How the Turks further wetted
themselves by complex ablutions in the tank (meydiaeh) in the courtyard
without, how they removed their shoes and, entering the mosque, knelt on
their carpets facing towards Mecca, and turning their backs on me, a
serried array of long-robed figures swaying and falling forward with
automatic regularity, and showing pairs of heels not always clean, while
the Imam chanted heart-breaking dirges overhead, I shall not detail, for
everybody has read of Moslem services. But I do not remember to have come
across any accurate description of a service of Dancing Dervishes such as
followed the more orthodox ceremonial.
All the mere Mussulmans having retired, the Dervishes sat around
cross-legged, forming an oval. Presently they began to say some phrase,
presumably Turkish (it sounded like _es "klabbam vivurah"_), which they
repeated and repeated and repeated with the same endless, uniform,
monotonous intonation, swaying from right to left and from left to right,
till I felt the whole universe was this phrase, and nothing else would
happen till the end of the world, and the world would never end. At last,
when I had reconciled myself to living for ever and ever with this sound
in my ears, they broke into a pleasant melody with rhyming stanzas and a
refrain of _Hazlee_.
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