watermelons that are so
popular in Cairo, display their wares beneath awnings of orange-colored
sackcloth, or in the full glare of the sun, and, their prayers
comfortably completed or perhaps not yet begun, the worshippers stand to
gossip, or sit to smoke their pipes, before going on their way into the
city or the mosque. There are noise and perpetual movement here. Stand
for a while to gain an impression from them before you mount the steps
and pass into the spacious peace beyond.

Orientals must surely revel in contrasts. There is no tumult like the
tumult in certain of their market-places. There is no peace like the
peace in certain of their mosques. Even without the slippers carefully
tied over your boots you would walk softly, gingerly, in the mosque of
El Movayad, the mosque of the columns and the garden. For once within
the door you have taken wings and flown from the city, you are in a
haven where the most delicious calm seems floating like an atmosphere.
Through a lofty colonnade you come into the mosque, and find yourself
beneath a magnificently ornamental wooden roof, the general effect of
which is of deep brown and gold, though there are deftly introduced
many touches of very fine red and strong, luminous blue. The walls are
covered with gold and superb marbles, and there are many quotations
from the Koran in Arab lettering heavy with gold. The great doors are
of chiseled bronze and of wood. In the distance is a sultan's tomb,
surmounted by a high and beautiful cupola, and pierced with windows of
jeweled glass. But the attraction of this place of prayer comes less
from its magnificence, from the shining of its gold, and the gleaming of
its many-colored marbles, than from its spaciousness, its airiness, its
still seclusion, and its garden. Mohammedans love fountains and shady
places, as can surely love them only those who carry in their minds a
remembrance of the desert. They love to have flowers blowing beside them
while they pray. And with the immensely high and crenelated walls of
this mosque long ago they set a fountain of pure white marble, covered
it with a shelter of limestone, and planted trees and flowers about it.
There beneath palms and tall eucalyptus-trees even on this misty day of
the winter, roses were blooming, pinks scented the air, and great red
flowers, that looked like emblems of passion, stared upward almost
fiercely, as if searching for the sun. As I stood there among the
worshippers in