“It is an evil hour: and it will pass.”
“Are you acting,” I asked, “to make it pass the quicker?”
“When we are ready, we shall act. Even as a child when it is ready to walk.” The son spoke. And his friend, a philosopher from Tunis, nodded.
“Islam has been cursed with a new childhood. We are not decadent. I know that your historians call us decadent. It is a lie. Measure us by the Law of the Prophet. If it was ever good and great, it is still so today. Perhaps you would find that it was never good. It has been studied by intelligent men—the Jews—and found wanting. We can understand that. But it is not changed: it is not decadent.”
I thought of the world fringing the Power of Rome, before Mohammed: a chaos of repellent parts, giving no light. The Arab kindled this anarchy and made it one. I thought of the reeking Kasbah of Algiers; of the swarming, inert Marrakech and Fez. I thought of the Monastery city in the Sahara and of the holy Marabout whose Word Arabs came weeks on camel-back to hear. I had felt everywhere a Body, flaccidly receding from its accumulate splendors.
“You are a poet,” I said. “Tell me about the forms and the spirit of your verse.”
“We have sixteen forms,” answered the son. “We have but one Spirit.”
“Poetry,” said my host, “is more plentiful than trees, in Islam. It is our water-bearer. It is our forest.”
All three spoke as one: “The Prophet.”