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[Page 318]

At home when we read the Arabian Nights and heard about the fat merchants of Baghdad the idea I got was of portly old Arabs squatting in their little shops, smoking their long bowled pipes, as you see them in pictures, with the suggestion of something mystical about them. A sort of feeling that if they clapped their hands, the forty thieves themselves would immediatly rise from nowhere to do their bidding.

When you first get to Cairo and go down the Mouski (the native bazar) you are charmed to find that at least one of your cherished ideas holds good. For there you see the narrow streets; (so called but really sort of artificial tunnels), the tiny shops, like rows of wool bins with the fat greasy merchant heavily bejeweled, and clad in rich, silk sitting in the centre; with his wares hung all round him; and 

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