They all
appeared horribly, almost indecently, old.
As I stood and stared at
them, I remembered a story of a Russian friend of mine, a landed
proprietor, on whose country estate dwelt a peasant woman who lived to
be over a hundred. Each year when he came from Petersburg, this old
woman arrived to salute him. At last she was a hundred and four, and,
when he left his estate for the winter, she bade him good-bye for
ever. For ever! But, lo! the next year there she still was - one
hundred and five years old, deeply ashamed and full of apologies for
being still alive. "I cannot help it," she said. "I ought no longer to
be here, but it seems I do not know anything. I do not know even how
to die!" The grey, tall houses of Old Cairo do not know how to die. So
there they stand, showing their haggard facades, which are broken by
protruding, worm-eaten, wooden lattices not unlike the shaggy,
protuberant eyebrows which sometimes sprout above bleared eyes that
have seen too much. No one looked out from these lattices. Was there,
could there be, any life behind them? Did they conceal harems of
centenarian women with wrinkled faces, and corrugated necks and hands?
Here and there drooped down a string terminating in a lamp covered
with minute dust, that wavered in the wintry wind which stole
tremulously between the houses. And the houses seemed to be leaning
forward, as if they were fain to touch each other and leave no place
for the wind, as if they would blot out the exiguous alleys so that no
life should ever venture to stir through them again. Did the eyes of
the Virgin Mary, did the baby eyes of the Christ Child, ever gaze upon
these buildings? One could almost believe it. One could almost believe
that already these buildings were there when, fleeing from the wrath
of Herod, Mother and Child sought the shelter of the crypt of Abu
Sargah.
I went on, walking with precaution, and presently I saw a man. He was
sitting collapsed beneath an archway, and he looked older than the
world. He was clad in what seemed like a sort of cataract of multi-
colored rags. An enormous white beard flowed down over his shrunken
breast. His face was a mass of yellow wrinkles. His eyes were closed.
His yellow fingers were twined about a wooden staff. Above his head
was drawn a patched hood. Was he alive or dead? I could not tell, and
I passed him on tiptoe. And going always with precaution between the
tall, grey houses and beneath the lowering arches, I came at last to
the Coptic church.
Near it, in the street, were several Copts - large, fat, yellow-
skinned, apparently sleeping, in attitudes that made them look like
bundles. I woke one up, and asked to see the church. He stared,
changed slowly from a bundle to a standing man, went away and
presently, returning with a key and a pale, intelligent-looking youth,
admitted me into one of the strangest buildings it was ever my lot to
enter.
The average Coptic church is far less fascinating than the average
mosque, but the church of Abu Sargah is like no other church that I
visited in Egypt. Its aspect of hoary age makes it strangely, almost
thrillingly impressive. Now and then, in going about the world, one
comes across a human being, like the white-bearded man beneath the
arch, who might be a thousand years old, two thousand, anything, whose
appearance suggests that he or she, perhaps, was of the company which
was driven out of Eden, but that the expulsion was not recorded. And
now and then one happens upon a building that creates the same
impression. Such a building is this church. It is known and recorded
that more than a thousand years ago it had a patriarch whose name was
Shenuti; but it is supposed to have been built long before that time,
and parts of it look as if they had been set up at the very beginning
of things. The walls are dingy and whitewashed. The wooden roof is
peaked, with many cross-beams. High up on the walls are several small
square lattices of wood. The floor is of discolored stone. Everywhere
one sees wood wrought into lattices, crumbling carpets that look
almost as frail and brittle and fatigued as wrappings of mummies, and
worn-out matting that would surely become as the dust if one set his
feet hard upon it. The structure of the building is basilican, and it
contains some strange carvings of the Last Supper, the Nativity, and
St. Demetrius. Around the nave there are monolithic columns of white
marble, and one column of the red and shining granite that is found in
such quantities at Assuan. There are three altars in three chapels
facing toward the East. Coptic monks and nuns are renowned for their
austerity of life, and their almost fierce zeal in fasting and in
prayer, and in Coptic churches the services are sometimes so long that
the worshippers, who are almost perpetually standing, use crutches for
their support. In their churches there always seems to me to be a cold
and austere atmosphere, far different from the atmosphere of the
mosques or of any Roman Catholic church. It sometimes rather repels
me, and generally make me feel either dull or sad. But in this
immensely old church of Abu Sargah the atmosphere of melancholy aids
the imagination.
In Coptic churches there is generally a great deal of woodwork made
into lattices, and into the screens which mark the divisions, usually
four, but occasionally five, which each church contains, and, which
are set apart for the altar, for the priests, singers, and
ministrants, for the male portion of the congregation, and for the
women, who sit by themselves. These divisions, so different from the
wide spaciousness and airiness of the mosques, where only pillars and
columns partly break up the perspective, give to Coptic buildings an
air of secrecy and of mystery, which, however, is often rather
repellent than alluring.
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