est is by no means taken always at the cafe.
Egyptians also take it at the baths, where, after the final douche, they
spend half an hour in motionless ease. For those who have not the paras
for the cafe or the bath, the mosques offer their shaded courts. When
there is no time to seek another place, the men take their rest wherever
they are. One often sees them lying asleep, or apparently asleep, in
their booths at the bazaars. The very beggars draw their rags round
them, cover their faces, and lie down close to a wall in the crowded
lanes.

[Illustration: AN ARAB CAFE

From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]

At the cafes, during another stage of the rest, games are played, the
favorites being dominos, backgammon, and chess. Sometimes a story-teller
entertains the circle. He narrates the deeds of Antar and legends of
adventure; he also tells stories from the Bible, such as the tale of the
flood, or of Daniel in the den of lions. Sometimes he recites, in
Arabic, the poems of Omar Khayyam.

"I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell;
And by-and-by my soul returned to me,
And answered, 'I myself am heaven and hell!'"

This verse of the Persian poet might be taken as the motto of kief; for
if the heaven or hell of each person is simply the condition of his own
mind, then if he is able every day to reduce his mind, even for a
half-hour only, to a happy tranquillity which has forgotten all its
troubles, has he not gained that amount of paradise?

II

[Illustration]

[Illustration: arabic]

"I love the Arabian language for three reasons: because I am an Arab
myself; because the Koran is in Arabic; because Arabic is the language
of Paradise." This hadith, or saying, of Mohammed might be put upon the
banner of the old university of Cairo, El Azhar; that is, the Splendid.
El Azhar was founded in the tenth century, when Cairo itself was hardly
more than a name. In its unmoved attachment to the beliefs of its
founders, to their old enthusiasms, their methods and hates, El Azhar
has opposed an inflexible front to the advance of European ideas,
sending out year after year its hundreds of pupils to all parts of Egypt
and to Nubia, to the Soudan and to Morocco, to Turkey, Arabia, and
Syria, to India and Ceylon, and to the borders of Persia, believing that
so long as it could keep the education of the young in its grasp the
reign of the Prophet was secure. It is to-day th