in one--he was visibly annoyed.

Truly the place was a khan--a great bleak building of four high outer
walls, surrounding a courtyard that was a yard deep with the dung
of countless camels, horses, bullocks, asses; crowded with arabas,
the four-wheeled vehicles of all the Near East, and smelly with
centuries of human journeys' ends.

Khans provide nothing except room, heat and water (and the heat costs
extra); there is no sanitation for any one at any price; every
guest dumps all his discarded rubbish over the balcony rail into
the courtyard, to be trodden and wheeled under foot and help build
the aroma. But the guests provide a picture without price that with
the very first glimpse drives discomfort out of mind.

In that place there were Parthians, Medes and Elamites, and all the
rest of the list. There was even a Chinaman. Two Hindus were unpacking
bundles out of a creaking araba, watched scornfully by an unmistakable
Pathan. A fat swarthy-faced Greek in black frock coat and trousers,
fez, and slippered feet gesticulated with his right arm like a pump-handle
while he sat on the balcony-rail and bellowed orders to a crowd mixed
of Armenians, Italians, Maltese, Syrians and a Turk or two, who labored
with his bales of cotton goods below. (The Italians eyed everybody
sidewise, for there were rumors in those days of impending trouble,
and when the Turk begins hostilities he likes his first opponents
easy and ready to hand.)

There were Kurds, long-nosed, lean-lipped and suspicious, who said
very little, but hugged long knives as they passed back and forth
among the swarming strangers. They said nothing at all, those Kurds,