Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 167
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[Page 167]
store rooms. In the entrance hall is a divan upholstered in white upon which visitors are asked to sit. The occupants of the court yard and rooms are five men, from 75 years to 30 years; five women, one old and the others in the prime of life; several children, I saw six; sheep, goats, a donkey, a mare & foal, geese, goslings, pigeons, fowls, cats, and flies! Jerusalem Kruseos! You should have seen them! But one entrance to the place! Humans and animals having the same run of every nook and corner. Furniture? In the old man's room, the door opened for me to examined, were bags and jars filled with corn, or butter, or potatoes, half the floor space raised about two feet, on this mats were spread, these designated the sleeping portion, while against the wall were old boxes and bags. Furniture, as we mean by the word, there was none. Just think? There is no drainage, where the cattle rested during the night, a layer of sand, brought from without, is spread each day. No sign of sweeping. No water and washing utensils, if any, not to be seen, nor evidence of their existence conveyed to one by the skins and clothing of the people, from the baby to the grandfather. Hydrophobia in excelsis appeared to me to be an appanage of these Egyptian arabs.
I was allowed to talk with the grandmother and to look at the other women. Why? "We do not keep our women so carefully secluded as do the Egyptians proper or the Turks. The arab women do not go out very much because their home duties keep them inside, the cleaning the cooking and other occupations are numerous."
Your father is an old man? "Yes a very old man, I think seventy-five years. He is a very healthy, a very clean man, he will eat only clean things, our women do all the cooking make the bread and so on."
Tea was brought to the grandfather and me. Two cups, loaf sugar, milk, spoons, saucers, a small tea pot. The materials had pretence to be clean. The whiteness of the sugar was in marked