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262 BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD
to the wind for its freedom, to the sun for its light,
so we pray to the desert for its silence. Let your
nature expand to the width of this horizon, to the
height and depth of this sky, and fill it all with the
eternity of this silence.
Ask of the sun why it shines, and if there is light in
you it will answer ; ask of the wind why it blows, and
to fettered and free alike it gives its answer; ask of
the desert why it is silent, and if there is silence in
you you need no answer.
Is there any calm for you in the sea until you put
it there ? Do you feel any freedom in the wind until
you have created it ? But can you, in any mood or
under any circumstance, evade the silence of the
desert? Its influence extends alike to those who
receive it and those who resent it.
The men who have no region of silence in them
selves are under the power of its physical aspect; to
them it is oppressive, wearying, and deadening; there
is an absence of life, a presence of monotony from
which there is no escape. But once we recognise its
silence as being of the nature of what we possess in
ourselves, the shadow of monotony and oppressiveness
is lifted. Can its effect be better described than it is
in that fundamental doctrine of Islam, where it almost
coincides with the teachings of Christianity in its
endeavour to give expression to the truth ? " Islam,"
that is the resignation of our own will to that of one
great power, the effacement of self, the futility of
putting our own will or mind against that of the
great, silent, all powerful, inevitable laws of Nature—•
the Moslem idea of Fate and Power—the Christian's