Background Colour: -White- -NavajoWhite- -Wheat- -Beige- -AntiqueWhite- -LightGray- -Silver- -BurlyWood- -Tan- -Black- -Blue-
Text Colour: -Black- -Brown- -Blue- -Green- -Red- -Yellow- -White- -Orange- -Silver-
Published in Amra, Vol. 2, No. 7 (November 1959).
The wind from the Mediterranean wafted a thousand scents across the packed bazaar. The surging, disputatious throng that milled there was clamorous and bizarre with the sounds and colors of the East. Lean, hawk-like desert riders, fierce and suspicious as wild dogs in a strange territory, shouldered fat, oily Algerian merchants. Beggars whined for alms, thieves plied their trade, shopmen quarreled with customers and with each other, and every now and then the crowd broke precipitately to right and left as an arrogant-eyed sheikh came galloping through disdainfully careless of the lives and limbs of others—while his turbaned retinue laid lustily right and left with their riding whips. Or a huge Negro, naked except for a loin cloth, would stalk through, or a group of saber girt soldiers would swagger by. And all the while went on the business of barter—buying and selling—Persian sashes, Bokhariot wool, Turkish rugs, weapons from Egypt and Damascus, brass buckles from Afghanistan, spice and monkeys from India, ivory from Nubia.
And there were those who dealt in human flesh. On the auction block in the center of the crowded market place stood a little clump of figures, chained and nearly naked, who looked out at the milling buyers with the patience and lethargy of oxen.