By a staircase I descended to the crypt, which lies beneath the choir of
the church, and there, surrounded by columns of venerable marble, beside
an altar, I stood on the very spot where, according to tradition, the
Virgin Mary soothed the Christ Child to sleep in the dark night. And, as
I stood there, I felt that the tradition was a true one, and that there
indeed had stayed the wondrous Child and the Holy Mother long, how long
ago.
The pale, intelligent Coptic youth, who had followed me everywhere,
and who now stood like a statue gazing upon me with his lustrous eyes,
murmured in English, "This is a very good place; this most interestin'
place in Cairo."
Certainly it is a place one can never forget. For it holds in its dusty
arms--what? Something impalpable, something ineffable, something strange
as death, spectral, cold, yet exciting, something that seems to creep
into it out of the distant past and to whisper: "I am here. I am not
utterly dead. Still I have a voice and can murmur to you, eyes and can
regard you, a soul and can, if only for a moment, be your companion in
this sad, yet sacred, place."
Contrast is the salt, the pepper, too, of life, and one of the great
joys of travel is that at will one can command contrast. From silence
one can plunge into noise, from stillness one can hasten to movement,
from the strangeness and the wonder of the antique past one can step
into the brilliance, the gaiety, the vivid animation of the present.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143