We are in a
cemetery, and have been passing in the midst of houses of the dead,
and mosques of the dead, in a town of the dead.
Once emerged from this cemetery, which in the end at least disclosed
itself in its true character, we are involved again in the
continuation of the mysterious town, which takes us back into its
network. Little houses follow one another as before, only now the
little gardens are replaced by little burial enclosures. And
everything grows more and more indistinct, in the gentle light, which
gradually grows less. It is as if someone were putting frosted globes
over the moon, so that soon, but for the transparency of this air of
Egypt and the prevailing whiteness of things, there would be no light
at all. Once at a window the light of a lamp appears; it is the
lantern of gravediggers. Anon we hear the voices of men chanting a
prayer; and the prayer is a prayer for the dead.
These tenantless houses were never built for dwellings. They are
simply places where men assemble on certain anniversaries, to pray for
the dead. Every Moslem family of any note has its little temple of
this kind, near to the family graves. And there are so many of them
that now the place is become a town - and a town in the desert - that is
to say, in a place useless for any other purpose; a secure place
indeed, for we may be sure that the ground occupied by these poor
tombs runs no risk of being coveted - not even in the irreverent times
of the future. No, it is on the other side of Cairo - on the other bank
of the Nile, amongst the verdure of the palm-trees, that we must look
for the suburb in course of transformation, with its villas of the
invading foreigner, and the myriad electric lights along its motor
roads. On this side there is no such fear; the peace and desuetude are
eternal; and the winding sheet of the Arabian sands is ready always
for its burial office.
At the end of this town of the dead, the desert again opens before us
its mournful whitened expanse. On such a night as this, when the wind
blows cold and the misty moon shows like a sad opal, it looks like a
steppe under snow.
But it is a desert planted with ruins, with the ghosts of mosques; a
whole colony of high tumbling domes are scattered here at hazard on
the shifting extent of the sands. And what strange old-fashioned domes
they are! The archaism of their silhouettes strikes us from the first,
as much as their isolation in such a place. They look like bells, or
gigantic dervish hats placed on pedestals, and those farthest away
give the impression of squat, large-headed figures posted there as
sentinels, watching the vague horizon of Arabia beyond.
