William Eaton now found himself one step closer to Hamet, having reached the great metropolis of Cairo, the jumping-off point for travelers heading farther south on the Nile. Eaton noted in letters that he expected to remain ten days at most in Cairo; he instead would find himself stranded there a bit longer.
Cairo—with a ployglot population of 400,000 Egyptians, Turks, Albanians, Syrians, Copts, Jews—once thrived as the hub for commerce from two continents. Twice yearly from time immemorial, massive African caravans of thousands of slaves, spices, and ivory arrived from the desert. In earlier centuries the wealth of the Indies, which by Eaton’s time passed by ship around the tip of Africa, used to go through Red Sea ports and then be siphoned through Cairo. To Turks and Egyptians, Cairo was “Misr el Kahira,” “Misr, without an equal, Misr, the mother of the World.” To monomaniacal Eaton, it was the gateway to Hamet.
Cairo was nominally under the control of Ahmet Pacha, a viceroy appointed by the grand sultan. Actually, Muhammad Ali, a cunning thirty-five-year-old Albanian warlord with an army, controlled the city; however, it suited Ali’s interests for the time being to allow the Pacha to rule in grand style. (By the following year, Muhammad Ali would crush the Mamelukes and have himself appointed by the Sultan to replace this viceroy; he would found a dynasty that would rule Egypt for a century and a half until lust-crazed King Farouk and his ninety-five offspring would kill it off.)
At that moment, Muhammad Ali was bivouacked to the south, fighting the Mamelukes. The Pacha sent horses and an armed guard to escort Eaton and his party into the city. A huge crowd gathered along the route. “We passed as American officers of the Army and Navy whom curiosity had brought from Malta to Egypt during the winter’s suspense of operations.”
Major Missett had kindly offered to allow the Americans to stay at the British House. Dr. Mendrici paid a quick personal visit to the Pacha, his patient, and put in a good word for the Americans. In the late afternoon, the Pacha’s interpreter came to welcome the Americans and told them the Pacha would be pleased to entertain them at the palace at nine o’clock the following night. He explained that the late hour was chosen because the fast of Ramadan had begun.
During Ramadan, the ninth and holiest month of the Moslem lunar calendar, Moslems must refrain from eating or drinking or having sexual intercourse from sunrise to sunset. Some theologians call the daylight hours a time for atonement for sins; all state that the fasting shows obediance to Allah’s command.
The Americans, though only masquerading as tourists, were fortunate to be in Cairo during Ramadan because the requirements of following Islamic law created a beguiling nocturnal spectacle.
Endless torches and bonfires illuminated the streets, mosques, and courtyards far into the night as turbaned men and veiled women celebrated outdoors. “Hundreds and thousands of lights may be seen in the great salons of the rich,” wrote traveler Ali Bey, “which consist of plain crystal or coloured [oil] lamps suspended from the ceiling. They produce a charming effect and no unpleasant smell, for the smoke passes out of ventilators.”
He added: “It is well known that the rich observe [Ramadan] by living in a manner completely opposite to their general mode, that is, by sleeping all day and amusing themselves during the night.”
William Browne, a British traveler who visited Cairo during Ramadan a decade earlier, chronicled the routine for the postsunset festivities. A long prayer was first recited, followed by a sumptuous feast. After that, oiled Egyptian wrestlers grappled for prizes, then came storytellers, many reciting tales from A Thousand and One Nights. Next came the comic wits who “wrestled in similes”; their performance often degenerated into insult contests: “You are like the city ass; you look sleek and carry dung.” Then, deeper in the night, appeared the female singers, sometimes to the accompaniment of stringed instruments; finally, the main attraction, the female dancers, notorious for their belly dancing.
While the lure of such entertainment would have thrilled a true tourist, Eaton looked forward to breaking fast with the Pacha only to learn about Hamet; indeed, he spent his first day in Cairo inquiring of the servants at the British House if any knew of Hamet supporters in Cairo. And Eaton succeeded in meeting with three former officials of Hamet’s exiled government: a secretary of state and two ministers. He described them as “destitute of everything but resentment, for even hope had abandoned them.”
Eaton discovered from them that the rumors were indeed true: Hamet, “after a series of vicissitudes and disasters,” had joined the Mamelukes; that he commanded a few loyal Tripolitan soldiers and some Arab mercenaries; and that Hamet was besieged with the Mamelukes inside Minyeh in Upper Egypt. Besieged meant that the city in which Hamet stayed was ringed by 8,000 Turkish and Albanian troops. Minyeh lay 140 miles south, upriver, a five-day journey from Cairo. Eaton later wrote a letter to the secretary of the navy, detailing the obstacles: the near impossibility of a small Christian force passing through a war zone to reach Hamet, the difficulty of even sending a Moslem messenger to him, the unlikelihood of obtaining a letter of safe conduct from the viceroy for Hamet to travel, and finally, the fatal risk of Hamet appearing a traitor to the Mamelukes if he tried to flee Minyeh.