Arabs, who had come in with the caravans, walked solemnly about,
very different in look and demeanour from the sleek inhabitants of
the town. Greeks and Jews squatted and smoked, their shops tended
by sallow-faced boys, with large eyes, who smiled and welcomed you
in; negroes bustled about in gaudy colours; and women, with black
nose-bags and shuffling yellow slippers, chattered and bargained at
the doors of the little shops. There was the rope quarter and the
sweetmeat quarter, and the pipe bazaar and the arm bazaar, and the
little turned-up shoe quarter, and the shops where ready-made
jackets and pelisses were swinging, and the region where, under the
ragged awning, regiments of tailors were at work. The sun peeps
through these awnings of mat or canvas, which are hung over the
narrow lanes of the bazaar, and ornaments them with a thousand
freaks of light and shadow. Cogia Hassan Alhabbal's shop is in a
blaze of light; while his neighbour, the barber and coffee-house
keeper, has his premises, his low seats and narghiles, his queer
pots and basins, in the shade. The cobblers are always good-
natured; there was one who, I am sure, has been revealed to me in
my dreams, in a dirty old green turban, with a pleasant wrinkled
face like an apple, twinkling his little grey eyes as he held them
up to talk to the gossips, and smiling under a delightful old grey
beard, which did the heart good to see. You divine the
conversation between him and the cucumber-man, as the Sultan used
to understand the language of birds. Are any of those cucumbers
stuffed with pearls, and is that Armenian with the black square
turban Haroun Alraschid in disguise, standing yonder by the
fountain where the children are drinking--the gleaming marble
fountain, chequered all over with light and shadow, and engraved
with delicate arabesques and sentences from the Koran?