To make sure that I understood him he repeated that remark
three times.

Every house had its quota of visitors, who lounged in the
doorways and eyed us with mixed insolence and curiosity. There
were coffee-booths all over the place that seemed to have been
erected for the occasion, where, under awnings made of stick and
straw, men sat with rifles on their knees. Those who had
provender to sell for horses were doing a roaring trade--short
measure and high price; and the noise of grinding was incessant.
The women in the back streets were toiling to produce enough to
eat for all that host of notables.

To have had to hunt for quarters in that town just then would
have been no joke. There was the mosque, of course, where any
Moslem who finds himself stranded may theoretically go and sleep
on a mat on the floor. But we rode past the mosque. It was
full. I would not have liked a contract to crowd one more in
there. Perhaps a New York Subway guard could have managed it.
The babel coming through the open door was like the buzzing of
flies on a garbage heap.

I was trying to sit upright in that abominable saddle and look
dignified, as became the honoured guest with a twenty-man escort,
when a courteous-looking cut-throat wearing an amber necklace
worth a wheat-field, forced his way through a crowd and greeted
Anazeh like a long lost brother. I examined him narrowly to make
sure he was not Grim in disguise, but he had two fingers missing,
and holes in his ears, which decided that question.