Each one of these mosques has its sainted dead, whose name it bears,
and who sleeps by its side, in an adjoining mortuary kiosk; some priest
rendered admirable by his virtues, or perhaps a khedive of earlier
times, or a soldier, or a martyr. And the mausoleum, which communicates
with the sanctuary by means of a long passage, sometimes open, sometimes
covered with gratings, is surmounted always by a special kind of cupola,
a very high and curious cupola, which raises itself into the sky like
some gigantic dervish hat. Above the Arab town, and even in the sand of
the neighbouring desert, these funeral domes may be seen on every side
adjoining the old mosques to which they belong. And in the evening, when
the light is failing, they suggest the odd idea that it is the dead man
himself, immensely magnified, who stands there beneath a hat that is
become immense. One can pray, if one wishes, in this resting-place of
the dead saint as well as in the mosque. Here indeed it is always more
secluded and more in shadow. It is more simple, too, at least up to the
height of a man: on a platform of white marble, more or less worn and
yellowed by the touch of pious hands, nothing more than an austere
catafalque of similar marble, ornamented merely with a Cufic
inscription. But if you raise your eyes to look at the interior of the
dome--the inside, as it were, of the strange dervish hat--you will see
shining between the clusters of painted and gilded stalactites a number
of windows of exquisite colouring, little windows that seem to be
constellations of emeralds and rubies and sapphires. And the birds, you
may be sure, have their nests also in the house of the holy one.
They are wont indeed to soil the carpets and the mats on which the
worshippers kneel, and their nests are so many blots up there amid the
gildings of the carved cedarwood; but then their song, the symphony that
issues from that aviary, is so sweet to the living who pray and to the
dead who dream. . . .