146
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
of Oriental rugs and canopies. While Sheikh Azaayim stayed
at the home of the grocer, as a distinguished guest, we of the
Green Shirts—twelve strong—were directed to a building near
by, where we were jammed into a tiny-windowed room about
fifteen feet square, with a low ceiling, one bed, and a divan.
The people about us lived with their animals, went to bed
with them, and woke up at the same hour with them. Nearly
every native was barefooted, and went to bed unwashed, got
up the next morning and went through the grime of the
streets, and then went to bed again without ever bathing his
body or feet, until the dirt and dung caked on them and
formed a leathery protective coating, I was convinced that soap
and water alone could never remove it. The street on which
we made our home was typical of provincial Egypt. All day
long, adults urinated against the walls, while children and
teen-agers splotched their excrement anywhere, usually near
the base of the walls, so that it was positively unsafe to walk
anywhere but in the middle of the street. Even though the
dung soon dried in the intense heat of day, swarms of greenblack flies always festered there, especially when someone
stepped on the mounds. Garbage was cast indiscriminately in
the streets. All day long women threw panfuls of house water
into the streets. Ma'alesh!
Hordes of children played among the refuse, and the inevitable droppings of donkeys, dogs, cats, chickens, camels,
and horses. Pitiful, scab-covered, undersized children with
running eyes scurried about, sores untreated, hair uncombed
week after week till it was matted like the underside of a pig.
They spilled out of their homes in the morning like ants from
an anthill. They looked exactly as the night before, and the
morning before, and the night before that. Their clothes, consisting sometimes of underwear, but usually only a nightshirt,
had apparently not been washed since they had been sewn
into garments. The first morning I saw a child, its face covered
with scabs, its nose running. I saw the same child in the
evening with the matter solidifying beneath his nose down