Part 9

Yes, one can forget even now in the hall of the temple of Isis, where the capricious graces of color, where, like old and delicious music in the golden strings of a harp, dwells a something--what is it? A murmur, or a perfume, or a breathing?--of old and vanished years when forsaken gods were worshipped. And one can forget in the chapel of Hathor, on whose wall little Horus is born, and in the grey hounds’ chapel beside it. One can forget, for one walks in beauty.

Lovely are the doorways in Philae, enticing are the shallow steps that lead one onward and upward; gracious the yellow towers that seem to smile a quiet welcome. And there is one chamber that is simply a place of magic--the hall of the flowers.

It is this chamber which always makes me think of Philae as a lovely temple of dreams, this silent, retired chamber, where some fabled princess might well have been touched to a long, long sleep of enchantment, and lain for years upon years among the magical flowers--the lotus, and the palm, and the papyrus.

In my youth it made upon me an indelible impression. Through intervening years, filled with many new impressions, many wanderings, many visions of beauty in other lands, that retired, painted chamber had not faded from my mind--or shall I say from my heart? There had seemed to me within it something that was ineffable, as in a lyric of Shelley’s there is something that is ineffable, or in certain pictures of Boecklin, such as “The Villa by the Sea.” And when at last, almost afraid and hesitating, I came into it once more, I found in it again the strange spell of old enchantment.

It seems as if this chamber had been imagined by a poet, who had set it in the centre of the temple of his dreams. It is such a spontaneous chamber that one can scarcely imagine it more than a day and a night in the building. Yet in detail it is lovely; it is finished and strangely mighty; it is a lyric in stone, the most poetical chamber, perhaps, in the whole of Egypt. For Philae I count in Egypt, though really it is in Nubia.

One who has not seen Philae may perhaps wonder how a tall chamber of solid stone, containing heavy and soaring columns, can be like a lyric of Shelley’s, can be exquisitely spontaneous, and yet hold a something of mystery that makes one tread softly in it, and fear to disturb within it some lovely sleeper of Nubia, some Princess of the Nile. He must continue to wonder. To describe this chamber calmly, as I might, for instance, describe the temple of Derr, would be simply to destroy it. For things ineffable cannot be fully explained, or not be fully felt by those the twilight of whose dreams is fitted to mingle with their twilight. They who are meant to love with ardor se passionnent pour la passion. And they who are meant to take and to keep the spirit of a dream, whether it be hidden in a poem, or held in the cup of a flower, or enfolded in arms of stone, will surely never miss it, even though they can hear roaring loudly above its elfin voice the cry of directed waters rushing down to Upper Egypt.

How can one disentangle from their tapestry web the different threads of a spell? And even if one could, if one could hold them up, and explain, “The cause of the spell is that this comes in contact with this, and that this, which I show you, blends with, fades into, this,” how could it advantage any one? Nothing could be made clearer, nothing be really explained. The ineffable is, and must ever remain, something remote and mysterious.

And so one may say many things of this painted chamber of Philae, and yet never convey, perhaps never really know, the innermost cause of its charm. In it there is obvious beauty of form, and a seizing beauty of color, beauty of sunlight and shadow, of antique association. This turquoise blue is enchanting, and Isis was worshipped here. What has the one to do with the other? Nothing; and yet how much! For is not each of these facts a thread in the tapestry web of the spell? The eyes see the rapture of this very perfect blue. The imagination hears, as if very far off, the solemn chanting of priests and smells the smoke of strange perfumes, and sees the long, aquiline nose and the thin, haughty lips of the goddess. And the color becomes strange to the eyes as well as very lovely, because, perhaps, it was there--it almost certainly was there--when from Constantinople went forth the decree that all Egypt should be Christian; when the priests of the sacred brotherhood of Isis were driven from their temple.

