It was, like a silent breeze, the same feeling in the mosques of Cairo and Delhi. From the desert and the sunny green plains arose a longing for shade, and with it the cool, crowded streets of the medina were born. From its noisy life, full of butcheries and dyed waters, a desire for silence was born: the mosques of heated cities are their ultimate antidote.

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The Jama Masjid and the mosque of Ibn Tulun are like two stone gardens rising above the noise around them, ever distant from it. From them, you can hear the hollowed city, deafened, and the wind rattling the rough red stone. In both, a large paving surrounded by a shaded wall, a fountain in the centre, and the sun and the air that fly over them. In both the absence that speaks to us from the walls naked of animals and prophets, from the canopies of shadow without statue.

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The square where men sometimes meet, thigh with thigh, is empty, and warm is the sand dust that lays on its ground. Only the void in the stone and the emptiness it encloses.