They passed up a
narrow street redeemed from sordidness by a domed koubbah or two; and
from the roofed balconies of cafes maures, Arabs looked down on them
with large, dreamy eyes like clouded stars. All the glory and pride of
the village was concentrated in the tomb and beautiful mosque of the
saint whose name falls sweet on the ear as the music of a summer storm,
the tinkle and boom of rain and thunder coming together: Sidi
Bou-Medine.
Toddling girls with henna-dyed hair, and miniature brown men, like
blowing flower-petals in scarlet, yellow, and blue, who had swarmed up
the street after the Roumis, stopped at the portals of the mosque and
the sacred tomb. But there was a humming in the air like the song of
bees, which floated rhythmically out from the zaouia, the school in the
mosque where many boys squatted cross-legged before the aged Taleb who
taught the Koran; bowing, swaying towards him, droning out the words of
the Prophet, some half asleep, nodding against the onyx pillars.
In the shadow of the mosque it was cool, though the crown of the
minaret, gemmed with priceless tiles from Fez, blazed in the sun's rays
as if it were on fire. Into this coolness the four strangers passed,
involuntarily hushing their voices in the portico of decorated walls and
hanging honeycombs of stucco whence, through great doors of ancient,
greenish bronze (doors said to have arrived miraculously from across the
sea), they found their way into a courtyard open to the sky, where a
fountain waved silver plumes over a marble basin.
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