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est is by no means taken always at the cafe. Egyptians also take it at the baths, where, after the final douche, they spend half an hour in motionless ease. For those who have not the paras for the cafe or the bath, the mosques offer their shaded courts. When there is no time to seek another place, the men take their rest wherever they are. One often sees them lying asleep, or apparently asleep, in their booths at the bazaars. The very beggars draw their rags round them, cover their faces, and lie down close to a wall in the crowded lanes. [Illustration: AN ARAB CAFE From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo] At the cafes, during another stage of the rest, games are played, the favorites being dominos, backgammon, and chess. Sometimes a story-teller entertains the circle. He narrates the deeds of Antar and legends of adventure; he also tells stories from the Bible, such as the tale of the flood, or of Daniel in the den of lions. Sometimes he recites, in Arabic, the poems of Omar Khayyam. "I sent my soul through the invisible, Some letter of that after-life to spell; And by-and-by my soul returned to me, And answered, 'I myself am heaven and hell!'" This verse of the Persian poet might be taken as the motto of kief; for if the heaven or hell of each person is simply the condition of his own mind, then if he is able every day to reduce his mind, even for a half-hour only, to a happy tranquillity which has forgotten all its troubles, has he not gained that amount of paradise? II [Illustration] [Illustration: arabic] "I love the Arabian language for three reasons: because I am an Arab myself; because the Koran is in Arabic; because Arabic is the language of Paradise." This hadith, or saying, of Mohammed might be put upon the banner of the old university of Cairo, El Azhar; that is, the Splendid. El Azhar was founded in the tenth century, when Cairo itself was hardly more than a name. In its unmoved attachment to the beliefs of its founders, to their old enthusiasms, their methods and hates, El Azhar has opposed an inflexible front to the advance of European ideas, sending out year after year its hundreds of pupils to all parts of Egypt and to Nubia, to the Soudan and to Morocco, to Turkey, Arabia, and Syria, to India and Ceylon, and to the borders of Persia, believing that so long as it could keep the education of the young in its grasp the reign of the Prophet was secure. It is to-day th
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