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.
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