Anxiety over my impending fate did not survive beyond a few hundred paces inside the gates. For the city was not only larger, noisier, and more crowded than any I had ever seen, it was also more fabulous in every way. Instantly, my sun-dazed senses were overwhelmed and submerged beneath the dizzying inundation of sight and sound-and smell – for the slops and refuse of the street-dwellers are allowed to stew in the sun and infuse the air with noxious and pestilential odours.
While the smells steal the breath away, the sounds buffet and batter: the beggars with their insistent cries, the street merchants with their shrill demands, dogs barking, children screeching, the press of the populace, talking, shouting, calling to one another-a thousand voices clamouring at once. The resulting welter of confusion is dizzying as it is deafening.
And the sights! Gait, in the space of a few dozen paces beyond Cairo's gates you will see more extraordinary things than most people see in their entire lives. Wherever the eye happened to light, some new and startling view presented itself. I saw men and women of wealth swathed head to foot in the most startling robes -the colour of which changed with every movement through all the shifting, radiant hues of the rainbow. I saw copper-domed mosqs covered with gleaming Persian tiles so that they looked as if they had been spun of peacock-coloured glass.
And the people, Gait, were the most unusual to walk under God's wide heaven. The colours of their skin ranged from black as dark as midnight shadow, through browns of every hue from the deep rich tones of walnuts, baked earth, and old leather to the fair pallor of fine parchment. Their shapes and sizes were no less various. I saw men as tall and gaunt and black as ebony pillars, and others small as half-grown children. The fairest of all were the Egyptians themselves. Fine featured, with high noble brows, straight white teeth, and rich black hair that glistens in the sun, they stand erect and move with unhurried grace, gazing upon the world with quiet amusement in their dark, almond-shaped eyes. They say they are descended from gods of old, and you only have to look at them to believe it. A more handsome race you cannot imagine.
To move about the city is to confront wonders on every side. There is more colour, more noise, more everything to be found on the streets of Cairo than anywhere else under the sun. Hanging from upper windows I saw gilded cages with birds as big as ravens, but more brightly-coloured than kings, long-tailed and hook-beaked, with feathers scarlet and green, jade blue, white, and yellow. I have no idea what they were or whence they came, but they screeched like the bhean sidhe to burst the ear. There were dogs unlike any I have seen before or since: lean and slender, narrow beasts with long, thin faces, hollow haunches and muscled shoulders, almost as big as wolf hounds, but sleek and fine-footed for running in the sand.
Also, though it was a while before I noticed them, cats. Once I began to see them, however, I was astonished at the numbers. There were very multitudes of the creatures, and they were everywhere. Not a shadow in the city, but you did not see the glint of a yellow eye looking back; not a tree, not a market stall, not a doorway, nor window, nor ledge, nor wall, nor rooftop where a cat did not sit, or walk, or stretch itself.
The crooked streets swarmed with every variety of merchant and seller known-some working from stalls, others carrying their wares stacked on their heads, or dangling from their arms-and every last one shouting to make himself heard above the din. Here a candlemaker walked with hundreds of candles attached by their wicks to a long pole; there a butcher shouted for custom with rings of sausage looped round his outstretched arms; next to him, a carpenter balanced four chairs on his back; and over here, an ironmonger jangled examples of the various chains he could make-and more: goldsmiths, gem dealers, slave merchants, and every kind of food vendor ever known.
Any space on the street, large or small, became a veritable marketplace for vendors to tout for business. I saw carts heaped high with hairy coconuts, others with mounds of sweet black dates, and still others with persimmons, or pears, lemons, almonds, or green bitter quinces.
People thronged these impromptu markets, or bazaars as they are called, eagerly bargaining with the merchants so that the din was a stupendous uproar. Through the tumult scampered lithe, brown children, darting around the legs of their elders, contributing to the havoc with shrill squeals and shouts. Barefoot ragged youths darted quickly here and there and, more than once as I witnessed with my own eyes, relieved unwary passersby of the burden of any unattended purses or belongings.
Our procession snaked through the throngs, passing one exotic quarter after another-including one filled with tiny houses-the only quiet corner of the entire city, I think, and I soon learned why: the stench arising from this place gave me to know that at very least a great calamity had befallen those who lived there. The powerful odour of death hung like an unseen cloud above the silent streets. Yet, save for a few black-robed men ambling idly around the deserted streets, there was no one about.
'Ah, the city of the dead,' Wazim told me when I asked him. 'Many Egyptians still hold to the old ways, believing they must feed and house their ancestors in the afterlife.'
The caliph's men paid no heed at all to the commotion around them, but passed through it with heads high, looking neither right nor left, as if the riotous tumult was so far beneath them as to be invisible. Because of the crush of people and the narrowness of the streets, it took the better part of the morning to reach our destination: a palace of stone that looked as if it might have been hewn in a single piece from the heart of a mountain.
In the dazzling heat of a midday sun, the pale ochre-coloured stone blazed like faded gold. Flags of red and blue waved fitfully on tall standards as we passed up the long ramp towards the gates which were made of pierced and gilded iron. Four tall black men with spears and the skins of lions on their shoulders guarded the entrance. At the envoy's approach, the gatemen opened the gleaming doors without a word; the baggage train entered the palace precinct, and I passed into my opulent prison.
THIRTY-NINE
Still dazed from the heady journey through the streets of Cairo, our baggage caravan passed through a maze-work of doorways, corridors, walls, and pathways, and arrived at an inner courtyard, there to wait in the sun while the envoy disappeared into one of the many rooms fronting the yard-a pleasant expanse of green grass and small trees of many varieties, all of them meticulously clipped and arranged to show their best features. Peacocks preened in the low branches and paraded in the sunlight, and white doves fluttered around a pool of clear running water. Flowering shrubs, many in gigantic earthenware pots, filled the air with a delightful scent and attracted the lazy hum of bees.
This paradise was bounded by royal residences on three sides; a high, vine-covered wall enclosed the fourth side. Each of the royal apartments and chambers featured a balcony-a roofed, but otherwise open platform affixed to the outer upper floor and surrounded by a wooden railing. These balconies are common in the arid East, for they allow one to escape the heat of the day and enjoy any passing breezes. In the city, I had seen many such balconies, some with elaborate screens of wood; those overlooking the inner courtyard were open, however, so that the residents might enjoy the beauty and calm of the garden below.