On place de Roumélié [today’s Salah el din sq.] we saw an entertainer, with a boy about 6 or 7

December 1st, 1849, 12am

On place de Roumélié [today’s Salah el din sq.] we saw an entertainer, with a boy about 6 or 7 and two girls, bare feet, in blue blouses, their hair falling in a tail in a handkerchief on their shoulders. With a backhand they make fake farts similar to the sound of a fabric torn. The boy, small, ugly, square, to the point where one doesn’t know if he’s a boy or a dwarf, was very funny. He addressed us in the crowd: “if you give me five Paras, I’ll bring you my mother to fuck”; or: “I wish you all sorts of prosperities, especially to have a long dick”; or did tricks with a tin vase, and a dervish cap of whittish felt. Expression of the “Allah” by the kid when he removed the top of the pot and saw cakes in place of the rolls of thread. The Arab language seemed to me quite charming in all this; it was modular and expressive. The master having a thread pulled out of his mouth, endlessly. To beat each other they had split sticks. The master was the fool and the child dominated; in a scene about deafness the child desperate to make himself heard started shouting at his behind.


Cassie, Josef, Paul and David Wade said thanks.

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Gustave Flaubert

"Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." [extracts from Flaubert's travel diary written in 1849-1851]

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