them the illusion of company. The love-songs of birds to com-panions they imagined — which were only reflections of them-selves! How heartbreakingly they sang, these illustrations of human love! Here too in the ghastly breath of the naphtha flares the old eunuchs sat at trictrac, smoking the long narguilehs which at every drawn breath loosed a musical bubble of sound like a dove’s sob; the walls of the old cafés were stained by the sweat from the tarbushes hanging on the pegs; their collections of coloured narguilehs were laid up in rows in a long rack, like muskets, for which each tobacco-drinker brought his cherished personal holder. Here too the diviners, cartomancers — or those who would deftly fill your palm with ink and for half a piastre scry the secrets of your inmost life. Here the pedlars carried magic loads of variegated and dissimilar objects of vertu from the thistle-soft carpets of Shiraz and Baluchistan to the playing cards of the Marseilles Tarot; incense of the Hejaz, green beads against the evil eye, combs, seeds, mirrors for birdcages, spices, amulets and paper fans … the list was endless; and each, of course, carried in his private wallet — like a medieval pardoner — the fruit of the world’s great pornographies in the form of handkerchiefs and post-cards on which were depicted, in every one of its pitiful variations, the one act we human beings most dream of and fear. Mysterious, underground, the ever-flowing river of sex, trickling easily through the feeble dams set up by our fretful legislation and the typical self-reproaches of the unpleasure-lov ing … the broad underground river flowing from Petronius to Frank Harris. (The drift and overlap of ideas in Mountolive’s fuddled mind, rising and disappearing in pretty half-formulated figures, iridescent as soap-bubbles.) He was perfectly at his ease, now; he had come to terms with his unfamiliar state of befuddlement and no longer felt that he was drunk; it was simply that he had become inflated now by a sense of tremendous dignity and self-importance which gave him a grandiose deliberation of movement. He walked slowly, like a pregnant woman nearing term, drinking in the sights and sounds.
At lon g last he entered a small shop which took his fancy because of its flaring ovens from which great draughts of smoke settled in parcels about the room; the smell of thyme, roasting pigeon and rice gave him a sudden stab of hunger. There were only one or two other diners, hardly to be seen through the clouds of smoke. Mountolive sat down with the air of someone making a grudging concession to the law of gravity and ordered a meal in his excellent Arabic, though he still kept his dark glasses and tarbush on. It was clear now that he could pass easily for a Moslem. The café owner was a great bald Tartar-faced Turk who served his visitor at once and without comment. He also set up a tumbler beside Mount-olive’s plate and without uttering a word filled it to the brim with the colourless arak made from the mastic-tree which is called mastika. Mountolive choked and spluttered a bit over it, but he was highly delighted — for it was the first drink of the Levant he had ever tasted and he had forgotten its existence for years now. Forgetting also how strong it was, and overcome with nostalgia, he ordered himself a second glass to help him finish the excellent hot pilaff and the pigeon (so hot from the spit that he could hardly bear to pick it up with his fingers). But he was in the seventh heaven of delight now. He was on the way to recovering, to restoring the blurred image of an Egypt which the meeting with Leila had damaged or somehow stolen from him.
The street outside was full of the shivering of tambourines and the voices of children raised in a chanting sort of litany; they were going about the shops in groups, repeating the same little verse over and over again. After three repetitions he managed to dis-entangle the words. Of course!
Lord of the shaken tree
Of Man’s extremity
Keep thou our small leaves firm
On branches free from harm
For we thy little