I believe the reason nearly all Arabs have
crooked legs is because they squat so much. One cannot have straight
legs when one uses one's legs to sit down on for hours at a time. They
always sit in the sun, too, and that must bake them into their
crookedness.
The "carpet" is a black velvet embroidered solidly in silver and gold.
It is shaped like an old-fashioned Methodist church, only there are
minarets at the four corners. It looks like a pall. Every year they
send a new one to Mecca, and then the old one is cut into tiny bits
and distributed among the faithful, who wear it next their hearts.
This carpet was about six feet long, and was railed in so that no one
could touch it. A man stood by and sprayed attar of roses on you as
you passed, but I do not know what he did it for, unless it was to
turn sensitive women faint with the heaviness of the perfume.
But the next morning the procession formed, and amid the wildest
enthusiasm, the bowing and salaaming of the men, and the shouting and
running of the children, and the singing of the Arabs who bore the
carpet, it was placed upon the most magnificent camel I ever saw,
which was covered from head to foot with cloth of gold, and whose very
gait seemed more majestic because of his sacred burden, and thus, led
by scores of enthusiastic Arabs, he moved slowly down the street,
following the covering for the tomb, and in turn being followed by one
scarcely less magnificent destined to cover the sacred carpet in its
camel journey to Mecca.
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