Isis nursing Horus gave way to the Virgin and the Child. But the cycles spin away down “the ringing grooves of change.” From Egypt has passed away that decreed Christianity. Now from the minaret the muezzin cries, and in palm-shaded villages I hear the loud hymns of earnest pilgrims starting on the journey to Mecca. And ever this painted chamber shelters its mystery of poetry, its mystery of charm. And still its marvellous colors are fresh as in the far-off pagan days, and the opening lotus-flowers, and the closed lotus-buds, and the palm and the papyrus, are on the perfect columns. And their intrinsic loveliness, and their freshness, and their age, and the mysteries they have looked on--all these facts are part of the spell that governs us to-day. In Edfu one is enclosed in a wonderful austerity. And one can only worship. In Philae one is wrapped in a radiance of color and one can only dream. For there is coral-pink, and there a wonderful green, “like the green light that lingers in the west,” and there is a blue as deep as the blue of a tropical sea; and there are green-blue and lustrous, ardent red. And the odd fantasy in the coloring, is not that like the fantasy in the temple of a dream? For those who painted these capitals for the greater glory of Isis did not fear to depart from nature, and to their patient worship a blue palm perhaps seemed a rarely sacred thing. And that palm is part of the spell, and the reliefs upon the walls and even the Coptic crosses that are cut into the stone.

But at the end, one can only say that this place is indescribable, and not because it is complex or terrifically grand, like Karnak. Go to it on a sunlit morning, or stand in it in late afternoon, and perhaps you will feel that it “suggests” you, and that it carries you away, out of familiar regions into a land of dreams, where among hidden ways the soul is lost in magic. Yes, you are gone.

To the right--for one, alas! cannot live in a dream for ever--is a lovely doorway through which one sees the river. Facing it is another doorway, showing a fragment of the poor, vivisected island, some ruined walls, and still another doorway in which, again, is framed the Nile. Many people have cut their names upon the walls of Philae. Once, as I sat alone there, I felt strongly attracted to look upward to a wall, as if some personality, enshrined within the stone, were watching me, or calling. I looked, and saw written “Balzac.”

Philae is the last temple that one visits before he gives himself to the wildness of the solitudes of Nubia. It stands at the very frontier. As one goes up the Nile, it is like a smiling adieu from the Egypt one is leaving. As one comes down, it is like a smiling welcome. In its delicate charm I feel something of the charm of the Egyptian character. There are moments, indeed, when I identify Egypt with Philae. For in Philae one must dream; and on the Nile, too, one must dream. And always the dream is happy, and shot through with radiant light--light that is as radiant as the colors in Philae’s temple. The pylons of Ptolemy smile at you as you go up or come down the river. And the people of Egypt smile as they enter into your dream. A suavity, too, is theirs. I think of them often as artists, who know their parts in the dream-play, who know exactly their function, and how to fulfil it rightly. They sing, while you are dreaming, but it is an under-song, like the murmur of an Eastern river far off from any sea. It never disturbs, this music, but it helps you in your dream. And they are softly gay. And in their eyes there is often the gleam of sunshine, for they are the children--but not grown men--of the sun. That, indeed, is one of the many strange things in Egypt--the youthfulness of its age, the childlikeness of its almost terrible antiquity. One goes there to look at the oldest things in the world and to feel perpetually young--young as Philae is young, as a lyric of Shelley’s is young, as all of our day-dreams are young, as the people of Egypt are young.

Oh, that Egypt could be kept as it is, even as it is now; that Philae could be preserved even as it is now! The spoilers are there, those blithe modern spirits, so frightfully clever and capable, so industrious, so determined, so unsparing of themselves and--of others! Already they are at work “benefiting Egypt.” Tall chimneys begin to vomit smoke along the Nile. A damnable tram-line for little trolleys leads one toward the wonderful colossi of Memnon. Close to Kom Ombos some soul imbued with romance has had the inspiration to set up--a factory! And Philae--is it to go?

Is beauty then of no value in the world? Is it always to be the prey of modern progress? Is nothing to be considered sacred; nothing to be left untouched, unsmirched by the grimy fingers of improvement? I suppose nothing.

Then let those who still care to dream go now to Philae’s painted chamber by the long reaches of the Nile; go on, if they will, to the giant forms of Abu-Simbel among the Nubian sands. And perhaps they will think with me, that in some dreams there is a value greater than the value that is entered in any bank-book, and they will say, with me, however uselessly:

“Leave to the world some dreams, some places in which to dream; for if it needs dams to make the grain grow in the stretches of land that were barren, and railways and tram-lines, and factory chimneys that vomit black smoke in the face of the sun, surely it needs also painted chambers of Philae and the silence that comes down from Isis.”

