“In Mardîn,” he answered. “My father and my mother live there yet.”
“Will you see them again?” said I.
“Perhaps not,” he replied, but there was no regret in his voice.
“And all your days you will live here?”
He looked out calmly over rock and plain. “Please God,” he said. “It seems to be a good place for prayer.”
It is the habit of the monks to let no traveller depart without food, a habit well known to the neighbouring Kurds who claim more hospitality than the monastery can well afford. While I worked at the church, the prior betook himself to the cave kitchen and prepared an ample meal of eggs and bread, raisins and sour curds for me and for my men. When we had eaten I asked whether it would not be seemly to thank the bishop for the entertainment which had been offered to us.
“You cannot see him,” said the prior. “He has left the world.”
“The kas from Useh Dereh came to-day to visit him,” I objected.
“He came to gaze upon his cell,” answered the prior, and with that he led me out of the church and pointed to a cave some fifty feet above us in the cliff. Three-quarters of the opening had been filled with masonry, and I could see that it was approached by a stair of which the lower part was cut out behind a gallery and the upper on the face of the rock. An active novice might have thought twice before attempting the path to the bishop’s cell.
“Is he old?” said I.