ver way
you look.

Imagine a blue sky--so clear-blue and pure that you can see
against it the very feathers in the tails of wheeling kites, and
know that they are brown, not black. Imagine all the houses, and
the shacks between them, and the poles on which the burlap
awnings hang, painted on flat canvas and stood up against that
infinite blue. Stick some vultures in a row along a roof-top--
purplish--bronze they'll look between the tiles and sky. Add
yellow camels, gray horses, striped robes, long rifles, and a
searching sun-dried smell. And there you have El-Kerak, from
the inside.

From any point along the broken walls or the castle roof you can
see for fifty miles over scenery invented by the Master-Artist,
with the Jordan like a blue worm in the midst of yellow-and-green
hills twiggling into a turquoise sea.

The villains stalk on-stage and off again sublimely aware of
their setting. The horses prance, the camels saunter, the very
street-dogs compose themselves for a nap in the golden sun, all
in perfect harmony with the piece. A woman walking with a stone
jar on her head (or, just as likely, a kerosene can) looks as if
she had just stepped out of eternity for the sake of the picture.
And not all the kings and kaisers, cardinals and courtezans
rolled into one great swaggering splurge of majesty could hold a
candle to a ragged Bedouin chief on a flea-bitten pony, on the
way to a small-town mejlis.

So it was worth a little inconvenience, and quite a little risk
to see those chiefs arrive at the castle gate, toss their reins
to a brother cut-throat, and swagger in, the poorest and least
important timing their arrival, when they could, just in advance
of an important man so as to take precedence of him and delay
his entrance.

Mindful of my charge to keep Anazeh sober, and more deadly afraid
of it than of all the other risks, I hung about waiting for him,
hoping he would arrive before Abdul Ali or ben Nazir. I wanted
to go inside and be seated before either of those gentry came.
But not a bit of it. I saw Anazeh ride up at the head of his
twenty men, halt at a corner, and ask a question. His men were in
military order, and looked not only ready but anxious to charge
the crowd and establish their old chief's importance.

Mahommed ben Hamza, not quite so smelly in his new clothes, was
standing at my elbow.

"Sheikh Anazeh beckons you," he said.

So the two of us worked our way leisurely through t