Personal Narrative Of A Pilgrimage To Al-Madinah & Meccah - Volume 1 of 2 - By Captain Sir Richard F. Burton




























 -  It was a building
of artless construction, consisting of little but a roof supported by
wooden posts, roughly hewn from - Page 284
Personal Narrative Of A Pilgrimage To Al-Madinah & Meccah - Volume 1 of 2 - By Captain Sir Richard F. Burton - Page 284 of 571 - First - Home

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It Was A Building Of Artless Construction, Consisting Of Little But A Roof Supported By Wooden Posts, Roughly Hewn From Date Trees:

Round the tamped earthen floor ran a raised bench of unbaked brick, forming a diwan for mats and sleeping-rugs.

In the centre a huge square Mastabah, or platform, answered a similar purpose. Here and there appeared attempts at long and side walls, but these superfluities had been allowed to admit daylight through large gaps. In one corner stood the apparatus of the "Kahwahji," an altar-like elevation, also of earthen-work, containing a hole for a charcoal fire, upon which were three huge coffee-pots dirtily tinned. Near it were ranged the Shishas, or Egyptian hookahs, old, exceedingly unclean, and worn by age and hard work. A wooden framework, pierced with circular apertures, supported a number of porous earthenware gullehs (gargoulettes, or monkey jars) full of cold, sweet water; the charge for each was, as usual in Al-Hijaz, five paras. Such was the furniture of the cafe, and the only relief to the barrenness of the view was a fine mellowing atmosphere composed of smoke, steam,

[p.216] flies, and gnats in about equal proportions. I have been diffuse in my description of the coffee-house, as it was a type of its class: from Alexandria to Aden the traveller will everywhere meet with buildings of the same kind.

Our happiness in this Paradise-for such it was to us after the "Golden Wire"-was nearly sacrificed by Sa'ad the Demon, whose abominable temper led him at once into a quarrel with the master of the cafe.

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