XVIII

OLD CAIRO

By Old Cairo I do not mean only le vieux Caire of the guide-book, the little, desolate village containing the famous Coptic church of Abu Sergius, in the crypt of which the Virgin Mary and Christ are said to have stayed when they fled to the land of Egypt to escape the fury of King Herod; but the Cairo that is not new, that is not dedicated wholly to officialdom and tourists, that, in the midst of changes and the advance of civilisation--civilisation that does so much harm as well as so much good, that showers benefits with one hand and defaces beauty with the other--preserves its immemorial calm or immemorial turmult; that stands aloof, as stands aloof ever the Eastern from the Western man, even in the midst of what seems, perhaps, like intimacy; Eastern to the soul, though the fantasies, the passions, the vulgarities, the brilliant ineptitudes of the West beat about it like waves about some unyielding wall of the sea.

When I went back to Egypt, after a lapse of many years, I fled at once from Cairo, and upon the long reaches of the Nile, in the great spaces of the Libyan Desert, in the luxuriant palm-grooves of the Fayyum, among the tamarisk-bushes and on the pale waters of Kurun, I forgot the changes which, in my brief glimpse of the city and its environs, had moved me to despondency. But one cannot live in the solitudes for ever. And at last from Madi-nat-al-Fayyum, with the first pilgrims starting for Mecca, I returned to the great city, determined to seek in it once more for the fascinations it used to hold, and perhaps still held in the hidden ways where modern feet, nearly always in a hurry, had seldom time to penetrate.

A mist hung over the land. Out of it, with a sort of stern energy, there came to my ears loud hymns sung by the pilgrim voices--hymns in which, mingled with the enthusiasm of devotees en route for the holiest shrine of their faith, there seemed to sound the resolution of men strung up to confront the fatigues and the dangers of a great journey through a wild and unknown country. Those hymns led my feet to the venerable mosques of Cairo, the city of mosques, guided me on my lesser pilgrimage among the cupolas and the colonnades, where grave men dream in the silence near marble fountains, or bend muttering their prayers beneath domes that are dimmed by the ruthless fingers of Time. In the buildings consecrated to prayer and to meditation I first sought for the magic that still lurks in the teeming bosom of Cairo.

Long as I had sought it elsewhere, in the brilliant bazaars by day, and by night in the winding alleys, where the dark-eyed Jews looked stealthily forth from the low-browed doorways; where the Circassian girls promenade, gleaming with golden coins and barbaric jewels; where the air is alive with music that is feverish and antique, and in strangely lighted interiors one sees forms clad in brilliant draperies, or severely draped in the simplest pale-blue garments, moving in languid dances, fluttering painted figures, bending, swaying, dropping down, like the forms that people a dream.

In the bazaars is the passion for gain, in the alleys of music and light is the passion for pleasure, in the mosques is the passion for prayer that connects the souls of men with the unseen but strongly felt world. Each of these passions is old, each of these passions in the heart of Islam is fierce. On my return to Cairo I sought for the hidden fire that is magic in the dusky places of prayer.

A mist lay over the city as I stood in a narrow byway, and gazed up at a heavy lattice, of which the decayed and blackened wood seemed on guard before some tragic or weary secret. Before me was the entrance to the mosque of Ibn-Tulun, older than any mosque in Cairo save only the mosque of Amru. It is approached by a flight of steps, on each side of which stand old, impenetrable houses. Above my head, strung across from one house to the other, were many little red and yellow flags ornamented with gold lozenges. These were to bear witness that in a couple of days’ time, from the great open place beneath the citadel of Cairo, the Sacred Carpet was to set out on its long journey to Mecca. My guide struck on a door and uttered a fierce cry. A small shutter in the blackened lattice was opened, and a young girl, with kohl-tinted eyelids, and a brilliant yellow handkerchief tied over her coarse black hair, leaned out, held a short parley, and vanished, drawing the shutter to behind her. The mist crept about the tawdry flags, a heavy door creaked, whined on its hinges, and from the house of the girl there came an old, fat man bearing a mighty key. In a moment I was free of the mosque of Ibn-Tulun.

