and delicate, and with brilliantly colored inscriptions in majolica. We could see also the two pavilions with heavy, pyramidal, green roofs with their carved cedar cornices and their supporting columns of creamy, aged marble, under the shadow of which the Faithful were performing their ritual ablutions. Thus the Idrisides, Almoravides, Almohades, Merinides and the sultans from the Saadi family all left something after them that forever attached their names to the walls of Kairween. Above all its beauty, as we saw it, stretched the flaming tent of the sky, while around it in the maze of commercial streets encircling its walls was the noise and movement of the outer world's life.
Kairween attracted me as strongly as Bab el-Maroukh, and I returned to it several times with the half hope that something would occur which would give me the opportunity to penetrate into this temple of the faith and science of Islam. However, nothing happened to cause a breach of the law of horm—that is, an actual breach of it, though in spirit I did transgress it, for I succeeded in learning much that went on within its walls and that is usually withheld from the knowledge of those without the Faith.
It came about through the meeting, mentioned above, with the mullah in the antique-shop, who turned out to be a professor in Kairween. As we sat drinking the heavily sweetened tea and chatting over the lighter subjects that sprang from selecting a beautifully bound copy of the Koran, Hafid, in his role of interpreter to a scholar, and even a Marabout, beamed with happiness and, with the master of the house, kissed the holy man's hand or
