It Is Approached By A Flight Of Steps, On Each
Side Of Which Stand Old, Impenetrable Houses.
Above my head, strung
across from one house to the other, were many little red and yellow
flags ornamented with gold lozenges.
These were to bear witness that
in a couple of days' time, from the great open place beneath the
citadel of Cairo, the Sacred Carpet was to set out on its long journey
to Mecca. My guide struck on a door and uttered a fierce cry. A small
shutter in the blackened lattice was opened, and a young girl, with
kohl-tinted eyelids, and a brilliant yellow handkerchief tied over her
coarse black hair, leaned out, held a short parley, and vanished,
drawing the shutter to behind her. The mist crept about the tawdry
flags, a heavy door creaked, whined on its hinges, and from the house
of the girl there came an old, fat man bearing a mighty key. In a
moment I was free of the mosque of Ibn-Tulun.
I ascended the steps, passed through a doorway, and found myself on a
piece of waste ground, flanked on the right by an old, mysterious
wall, and on the left by the long wall of the mosque, from which close
to me rose a grey, unornamented minaret, full of the plain dignity of
unpretending age. Upon its summit was perched a large and weary-
looking bird with draggled feathers, which remained so still that it
seemed to be a sad ornament set there above the city, and watching it
for ever with eyes that could not see.
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