Delicate rugs, soft as clouds and tinted like opals, were heaped in
piles on the tiled floor; rugs from Ispahan, rugs from Mecca; old rugs
from the sacred city of Kairouan, such as are made no more there or
anywhere. The walls were hung with Tunisian silks and embroidered stuffs
from the homes of Jewish families, where they had served as screens for
talismanic words too sacred to be seen by common eyes; and there was
drapery of ancient banners, Tyrian-dyed, whose gold or silver fringes
had been stained with blood, in battle. From the ceiling were suspended
antique lamps, and chandeliers of rare rock crystal, whose prisms gave
out rose and violet sparks as they caught the light.
On shelves and inlaid tables were beggars' bowls of strange dark woods,
carried across deserts by wandering mendicants of centuries ago, the
chains, which had hung from throats long since crumbled into dust,
adorned with lucky rings and fetishes to preserve the wearer from evil
spirits. There were other bowls, of crystal pure as full-blown bubbles,
bowls which would ring at a tap like clear bells of silver. Some of
these were guiltless of ornament, some were graven with gold flowers,
but all seemed full of lights reflected from tilted, pearl-framed
mirrors, and from the swinging prisms of chandeliers.
Chafing-dishes of bronze at which vanished hands had been warmed, stood
beside chased brazen ewers made to pour rose-water over henna-stained
fingers, after Arab dinners, eaten without knives or forks.
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