The Spell of Egypt by Robert Hichens — Read

Prayer pervades the East. Far off across the sands, when one is / traveling in the desert, one sees thin minarets rising toward the sky. / A desert city is there. It signals its presence by this mute appeal / to Allah. And where there are no minarets -- in the great wastes of the / dunes, in the eternal silence, the lifelessness that is not broken even / by any lonely, wandering bird -- the camels are stopped at the appointed / hours, the poor, and often ragged, robes are laid down, the brown / pilgrims prostrate themselves in prayer. And the rich man spreads his / carpet, and prays. And the half-naked nomad spreads nothing; but he / prays, too. The East is full of lust and full of money-getting, and / full of bartering, and full of violence; but it is full of worship -- of / worship that disdains concealment, that recks not of ridicule or / comment, that believes too utterly to care if others disbelieve. There / are in the East many men who do not pray. They do not laugh at the man / who does, like the unpraying Christian. There is nothing ludicrous to / them in prayer. In Egypt your Nubian sailor prays in the stern of your / dahabiyeh; and your Egyptian boatman prays by the rudder of your boat; / and your black donkey-boy prays behind a red rock in the sand; and / your camel-man prays when you are resting in the noontide, watching the / far-off quivering mirage, lost in some wayward dream.

And must you not pray, too, when you enter certain temples where once / strange gods were worshipped in whom no man now believes?