STREET TYPES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 159, 6 July 1940, Page 7

STREET TYPES.

CAMEOS OF CAIRO.

N.Z. SOLDIERS' QUEST.

"AHMED THE CAMERA-SHY."

{Special.—By Air Mail.)

(By R. T. MILLER.) WITH THE N.Z.E.F. IN EGYPT, June 5

The discovery may mean nothing to you or to history, but I felt almost like Columbus in America or Byrd in the Antarctic the other day when I unearthed what I'm sure is the only camera-shy man of the street in Egypt. .And in a land where one can hardly focus on a remote desert landscape without having a brown face throw its shadow across the lens, that means something. It happened in Cairo, where the fun a companion and I had in shooting Egyptian "street types" was worth as much as the satisfaction of getting the pictures we wanted. from the camera, the ingredients of this kind of entertainment are simply a lot of patience and nearly as much small change—the purpose of which will be clear in a moment.

Street of Many Odours. We begin our round as soon as the train pulls into the suburban station, for the driver is to be our Type No. 1. He looks the last man in the world who might hold the leash of a gleaming, throbbing, streamlined, 60 miles-an-hour monster. He is alight, unassuming, almost timid, and where a braided, shiny buttoned uniform would seem appropriate, he wears a greasy and ancient suit. But he is "easy meat" for our i-iimera, and allows himself to be manoeuvred into position without a murmur. The guard blows his whistle more or less as a matter of form; wbo cares if the t~*in is two minute* late In departing?

Reaching the city, we find ourselves in the strongest-smelling street in the world. It is a street of market places and native cafes, end it leaves us with the impression that every odour we have ever known or ever will know comes flooding - suddenly and simultaneously, to our nostrils. But almost every other lingerer on its crowded pavements is one of the types we want. It is "here that we find Ahmed the Camera-Shy. We need his picture because he is one of the sherbet sellers—a human refreshment bar who has a vast, ornately decorated glass jar of sherbet drink slung at his middle like the bass drum in a military band, so placed that it pours when he leans forward. He carries tumblers with him, and (somehow still manages to have a hand free to beat out the rhythmical theme eong of his trade with two brass plates.

Dodging the Dragoman. Ahmed simply cannot bring himself . to face the camera. He backs and sidesteps like a shy child, shakes his head, i looks as if he may run to hiding at , any moment in the skirts of his nearest , compatriot, and finally skips down a , dark alley, his trappings clinking as he goes. It takes the persuasive powers of a dragoman, or guide, five minutes of wild gesticulation and argument among i the crowd which has now gathered, and a dip into our small change (you see the reasou for it now), to bring him out into the light again. He forces a smile, and the shutter clicks. Now our dragoman, whose smoothly overbearing ways remind me of motor car salesmen, takes upon himself a major part in our little comedy. He tries everything on us—Pyiamids, mosques, bazaars—and we see that he » going to be a bit of a problem. However" we get his picture, too, after clearing from the foreground a horde of bootblacks, vendors, hangers-on, passers-by, begging children, donkey carts, and, of all people, a second sherbert seller who practically begs to be photographed! With the six-foot figure of the dragoman haunting our steps and taking control over everv situation, we snap a bootboy, a beggar girl and a fez seller 'in quick succession, scattering baksheesh" here and there in the form of piastres and half-piastres. Growing » more confident with each new success, i we decide the time is ripe to lose the dragoman. "Awfully sorry, old man, but we'll have to leave you now. . .

We don't like the pained look on his face, 'but we are putting two lanes of traffic between him and ourselves at this intersection, and it is soon all over.

The Women Were Difficult. ! The traffic policeman—portly, white j uniformed, and a wonderful moustaehcj —turns out to be a difficult subject, but he is .not free, as Ahmed was, to hide! in a dark alley. So I put myself at the mercy of Cairo's gloriously carefree drivers, crouch in - the middle of the istreet, arid snap the windmill arms in [full action.

What we want now is a woman in black robes and a yashmak—the type 1 of veil that includes a metal plate over the nose. Because of the timidity of the women here, this is going to be a delicate operation. We spy two perfect examples; they are even displaying that marvellous sense of balance that seems born in them, for on their heads are perched huge bales of waste rag.

'"Hey—er, madame!" I run across the road. One of them tirns, sees the camera—and takes to her heels, almost losing her 'burden as it bumps against a verandah awning. We have lost them.

But back in the Street of Many Odours the yashmaks play right into our lens. We find a full half-dozen of them in a situation from which their wearers have no chance of escaping. They are the placid human cargo of a flat-topped donkey cart, a sort of native jtaxi to whose driver time, petrol consumption and tariff meters have no meaning. I rush out and bring it to a standstill. A general shot and a close-up in quick succession—and we have our yashmaks! Our success is complete.