Ottoman Turk in Cairo in the late 1880s who wrote about his
personal interaction with the dissolute Khedive Tevfik Paşa,
mostly in a pejorative manner. What follows is a letter
from an American to the Khedive that the Turk claimed to
have seen and heard read out.//
Khedive Tevfik Paşa (1852-1892)
"In 1304 (1888) an American sent a letter to Khedive Tevfik
Paşa. The text of the letter read as follows:
'For a number of years, the English have been living in Egypt
and it seems that just about everyone there has accepted this.
Although I have not had the pleasure of visiting Egypt myself,
I have learned from geography that Egypt is a big country with
a population of 7 million people.
I read in the newspaper that there are two or three thousand
English soldiers in Egypt. How is it possible that these 3,000
soldiers have taken 7 million people as prisoners? I can't figure
this out. Are you all women? But even women, although the
weaker sex, would not be this weak and subservient. While
a foreign nation rules your country you are happy and content
to knuckle under to this abasement! This submission of yours
is like putting clothes on trees and calling the trees humans.
I can't think of it in any other way.'
The man who wrote this letter (Hey! You crazy American!)
unsparingly ridiculed the Khedive and I saw the letter with
my own eyes and heard it read with my own ears. I leave it
to the readers to picture this scene and form an opinion."
Egyptian Khedives' Abidin Palace, Cairo, around 1900.
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