On his way back to the European quarter of Cairo he rested for a short time by the roadside, in a strange little cemetery of poor Moslem tombs. It lay exposed to the turmoil and dust of a rough road, a sun-baked spot in the daytime; at night it was grimly mysterious. The memorial stones—the humbler for the women, of course, the grander ones, with turbans cut in the grey stone, for the men—had sunk into the ground until they stood at strange angles. The rough white stones had become grey with age, and many of them were sadly broken.
A donkey-boy, who had perchance taken some portly Turkish merchant back to his home in the country after his day's work in the city, came hurrying down the hill. It was steep, and loose stones covered the path. When he reached the dilapidated cemetery he pulled up his suffering animal. Michael, from his hidden corner, watched the boy fling himself from the donkey's back; the animal remained motionless, while its rider, in his one garment—a short white shirt, which only reached to the knees of his tanned legs—stepped in amongst the gravestones. Finding the one he sought, he said a short prayer beside it in devout tones, then hastened back to his donkey. When he started down the hill and the tired beast stumbled, he belaboured it with a heavy stick and cursed it. His foul language rang out into the stillness; it echoed among the stones under which lay the bones of his ancestor—or was it, perhaps, the bones of some humble saint, whose favour he was inciting?
The little incident was as illustrative of the effects of Islam as the peace within the courts of el-Azhar.
Michael sat in the cemetery, which had seemed to him to be of no more consequence than a heap of stones by the wayside, awaiting the roadmender's hammer. Yet, with the strange inconsequence of Orientals, it was evidently a sacred spot. It had its pilgrims and its uses. This city cemetery brought to his mind the drifting sand of the open desert, and the ever-increasing mound which Nature was piling up over the bones of the holy man, which lay in an ocean of sweet silence and expanse.
CHAPTER XXIII
Early the next morning Michael again stood at the gate of the university-mosque, but it was a different Michael to the Michael of the night before. The unseen hand which had stopped him when he was about to ring the bell did not have to interfere a second time. He rang it resolutely, thinking calm thoughts, and despising himself for his foolish mood of the night before.
When the gate was opened to him, he passed in and hurried across the blinding brightness of the open courtyard. He made haste to reach the shelter of the colonnade; he was in no drifting humour; he was again asserting his capacity for being practical about the unpractical. He did not even allow himself to dwell on the memories which the scene recalled of the day when he had visited his friend, before he determined to leave the Valley and go into the Libyan Desert.
When he reached the portion of the building where the old African student lived, his steps slackened. What if he was dead? He was an old man for a mid-African, and his physique had been greatly exhausted by continued chastening of the flesh.
When he was well within sight of his cell he saw the lean, gaunt figure of the hermit-student standing inside the iron-barred gate; he was straining his eyes into the distance; he was looking for someone.
When Michael was near enough to address him, which he did in tones of pleasure and respect, the African opened the gate slowly and not without difficulty, his trembling hands thinner and more bloodless even than they had been when Michael had visited him before.