“How pleasantly the time passes away conversing with one’s friends”; and as he spoke he stood erect, turning towards Mecca, as mechanically as the needle turns towards the pole.
His whole appearance altered and his mean presence suffered a subtle change. With eyes fixed upon space, and hands uplifted, he testified to the existence of the one God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Bounteous, the Generous One, who alone giveth victory.
Then, sinking down, he laid his forehead on the ground, bringing his palms together. Three times he bowed himself, and then rising again upon his feet recited the confession of his faith.
The instant he had done he sat him down again; but gravely and with the air of one who has performed an action, half courteous, half obligatory, but refreshing to the soul.
The Consul, who well knew his ways, and knew that probably he seldom prayed at home, and that the prayers he had just seen most likely were a sort of affirmation of his neutral attitude before a stranger, yet was interested.
Then, when the conversation was renewed, he said to him, “Prayer seems to me, Sherif, to be the one great difference between the animals and man.
“As to the rest, we live and die, drink, eat, and propagate our species, just as they do; but no one ever heard of any animal who had addressed himself to God.”
A smile flitted across the pock-marked features of the descendant of the Prophet, and looking gravely at his friend,—
“Consul,” he said, “Allah to you has given many things. He has endowed you with your fertile brains, that have searched into forces which had remained unknown in nature since the sons of Adam first trod the surface of the earth. All that you touch you turn to gold, and as our saying goes, ‘Gold builds a bridge across the sea.’
“Ships, aeroplanes, cannons of monstrous size, and little instruments by which you see minutest specks as if they were great rocks; all these you have and yet you doubt His power.