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By Root 6293 0

and wandered about aimlessly, looking at the proud proofs of civilization: the varnished tables covered with sheets of paper instead of tablecloths, the heavy glass salt shakers, and the opened bottles of wine with the identifying napkins tied around their necks. One of the pink dogs came crawling into the room from the kitchen, and seeing him, continued to the patio, where it lay down and sighed deeply. He walked through the door into the kitchen. In the center of the room, under the one weak light bulb, stood Mohammed holding a large butcher’s knife with its point sticking in the table. Under the point was a cockroach, its legs still feebly waving. Mohammed regarded the insect studiously, He looked up and grinned.

“Finished?” he asked.

“What?” said Port.

“Finished with dinner?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then I’ll lock the dining room.” He went and moved Port’s table back into the room, turned off the lights and locked both doors. Then he put out the light in the kitchen. Port moved into the patio. “Going home to sleep?” he inquired.

Mohammed laughed. “Why do you think I work all day? Just to go home to sleep? Come with me. I’ll show you the best place in Ain Krorfa.”

Port walked with him out into the street, where they conversed for a few minutes. Then they moved off down the street together.

The house was several houses, all with a common entrance through a large tiled courtyard. And each house had several rooms, all very small, and, with the exception of those on the ground floor, all at varying levels. As he stood in the courtyard in the faint light that was a blend of carbidelamp glare and starlight, all the bright little boxlike interiors looked like so many ovens around him. Most of them had their door or windows open, and were filled to bursting with men and girls, both sexes uniformly dressed in flowing white garments. It looked festive, and it exhilarated him to see it; certainly he had no feeling that it was a vicious place, even though at first he tried hard to see it as such.

They went to the door of a room opposite the entrance, and Mohammed peered in, saluting certain of the men sitting inside on the couches along the walls. He entered, motioning to Port to follow him. Room was made for them, and they sat down with the others. A boy took their order for tea and quickly ran out of the room across the court. Mohammed was soon engaged in conversation with a man sitting nearby. Port leaned back and watched the girls as they drank tea and chatted with the men, sitting opposite them on the floor; he was waiting for a licentious gesture, at least a hint of a leer. None was forthcoming.

For some reason which he was unable to fathom, there were a good many small children running about the establishment. They were well behaved and quiet as they played in the gloomy courtyard, exactly as if it had belonged to a school instead of a brothel. Some of them wandered inside the rooms, where the men took them on their laps and treated them with the greatest affection, patting their cheeks and allowing them occasional puffs on their cigarettes. Their collective disposition toward contentment might easily be due, he thought, to the casual benevolence of their elders. If one of the younger ones began to shed tears, the men laughed and waved it away; it soon stopped.

A fat black police dog waddled in and out of the rooms, sniffing shoes; it was the object of everyone’s admiration. “The most beautiful dog in Ain Krorfa,” said Mohammed as it appeared panting in the doorway near them. “It belongs to Colonel Lefilleul; he must be here tonight.”

When the boy returned with the tea he was accompanied by another, not more than ten years old, but with an ancient, soft face. Port pointed him out to Mohammed and whispered that he looked ill.

“Oh, no! He’s a singer.” He signaled to the child, who began to clap his hands in a syncopated rhythm and utter a long repetitious lament built on three notes. To Port it seemed utterly incongruous and a little scandalous, hearing this recent addition to humanity produce a music so un-childlike and weary.