“To us, the Arabs, we who came from the lands of fire in the Hejaz and Hadramut. We who for centuries have remained unchanged, driving our camels as our fathers drove them, eating and drinking as our fathers ate and drank, and living face to face with God. . . . Consu’, you should not smile, for do we not live closer to Him than you do, under the stars at night, out in the sun by day, our lives almost as simple as the lives of animals? To us He has vouchsafed gifts that He either has withheld from you, or that you have neglected in your pride.
“Thus we still keep our faith. . . . Faith in the God who set the planets in their courses, bridled the tides, and caused the palm to grow beside the river so that the traveller may rest beneath its shade, and resting, praise His name.
“You ask me, who ever heard of any animal that addressed himself to God. He in His infinite power . . . be sure of it . . . is He not merciful and compassionate, wonderful in His ways, harder to follow than the track that a gazelle leaves in the desert sands; it cannot be that He could have denied them access to His ear?
“Did not the lizard, Consul . . ., Hamed el Angri, the runner, the man who never can rest long in any place, but must be ever tightening his belt and pulling up his slippers at the heel to make ready for the road . . ., did he not tell you of El Hokaitsallah, the little lizard who, being late upon the day when Allah took away speech from all the animals, ran on the beam in the great mosque at Mecca, and dumbly scratched his prayer?”
The Consul nodded. “Hamed el Angri,” he said, “no doubt is still upon the road, by whose side he will die one day of hunger or of thirst. . . . Yes; he told me of it, and I wrote it in a book. . . .”
“Write this, then,” the Sherif went on, “Allah in his compassion, and in case the animals, bereft of speech, that is in Arabic, for each has his own tongue, should not be certain of the direction of the Kiblah, has given the power to a poor insect which we call El Masgad to pray for all of them. With its head turned to Mecca, as certainly as if he had the needle of the mariners, he prays at El Magreb.
“All day he sits erect and watches for his prey. At eventide, just at the hour of El Magreb, when from the ‘alminares’ of the Mosques the muezzin calls upon the faithful for their prayers, he adds his testimony.
“Consu’, Allah rejects no prayer, however humble, and that the little creature knows. He knows that Allah does not answer every prayer; but yet the prayer remains; it is not blotted out, and perhaps some day it may fructify, for it is written in the book.
“Therefore El Masgad prays each night for all the animals, yet being but a little thing and simple, it has not strength to testify at all the hours laid down in Mecca by our Lord Mohammed, he of the even teeth, the curling hair, and the grave smile, that never left his face after he had communed with Allah in the cave.”
The Consul dropped his smoked-out cigarette, and, stretching over to his friend, held out his hand to him.