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At eventide, when he spreads his praying-carpet and places the little oblong tablet from Kerbela in its customary position, preparatory to commencing his last prayers for the day, it is furthermore ascertained by the compass that he has been pretty accurate in his daily prostrations toward Mecca.
The Aradan telegraph-jee is a young man skin-full of piety, rejoicing in the possession of a nice little praying-carpet, a praying-stone from holy Kerbela, the holiest of all except Mecca, and he owns a string of beads of the same soul-comforting material as the stone.
So saying, he rose, went home, put on some clothes of better materials, and twisting up his red cotton sash for a turban, he took up his praying-carpet, with a determination to go to the bazaar and sell it for what it would fetch. As he passed the mosque of Hosein, he observed several mollahs, reading and expounding the more abstruse passages of the Koran.
At last we felt a breeze, topped a low rise: an old greybeard all in white jogged up towards us on a donkey, a man running behind; a village lay below; but our eyes only went to one spot in the wide blue plain, which was spread out like a praying-carpet before us. That spot lay twenty-five miles off a single tower, the Kutobea in Morocco City. "Marrakesh!" cried Omar and Saïd simultaneously.
He drew a swift breath, clutched the bars, and was silent stricken speechless. He looked into a large and lofty room, lighted by several hanging lamps. It had a carpeted divan at one end and was otherwise scantily furnished, in the Eastern manner. A silver incense-burner smoked upon a large praying-carpet, and by it stood the man in the crocodile mask.
With all these enviable advantages the praying-carpet, the praying-stone, the holy rosary, and the happy accuracy as regards Mecca the Aradan telegraph-jee is a Mussulman who ought to feel tolerably certain of a rose-garden, a gurgling rivulet, and any number of black-eyed houris to contribute to his happiness in the paradise he hopes to enter beyond the tomb.
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