"He is nothing," said Habib, when I seemed disturbed. "He is only an Arab." Still, he was praying to Habib's God.
Many persons do not realize, I believe, that Christianity and Mohammedanism differ mainly in their Messiah. The Jew furnished the Moslem as well as the Christian with a God, patriarchs, and prophets—the Old Testament being common to all. The Moslem goes further than the Jew, for he accepts parts of the New Testament. He recognizes John the Baptist as a holy messenger, even claiming to have his head in this very church, in a shrine which we saw, though I could see that Habib thought the relic apocryphal. Furthermore, the Moslem accepts Christ! To him, Christ is only a lesser prophet than Mohammed, but still a great being—an emissary of God—and on this same mosque is the Minaret of Jesus, where, one day, as they believe, he will stand to judge the world. On the other hand, the average Christian believes that Mohammed was merely a fraud, and it is this difference of opinion that has reddened the East with blood. I am moved to set down this paragraph of rather general information for the reason that it contains some things which I suppose others to be as ignorant of as I was—things which seem to me interesting.
We did see one old book, by-the-way—fifteen hundred years old, Habib said, and a member of our party asked if it was printed on a press; though that is nothing—I have done worse myself. Then we ascended the Minaret of the Bride for the view. We climbed and climbed, and got hot, and shaky in the knees, but the view repaid us. There was Damascus spread out in its beauty; its marble courts, its domes and minarets and painted houses—a magic city in the midst of a garden of bloom. Certainly this is fairyland—a mirage whose fragile fabric may vanish in a breath. Oh, our time is all too short! One must have long and long to look upon the East—it has taken so long to build!
We went to Saladin's tomb, and that is authoritative, though I confess that I could not realize, as we stood in that narrow building and viewed the catafalque in the centre, that the mighty Saracen hero of romance rested there. For me, he belongs only in tales of enchantment and fierce deeds, and not in that quiet place. I remembered that his sword was so sharp that a feather pillow dropped on its edge would fall on either side. Perhaps they have the sword there, and possibly the pillow to prove it, but I did not see them.
A Turkish school turned out to look at us and smile. We looked and smiled back, and everybody was satisfied. It is certain that we look more strange to them than they do to us, now. I know this, for when I stop anywhere and look over our party, here amid the turbans and fezzes and long flowing garments of the Orient, I can see for myself that it is really our party that looks queer and fantastic and out of place—not these people at all.
It is natural that one should realize this in Damascus, for Damascus is the great reality—the unchanged and changeless. Algiers was a framed picture; Constantinople was a world's Midway—a sort of masquerade, prepared for our benefit. Here it is different. No longer the country and the people constitute the show, but ourselves. One presently discovers that he is artificial—an alien, a discord—that he has no place here. These others are the eternal verities; their clothes are the real clothes—not ours, that change fashion with every year and season. One is tempted to abjure all the fanfare and flourish of his so-called progress—to strip off his ridiculous garments and customs and fall in with the long steady rhythm of the ages.
Only, you don't do it. You discover objections to such a course. I could name some of them if I wanted to. Never mind; you couldn't do it anyway. You have been hurrying and sweating and capering about and wearing your funny clothes and singing in false keys too long. You cannot immediately put on the garb of the ages, and lock step with the swing of a thousand years.