Arab Americans -- Fiction; Immigrants -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction
Just then the brass band in front of the Hotel struck up the Dastur
march in honour of the Sheikhs who come to escort the Unionist
Deputies and the speaker to the Mosque.
"I have made up my mind. I have given my word."
And being called, Mrs. Gotfry, though loath to let him go, presses his
hand and wishes him good speed.
And here we are in the carriage on the right of the green-turbaned
Sheikh. We look disdainfully on the troops, the brass band, and the
crowd of nondescripts that are leading the procession. We cross the
bridge, pass the Town-Hall, and, winding a narrow street groaning with
an electric tramway, we come to the grand arcade in which the
multitudes on both sides are pressed against the walls and into the
stalls by the bullying Dragoons. We drive through until we reach the
arch, where some Khalif of the Omayiahs used to take the air. And
descending from the carriage, we walk a few paces between two rows of
book-shops, and here we are in the court of the grand Mosque Omayiah.
We elbow our way through the pressing, distressing multitudes,
following Ahmed Bey into the Mosque, while the Army Officer mounts a
platform in the court and dispenses to the crowd there of his Turkish
blatherskite. We stand in the Mosque near the heavy tapestried square
which is said to be the sarcophagus of St. John. Already a Sheikh is
in the pulpit preaching on the excellences of liberty, chopping out
definitions of equality, and quoting from Al-Hadith to prove that all
men are Allah's children and that the most favoured in Allah's sight
is he who is most loving to his brother man. He then winds up with an
encomium on the heroes of the day, curses vehemently the reactionaries
and those who curse them not (the Mosque resounds with "Curse the
reactionists, curse them all!"), tramples beneath his heel every spy
and informer of the New Era, invokes the great Allah and his Apostle
to watch over the patriots and friends of the Ottoman nation, to
visit with grievous punishment its enemies, and--descends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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