If I poorly deserved, yet I liked this claim of brotherhood. Not
all the warnings which I heard against their rascality could hinder
me from feeling kindly towards my fellow-Christians in the East.
English travellers, from a habit perhaps of depreciating sectarians
in their own country, are apt to look down upon the Oriental
Christians as being "dissenters" from the established religion of a
Mahometan empire. I never did thus. By a natural perversity of
disposition, which my nursemaids called contrariness, I felt the
more strongly for my creed when I saw it despised among men. I
quite tolerated the Christianity of Mahometan countries,
notwithstanding its humble aspect and the damaged character of its
followers. I went further and extended some sympathy towards those
who, with all the claims of superior intellect, learning, and
industry, were kept down under the heel of the Mussulmans by reason
of their having OUR faith. I heard, as I fancied, the faint echo
of an old crusader's conscience, that whispered and said, "Common
cause!" The impulse was, as you may suppose, much too feeble to
bring me into trouble; it merely influenced my actions in a way
thoroughly characteristic of this poor sluggish century, that is,
by making me speak almost as civilly to the followers of Christ as
I did to their Mahometan foes.
This "holy" Damascus, this "earthly paradise" of the Prophet, so
fair to the eyes that he dared not trust himself to tarry in her
blissful shades, she is a city of hidden palaces, of copses and
gardens, and fountains and bubbling streams. The juice of her life
is the gushing and ice-cold torrent that tumbles from the snowy
sides of Anti-Lebanon. Close along on the river's edge, through
seven sweet miles of rustling boughs and deepest shade, the city
spreads out her whole length. As a man falls flat, face forward on
the brook, that he may drink and drink again, so Damascus,
thirsting for ever, lies down with her lips to the stream and
clings to its rushing waters.
The chief places of public amusement, or rather, of public
relaxation, are the baths and the great cafe; this last, which is
frequented at night by most of the wealthy men, and by many of the
humbler sort, consists of a number of sheds, very simply framed and
built in a labyrinth of running streams, which foam and roar on
every side. The place is lit up in the simplest manner by numbers
of small pale lamps strung upon loose cords, and so suspended from
branch to branch, that the light, though it looks so quiet amongst
the darkening foliage, yet leaps and brightly flashes as it falls
upon the troubled waters. All around, and chiefly upon the very
edge of the torrents, groups of people are tranquilly seated. They
all drink coffee, and inhale the cold fumes of the narghile; they
talk rather gently the one to the other, or else are silent. A
father will sometimes have two or three of his boys around him; but
the joyousness of an Oriental child is all of the sober sort, and
never disturbs the reigning calm of the land.
It has been generally understood, I believe, that the houses of
Damascus are more sumptuous than those of any other city in the
East. Some of these, said to be the most magnificent in the place,
I had an opportunity of seeing.
Every rich man's house stands detached from its neighbours at the
side of a garden, and it is from this cause no doubt that the city
(severely menaced by prophecy) has hitherto escaped destruction.
You know some parts of Spain, but you have never, I think, been in
Andalusia: if you had, I could easily show you the interior of a
Damascene house by referring you to the Alhambra or Alcanzar of
Seville. The lofty rooms are adorned with a rich inlaying of many
colours and illuminated writing on the walls. The floors are of
marble. One side of any room intended for noonday retirement is
generally laid open to a quadrangle, in the centre of which there
dances the jet of a fountain. There is no furniture that can
interfere with the cool, palace-like emptiness of the apartments.
A divan (which is a low and doubly broad sofa) runs round the three
walled sides of the room. A few Persian carpets (which ought to be
called Persian rugs, for that is the word which indicates their
shape and dimensions) are sometimes thrown about near the divan;
they are placed without order, the one partly lapping over the
other, and thus disposed, they give to the room an appearance of
uncaring luxury; except these (of which I saw few, for the time was
summer, and fiercely hot), there is nothing to obstruct the welcome
air, and the whole of the marble floor from one divan to the other,
and from the head of the chamber across to the murmuring fountain,
is thoroughly open and free.
So simple as this is Asiatic luxury! The Oriental is not a
contriving animal; there is nothing intricate in his magnificence.
The impossibility of handing down property from father to son for
any long period consecutively seems to prevent the existence of
those traditions by which, with us, the refined modes of applying
wealth are made known to its inheritors. We know that in England a
newly-made rich man cannot, by taking thought and spending money,
obtain even the same-looking furniture as a gentleman. The
complicated character of an English establishment allows room for
subtle distinctions between that which is comme il faut, and that
which is not. All such refinements are unknown in the East; the
Pasha and the peasant have the same tastes. The broad cold marble
floor, the simple couch, the air freshly waving through a shady
chamber, a verse of the Koran emblazoned on the wall, the sight and
the sound of falling water, the cold fragrant smoke of the
narghile, and a small collection of wives and children in the inner
apartments - these, the utmost enjoyments of the grandee, are yet
such as to be appreciable by the humblest Mussulman in the empire.
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