telling the story of the Shiah martyrs to a circle of villagers while people brought you tea and a bowl of rice with tears running down their faces at the tales of the sufferings of the great Imaum, son of Ali, whose flesh was infused with the substances of God, done to death by the falseness of the men of Kufa, dogs and sons of dogs, and by the wiles of Sheitan, the stoned one.
With the name of Allah for all baggage you could travel from the Great Wall of China to the Niger and be fairly sure of food and often of money, if only you were ready to touch your forehead in the dust five times a day, and put away self and the glamorous West.
And yet the West is conquering. Henry Fordâs gospel of multiple production and interchangeable parts will win hearts that stood firm against Thales and Democritus, against Galileo and Faraday. There is no god strong enough to withstand the Universal Suburb.
Within our time the dervish, the symbol of mystery errant on the face of the world, will become a simple vagrant as he is in civilized countries.
2. The Teahouse
Hot afternoons the E.A. sat in a covered courtyard beside a fountain where goldfish swam, drinking glass after glass of tea and eating a curious cool jelly flavored with roses. There were few people in the teahouse: an occasional Armenian in European clothes, a Turk in fez and frock coat. In the month of mourning people stay in their houses. In a far corner the serving boys talked in low whispers. A fountain tinkled; there was the buzz of an occasional fly. The few sounds were flaws in the bright crystal silence.
Caught tight in the intent stillness of autumn afternoons, the E.A. used to wonder and puzzle on a continual jerky roundabout of ways and means. At the bottom of a vast still contentedness something miniature kept going round and round: how to get to Isfahan, how to get to Khorasan eastward, eastward to Kabul, to the Afghan mountains, to Canton, to Frisco. He pulled off ring after ring, but never the brass ring that carries the prize.
But what do I want to drag myself round the Orient for anyway? What do I care about these withered fragments of old orders, these dead religions, these ruins swarming with the maggots of history? Old men, toothless eunuchs asleep in the sun. Itâs in the West that life is, terrible, destroying sprouts of the new among the litter of Russian trainyards, out of the smell of burnt gasoline in Detroit garages. To hand Samarcand on a platter to that little Polish girl in the funicular at Tiflis.
As a sideshow itâs still pretty fine, this vanishing East. The inexpressible soft, lithe swinging length of a two-humped camelâs stride; the old men with crimson beards, the enormous turbans, white, blue, black, green, perched on shaved polls, boys with their hair curling troubadour-fashion from under their skullcaps, the hooded ghosts of women, the high-domed felt hats, the gaudy rags, the robes of parrot-green silk, trees the violent green of manganese spurting out of yellow hills, quick watercourses, white asses, the robinâs-egg domes, the fields of white opium poppies.
If one were old enough and oneâs blood were cool enough there would be the delight of these quiet gardens of poplar-trees, the deferential bringing of the samovar, the subtle half smiles across the rim of tiny glasses of tea, the glint of scurrying water in the runnel in the center of the room, the bright calm of sunny changeless courts, the effortless life of submission to the Written.
But there are things worth trying first.
The E.A. gets to his feet dizzy with a sudden choked feeling of inaction and walks out into the broad street where the twilight flutters down like scraps of colored paper through the broad leaves of the planes. Hassan, Hosein. Hassan, Hosein.⦠To a sound of drums a procession is passing, gruff voices savagely passing, the warlike banners and standards of Islam, the hand of Fatima, the mareâs tails, the crescent. It is
With the name of Allah for all baggage you could travel from the Great Wall of China to the Niger and be fairly sure of food and often of money, if only you were ready to touch your forehead in the dust five times a day, and put away self and the glamorous West.
And yet the West is conquering. Henry Fordâs gospel of multiple production and interchangeable parts will win hearts that stood firm against Thales and Democritus, against Galileo and Faraday. There is no god strong enough to withstand the Universal Suburb.
Within our time the dervish, the symbol of mystery errant on the face of the world, will become a simple vagrant as he is in civilized countries.
2. The Teahouse
Hot afternoons the E.A. sat in a covered courtyard beside a fountain where goldfish swam, drinking glass after glass of tea and eating a curious cool jelly flavored with roses. There were few people in the teahouse: an occasional Armenian in European clothes, a Turk in fez and frock coat. In the month of mourning people stay in their houses. In a far corner the serving boys talked in low whispers. A fountain tinkled; there was the buzz of an occasional fly. The few sounds were flaws in the bright crystal silence.
Caught tight in the intent stillness of autumn afternoons, the E.A. used to wonder and puzzle on a continual jerky roundabout of ways and means. At the bottom of a vast still contentedness something miniature kept going round and round: how to get to Isfahan, how to get to Khorasan eastward, eastward to Kabul, to the Afghan mountains, to Canton, to Frisco. He pulled off ring after ring, but never the brass ring that carries the prize.
But what do I want to drag myself round the Orient for anyway? What do I care about these withered fragments of old orders, these dead religions, these ruins swarming with the maggots of history? Old men, toothless eunuchs asleep in the sun. Itâs in the West that life is, terrible, destroying sprouts of the new among the litter of Russian trainyards, out of the smell of burnt gasoline in Detroit garages. To hand Samarcand on a platter to that little Polish girl in the funicular at Tiflis.
As a sideshow itâs still pretty fine, this vanishing East. The inexpressible soft, lithe swinging length of a two-humped camelâs stride; the old men with crimson beards, the enormous turbans, white, blue, black, green, perched on shaved polls, boys with their hair curling troubadour-fashion from under their skullcaps, the hooded ghosts of women, the high-domed felt hats, the gaudy rags, the robes of parrot-green silk, trees the violent green of manganese spurting out of yellow hills, quick watercourses, white asses, the robinâs-egg domes, the fields of white opium poppies.
If one were old enough and oneâs blood were cool enough there would be the delight of these quiet gardens of poplar-trees, the deferential bringing of the samovar, the subtle half smiles across the rim of tiny glasses of tea, the glint of scurrying water in the runnel in the center of the room, the bright calm of sunny changeless courts, the effortless life of submission to the Written.
But there are things worth trying first.
The E.A. gets to his feet dizzy with a sudden choked feeling of inaction and walks out into the broad street where the twilight flutters down like scraps of colored paper through the broad leaves of the planes. Hassan, Hosein. Hassan, Hosein.⦠To a sound of drums a procession is passing, gruff voices savagely passing, the warlike banners and standards of Islam, the hand of Fatima, the mareâs tails, the crescent. It is
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