_Verb sap!_"
Most of the Legionaries produced tobacco; but the Olema, smiling,
raised a hand of negation. For already the slave-girls were entering
with trays of cigarettes and silver boxes of tobacco. These they
passed to the visitors, then to the Arabs. Such as preferred
cigarettes, suffered the girls to light them at the copper fire-pans.
Others, choosing a _shishah_, let the girls fill it from the silver
boxes; and soon the grateful vapors of tobacco were rising to blend
with the spiced incense-smoke.
A more comfortable feeling now possessed the Legionaries. This sharing
of tobacco seemed to establish almost an amicable Free Masonry between
them and the Jannati Shahr men. All sat and smoked in what seemed a
friendly silence.
The slave-girls silently departed. Others came with huge, silver trays
graven with Koran verses. These trays contained meat-pilafs, swimming
in melted butter; vine leaves filled with chopped mutton; _kababs_,
or bits of roast meat spitted on wooden splinters; crisp cucumbers; a
kind of tasteless bread; a dish that looked like vermicelli sweetened
with honey; thin jelly, and sweetmeats that tasted strongly of
rosewater.
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