It Was A Building
Of Artless Construction, Consisting Of Little But A Roof Supported By
Wooden Posts, Roughly Hewn From Date Trees:
Round the tamped earthen
floor ran a raised bench of unbaked brick, forming a diwan for mats and
sleeping-rugs.
In the centre a huge square Mastabah, or platform,
answered a similar purpose. Here and there appeared attempts at long
and side walls, but these superfluities had been allowed to admit
daylight through large gaps. In one corner stood the apparatus of the
"Kahwahji," an altar-like elevation, also of earthen-work, containing a
hole for a charcoal fire, upon which were three huge coffee-pots
dirtily tinned. Near it were ranged the Shishas, or Egyptian hookahs,
old, exceedingly unclean, and worn by age and hard work. A wooden
framework, pierced with circular apertures, supported a number of
porous earthenware gullehs (gargoulettes, or monkey jars) full of cold,
sweet water; the charge for each was, as usual in Al-Hijaz, five paras.
Such was the furniture of the cafe, and the only relief to the
barrenness of the view was a fine mellowing atmosphere composed of
smoke, steam,
[p.216] flies, and gnats in about equal proportions. I have been
diffuse in my description of the coffee-house, as it was a type of its
class: from Alexandria to Aden the traveller will everywhere meet with
buildings of the same kind.
Our happiness in this Paradise-for such it was to us after the "Golden
Wire"-was nearly sacrificed by Sa'ad the Demon, whose abominable temper
led him at once into a quarrel with the master of the cafe.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 284 of 571
Words from 78714 to 78984
of 157964
