was not, and told us scandalous tales about Achmet concerning
his weakness for cemeteries. They drank coffee and smoked, for though
Hussein was our servant, we had been that day the guests of his father,
and shortly after they had gone, up came Machmout.