Hidden in the grove of silver-tufted poplars is the little Temple of Venus, doomed to keep company with a Mosque. But it is a joy to stand on the bridge above the stream that flows between them, and listen to the muezzin in the minaret and the bulbuls in the Temple.
Mohammad calling to Venus, Venus calling to Mohammad—what a romance!
We leave the subject to the poet that wants it. Another Laus Veneris to another Swinburne might suggest itself.
An Arab Prophet with the goddess, this time—but the River flows between the Temple and the Mosque. In the city, life is one such picturesque languid stream. The shopkeepers sit on their rugs in their stalls, counting their beads, smoking their narghiles, waiting indifferently for Allah’s bounties. And the hawkers shuffle along crying their wares in beautiful poetic illusions—the flower-seller singing, “Reconcile your mother-in-law! Perfume your spirit! Buy a jasmine for your soul!” the seller of loaves, his tray on his head, his arms swinging to a measured step, intoning in pious thankfulness, “O thou Eternal, O thou Bountiful!” The sakka of licorice-juice, clicking his brass cups calls out to the thirsty one, “Come, drink and live! Come, drink and live!” And ere you exclaim, How quaint! How picturesque! a train of laden camels drives you to the wall, rudely shaking your illusion. And the mules and donkeys, tottering under their heavy burdens, upsetting a tray of sweetmeats here, a counter of spices there, must share the narrow street with you and compel you to move along slowly, languidly like themselves. They seem to take Time by the sleeve and say to it, “What’s your hurry?” “These donkeys,” Shakib writes, quoting Khalid, “can teach the strenuous Europeans and hustling Americans a lesson.”
In the City Square, as we issue from the congested windings of the Bazaar, we are greeted by one of those scrub monuments that are found in almost every city of the Ottoman Empire.