In The Buildings Consecrated To Prayer And To Meditation I First
Sought For The Magic That Still Lurks In The Teeming Bosom Of Cairo.
Long as I had sought it elsewhere, in the brilliant bazaars by day,
and by night in the winding
Alleys, where the dark-eyed Jews looked
stealthily forth from the low-browed doorways; where the Circassian
girls promenade, gleaming with golden coins and barbaric jewels; where
the air is alive with music that is feverish and antique, and in
strangely lighted interiors one sees forms clad in brilliant
draperies, or severely draped in the simplest pale-blue garments,
moving in languid dances, fluttering painted figures, bending,
swaying, dropping down, like the forms that people a dream.
In the bazaars is the passion for gain, in the alleys of music and
light is the passion for pleasure, in the mosques is the passion for
prayer that connects the souls of men with the unseen but strongly
felt world. Each of these passions is old, each of these passions in
the heart of Islam is fierce. On my return to Cairo I sought for the
hidden fire that is magic in the dusky places of prayer.
A mist lay over the city as I stood in a narrow byway, and gazed up at
a heavy lattice, of which the decayed and blackened wood seemed on
guard before some tragic or weary secret. Before me was the entrance
to the mosque of Ibn-Tulun, older than any mosque in Cairo save only
the mosque of Amru.
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