“Deign to hear me, O my lord! I ask a favor—a small thing, far beneath thee. There dwell here in the city many poor men, servants, black like me. These meet together privately to be judged of their sheykh, who is no other than Ismaìl, the doorkeeper at this house. They seek the right, but as the street dogs seek, whom no man stoops to feed. Their prayer is through me unto thee, O my master, that thou wilt grant them a little instruction. This is the Day of Assembly, when they meet always toward sunset. Vouchsafe to honor them, and I, thy slave, will guide thee to the place.”
“With pleasure and alacrity,” replied Shems-ud-dìn, and the teeth of the negro gleamed forth in satisfaction.
Forthwith, at his accustomed mooning pace, Mâs set about his preparations. From out a vault, whereof the door stood open, he produced a lantern, which he opened to be sure the candle was not spent. He put a box of Frankish matches within the frame, shut to the glass, and, taking a staff that leaned against the wall, smiled of readiness.
Zeyd, with Shems-ud-dìn, followed him out into the streets, where forms moved vaguely in rich lights and shadows, like the concourse of a dream.
Zeyd raised his eyes to the sky, a blue eye of love perusing the sun-red city, and his thoughts were a lump in his throat. At length men recognized the holiness of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn; at last they cried to him for light. Surely Allah had smitten the multitude with blindness; certainly the notables of this city, her merchants, her high officials were as blind as their own walls. Allah had put out their eyes, as He had put out those of Hassan Agha the iniquitous and his crew of reprobates. It had been reserved for a poor fellâh, for a few low negroes, to perceive and welcome the blessing from on high.
They crossed the open space before the tower, where was noise and much people, shadows in an amber glow, and thence passed by dim and quiet ways through the Armenian quarter. Here and there, along the coping of old walls, the leaves of stone plants burned like tongues of flame. A gate yawned on them suddenly, its square tower red in the stream of sunset. It let them out on to the brink of a gorge full of dusty gloom.
Mâs kept to the top of the rocks, close along by the foot of the wall. Following, through deep shadows, Zeyd in mind compared himself to one proved faithful passing, by support of the Prophet, over the hair bridge into Paradise. Between black wall and blue abyss, their path ran, a very thread. The ravines seemed fathomless. The high hills were of the sky, all warmth. The features of the landscape were transfigured, exaggerated, made monstrous with excess of color like an opium dream. Yet though he felt as one poised in mid-air, Zeyd knew no fear; having with him the saint, that enchanter whose mere neighborhood made a seer of the poor fellâh.
At a turn of the wall, Mâs waited for them to overtake him. There a wide prospect was revealed. Far away, across a darkling sea of ridge and gully, stood a pile all rosy in the sun’s last rays. It was the rampart of their own wild land, which frowns at dawn upon the Sea of Lot. Shems-ud-dìn stood still to gaze upon that distant splendor. But Mâs plucked his robe.
“Behold the assembly, O my master!”
The stretch of embattled wall seemed of iron, bounding a hearth of colored fires. It cast such gloom upon the rocks, that Zeyd must look twice ere he discerned the white of turbans and men’s raiment near at hand.