I ascended the steps, passed through a doorway, and found myself on a piece of waste ground, flanked on the right by an old, mysterious wall, and on the left by the long wall of the mosque, from which close to me rose a grey, unornamented minaret, full of the plain dignity of unpretending age. Upon its summit was perched a large and weary-looking bird with draggled feathers, which remained so still that it seemed to be a sad ornament set there above the city, and watching it for ever with eyes that could not see. At right angles, touching the mosque, was such a house as one can see only in the East--fantastically old, fantastically decayed, bleared, discolored, filthy, melancholy, showing hideous windows, like windows in the slum of a town set above coal-pits in a colliery district, a degraded house, and yet a house which roused the imagination and drove it to its work. In this building once dwelt the High Priest of the mosque. This dwelling, the ancient wall, the grey minaret with its motionless bird, the lamentable waste ground at my feet, prepared me rightly to appreciate the bit of old Cairo I had come to see.

People who are bored by Gothic churches would not love the mosque of Ibn-Tulun. No longer is it used for worship. It contains no praying life. Abandoned, bare, and devoid of all lovely ornament, it stands like some hoary patriarch, naked and calm, waiting its destined end without impatience and without fear. It is a fatalistic mosque, and is impressive, like a fatalistic man. The great court of it, three hundred feet square, with pointed arches supported by piers, double, and on the side looking toward Mecca quintuple arcades, has a great dignity of sombre simplicity. Not grace, not a light elegance of soaring beauty, but massiveness and heavy strength are distinguishing features of this mosque. Even the octagonal basin and its protecting cupola that stands in the middle of the court lack the charm that belongs to so many of the fountains of Cairo. There are two minarets, the minaret of the bird, and a larger one, approached by a big stairway up which, so my dragoman told me, a Sultan whose name I have forgotten loved to ride his favorite horse. Upon the summit of this minaret I stood for a long time, looking down over the city.

Grey it was that morning, almost as London is grey; but the sounds that came up softly to my ears out of the mist were not the sounds of London. Those many minarets, almost like columns of fog rising above the cupolas, spoke to me of the East even upon this sad and sunless morning. Once from where I was standing at the time appointed went forth the call to prayer, and in the barren court beneath me there were crowds of ardent worshippers. Stern men paced upon the huge terrace just at my feet fingering their heads, and under that heavy cupola were made the long ablutions of the faithful. But now no man comes to this old place, no murmur to God disturbs the heavy silence. And the silence, and the emptiness, and the greyness under the long arcades, all seem to make a tremulous proclamation; all seem to whisper, “I am very old, I am useless, I cumber the earth.” Even the mosque of Amru, which stands also on ground that looks gone to waste, near dingy and squat houses built with grey bricks, seems less old than this mosque of Ibn-Tulun. For its long façade is striped with white and apricot, and there are lebbek-trees growing in its court near the two columns between which if you can pass you are assured of heaven. But the mosque of Ibn-Tulun, seen upon a sad day, makes a powerful impression, and from the summit of its minaret you are summoned by the many minarets of Cairo to make the pilgrimage of the mosques, to pass from the “broken arches” of these Saracenic cloisters to the “Blue Mosque,” the “Red Mosque,” the mosques of Mohammed Ali, of Sultan Hassan, of Kait Bey, of El-Azhar, and so on to the Coptic church that is the silent centre of “old Cairo.” It is said that there are over four hundred mosques in Cairo. As I looked down from the minaret of Ibn-Tulun, they called me through the mist that blotted completely out all the surrounding country, as if it would concentrate my attention upon the places of prayer during these holy days when the pilgrims were crowding in to depart with the Holy Carpet. And I went down by the staircase of the house, and in the mist I made my pilgrimage.

As every one who visits Rome goes to St. Peter’s, so every one who visits Cairo goes to the mosque of Mohammed Ali in the citadel, a gorgeous building in a magnificent situation, the interior of which always makes me think of Court functions, and of the pomp of life, rather than of prayer and self-denial. More attractive to me is the “Blue Mosque,” to which I returned again and again, enticed almost as by the fascination of the living blue of a summer day.