It was as if they spread a sort of giant umbrella over the circle
of stones, and elaborately hung curtains between them, so as to
turn the old Druid temple into a sort of patchwork pavilion.
In one sense there is much more vandalism, and in another sense
much more practicality; but it is a practicality that always stops
short of the true creative independence of going off and building
a house of their own. That is the attitude of the Arab; and it runs
through all his history. Noble as is his masterpiece of the Mosque
of Omar, there is something about it of that patchwork pavilion.
It was based on Christian work, it was built with fragments,
it was content with things that fastidious architects call fictions
or even shams.
I frequently saw old ruined houses of which there only remained two walls
of stone, to which the nomads had added two walls of canvas making
an exact cube in form with the most startling incongruity in colour.
He needs the form and he does not mind the incongruity, nor does
he mind the fact that somebody else has done the solid part and
he has only done the ramshackle part. You can say that he is nobly
superior to jealousy, or that he is without artistic ambition,
or that he is too much of a nomad to mind living half in somebody
else's house and half in his own.
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