And In The Evening, When The Light Is Failing, They
Suggest The Odd Idea That It Is The Dead Man Himself, Immensely
Magnified, Who Stands There Beneath A Hat That Is Become Immense.
One
can pray, if one wishes, in this resting-place of the dead saint as
well as in the mosque.
Here indeed it is always more secluded and more
in shadow. It is more simple, too, at least up to the height of a man:
on a platform of white marble, more or less worn and yellowed by the
touch of pious hands, nothing more than an austere catafalque of
similar marble, ornamented merely with a Cufic inscription. But if you
raise your eyes to look at the interior of the dome - the inside, as it
were, of the strange dervish hat - you will see shining between the
clusters of painted and gilded stalactites a number of windows of
exquisite colouring, little windows that seem to be constellations of
emeralds and rubies and sapphires. And the birds, you may be sure,
have their nests also in the house of the holy one. They are wont
indeed to soil the carpets and the mats on which the worshippers
kneel, and their nests are so many blots up there amid the gildings of
the carved cedarwood; but then their song, the symphony that issues
from that aviary, is so sweet to the living who pray and to the dead
who dream. . . .
*****
But yet, when all is said, these mosques seem somehow to be wanting.
They do not wholly satisfy you. The access to them perhaps is too
easy, and one feels too near to the modern quarters of the town, where
the hotels are full of visitors - so that at any moment, it seems, the
spell may be broken by the entry of a batch of Cook's tourists, armed
with the inevitable /Baedeker/. Alas! they are the mosques of Cairo,
of poor Cairo, that is invaded and profaned. The memory turns to those
of Morocco, so jealously guarded, to those of Persia, even to those of
Old Stamboul, where the shroud of Islam envelops you in silence and
gently bows your shoulders as soon as you cross their thresholds.
And yet what pains are being taken to-day to preserve these mosques,
which in olden times were such delightful retreats. Neglected for
whole centuries, never repaired, notwithstanding the veneration of
their heedless worshippers, the greater part of them were fallen into
ruin; the fine woodwork of their interiors had become worm-eaten,
their cupolas were cracked and their mosaics covered the floor as with
a hail of mother-of-pearl, of porphyry and marble. It seemed that to
repair all this was a task incapable of fulfilment; it was sheer
folly, people said, to conceive the idea of it.
Nevertheless, for nearly twenty years now an army of workers has been
at the task, sculptors, marble-cutters, mosaicists. Already certain of
the sanctuaries, the most venerable of them indeed, have been entirely
renovated.
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