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.
And must you not pray, too, when you enter certain temples where once
strange gods were worshipped in whom no man now believes?
There is one temple on the Nile which seems to embrace in its arms all
the worship of the past; to be full of prayers and solemn praises; to
be the holder, the noble keeper, of the sacred longings, of the
unearthly desires and aspirations, of the dead.
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