When I Went Back To Egypt, After A Lapse Of Many Years, I Fled At Once
From Cairo, And Upon
The long reaches of the Nile, in the great spaces
of the Libyan Desert, in the luxuriant palm-grooves of
The Fayyum,
among the tamarisk-bushes and on the pale waters of Kurun, I forgot
the changes which, in my brief glimpse of the city and its environs,
had moved me to despondency. But one cannot live in the solitudes for
ever. And at last from Madi-nat-al-Fayyum, with the first pilgrims
starting for Mecca, I returned to the great city, determined to seek
in it once more for the fascinations it used to hold, and perhaps
still held in the hidden ways where modern feet, nearly always in a
hurry, had seldom time to penetrate.
A mist hung over the land. Out of it, with a sort of stern energy,
there came to my ears loud hymns sung by the pilgrim voices - hymns in
which, mingled with the enthusiasm of devotees en route for the
holiest shrine of their faith, there seemed to sound the resolution of
men strung up to confront the fatigues and the dangers of a great
journey through a wild and unknown country. Those hymns led my feet to
the venerable mosques of Cairo, the city of mosques, guided me on my
lesser pilgrimage among the cupolas and the colonnades, where grave
men dream in the silence near marble fountains, or bend muttering
their prayers beneath domes that are dimmed by the ruthless fingers of
Time. 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. 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. At right angles, touching the
mosque, was such a house as one can see only in the East -
fantastically old, fantastically decayed, bleared, discolored, filthy,
melancholy, showing hideous windows, like windows in the slum of a
town set above coal-pits in a colliery district, a degraded house, and
yet a house which roused the imagination and drove it to its work. In
this building once dwelt the High Priest of the mosque. This dwelling,
the ancient wall, the grey minaret with its motionless bird, the
lamentable waste ground at my feet, prepared me rightly to appreciate
the bit of old Cairo I had come to see.
People who are bored by Gothic churches would not love the mosque of
Ibn-Tulun. No longer is it used for worship. It contains no praying
life. Abandoned, bare, and devoid of all lovely ornament, it stands
like some hoary patriarch, naked and calm, waiting its destined end
without impatience and without fear. It is a fatalistic mosque, and is
impressive, like a fatalistic man. The great court of it, three
hundred feet square, with pointed arches supported by piers, double,
and on the side looking toward Mecca quintuple arcades, has a great
dignity of sombre simplicity. Not grace, not a light elegance of
soaring beauty, but massiveness and heavy strength are distinguishing
features of this mosque.
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