240	Egypt
besieged the British residents at Assiut for several days.
These disorders continued on March 16 and 17, with
casualties to the rioters of thirty killed at Minet el Kam,
fourteen at Alexandria, and twelve, mostly Bedawin, at
Damanhur. Provisional Governments were proclaimed at
various provincial centres. Nationalist Committees of
Public Safety were set up in the towns and Nationalist
Councils of Sheikhs in the villages. Cairo was isolated.
The military authorities there summoned the Committee
of Independence and a Conference of Notables to be
rated and threatened, but had lost all political control.
The two slogans, ^c< Mafish Hukema " (Down with the
Government) and '' Yehii el Watan'' (Up the Nation)
swept the country.
So far, practically all destruction had been done to
public property, and all the casualties had been incurred
by the rioters. The foreign communities were, of course,
panic-stricken and hourly expected to be massacred ; but
had as yet received no molestation except from the
Bedawin. In no case were women and children menaced.
But now, at Beirut, a mob got out of hand in attacking
a train and very brutally murdered two British officers,
an official, and five soldiers (March 18). There would
seem to have been on this occasion scenes of medieval
savagery, including the blood-drinking ritual practised on
the bodies of murderers by the relatives of the murdered
—a custom that survived in Egypt officiaEy down to the
sixties, and that was, of course, misunderstood by the
foreign Press. For in the eyes of the mob the British
officers were the murderers of their relatives killed in Syria.
But, even in this frenzy of hate, the humanity of the
Egyptian asserted itself. Hanem Areef, a courtesan of
Mellawi, who braved the fury of the mob to ease the last
moments of a dying British officer, deserves honourable