And you feel the touch of time,
but the touch of eternity, too. And as, in that rock-hewn sanctuary, you
whisper "_Pax vobiscum_," you say it for all the world.
XIV
EDFU
Prayer pervades the East. Far off across the sands, when one is
traveling in the desert, one sees thin minarets rising toward the sky.
A desert city is there. It signals its presence by this mute appeal
to Allah. And where there are no minarets--in the great wastes of the
dunes, in the eternal silence, the lifelessness that is not broken even
by any lonely, wandering bird--the camels are stopped at the appointed
hours, the poor, and often ragged, robes are laid down, the brown
pilgrims prostrate themselves in prayer. And the rich man spreads his
carpet, and prays. And the half-naked nomad spreads nothing; but he
prays, too. The East is full of lust and full of money-getting, and
full of bartering, and full of violence; but it is full of worship--of
worship that disdains concealment, that recks not of ridicule or
comment, that believes too utterly to care if others disbelieve. There
are in the East many men who do not pray. They do not laugh at the man
who does, like the unpraying Christian. There is nothing ludicrous to
them in prayer. In Egypt your Nubian sailor prays in the stern of your
dahabiyeh; and your Egyptian boatman prays by the rudder of your boat;
and your black donkey-boy prays behind a red rock in the sand; and
your camel-man prays when you are resting in the noontide, watching the
far-off quivering mirage, lost in some wayward dream.
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