An old Arab who was "hâjjee" brought them coffee, straight from the glowing embers. Starnworth took from his pocket a little box of tobacco and cigarette-papers, and deftly rolled two cigarettes. There were but few people in the café, and they were Easterns--two Egyptians, a negro, and three soldiers from the Soudan, black, thin almost as snakes, with skins so dry that they looked like the skins of some reptiles of the sands. And these Easterns were almost motionless, and seemed to be sunk in dreams.
"Why did you bring me here?" asked Isaacson.
"It bores you?"
"No. But I want to know why you chose this café out of all the cafés of Cairo."
"It's a very old and, among Easterns, very famous resort of smokers of hashish. You notice the blackened walls, the want of light. The hashish smoker does not desire any luxury or brightness. He wants his dream, and he gets it here. You would scarcely suppose it, but there are rich Egyptians of the upper classes, men who are seen at official receptions, who go to the great balls at the smart hotels, and who slink in here secretly night after night, mingle with the lowest riff-raff, to have their dream beneath this blackened roof. There is one coming in now."
As he spoke, Mahmoud Baroudi appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in native costume--very poorly dressed; wore a dingy turban, and a long gibbeh of discoloured cloth. With the usual salaam, muttered in his throat, he went into the farthest and darkest corner of the café and squatted down on the floor. The old Arab carried to him in a moment a gozeh, a pipe resembling a nargeeleh, but without the snake-like handle. Baroudi took it for a moment, inhaled the smoke of the hashish, and poured it out from his mouth and nostrils.
"He looks like a poor Egyptian," said Isaacson, almost in a whisper.
"He is a millionaire. By the way, didn't you see him this afternoon?"
"Where?"
"At Shepheard's. He drove up just before I saw you in a phaeton."
"The man with the Russian horses! Surely, it's impossible!"
"This afternoon he was the cosmopolitan millionaire. To-night he sinks down into his native East."
"Who is he?"
"Mahmoud Baroudi."
"Mahmoud Baroudi!" repeated Isaacson, slowly and softly.
An old man who had crept in began to sing in a high and quavering voice a song of the smokers of hashish, accompanying himself upon an instrument of tortoise and goat-skin. A youth in skirts began to posture and dance an unfinished dance of the dreamer who has been led by hashish into a world that is sweet and vague.