every word is in my heart.

We rowed down through the city next day - Salama rowing, and
little Kahdra lazily paddling at the bow - a wonderful city,
with its narrow ways begrimed with the dirt of ages, and its
balconied houses looking as if disease and sin had soaked into
them and given them a vicious tottering beauty, horrible and yet
lovely too. We saw the swarming life of the bazaar, the white
turbans coming and going, diversified by the rose and yellow
Hindu turbans, and the caste-marks, orange and red, on the dark
brows.

I saw two women - girls - painted and tired like Jezebel,
looking out of one window carved and old, and the grey burnished
doves flying about it. They leaned indolently, like all the old,
old wickedness of the East that yet is ever young - "Flowers of
Delight," with smooth black hair braided with gold and blossoms,
and covered with pale rose veils, and gold embossed disks
swinging like lamps beside the olive cheeks, the great eyes
artificially lengthened and darkened with soorma, and the curves
of the full lips emphasized with vermilion. They looked down on
us with apathy, a dull weariness that held all the old evil of
the wicked humming city.

It had taken shape in those indolent bodies and heavy eyes that
could flash into life as a snake wakes into fierce darting energy
when the time comes to spring - direct inheritrixes from Lilith,
in the fittest setting in the world - the almost exhausted vice
of an Oriental city as old as time.