iful things.

Aoob:

I think they are loveliest a little after dawn when night falls off
from the houses. They draw it away from them slowly and let it fall
like a cloak and stand quite naked in their beauty to shine in some
broad river; and the light comes up and kisses them on the forehead. I
think they are loveliest then. The voices of men and women begin to
arise in the streets, scarce audible, one by one, till a slow loud
murmur arises and all the voices are one. I often think the city
speaks to me then: she says in that voice of hers, "Aoob, Aoob, who
one of these days shall die, I am not earthly, I have been always, I
shall not die."

Bel-Narb:

I do not think that cities are loveliest at dawn. We can see dawn in
the desert any day. I think they are loveliest just when the sun is
set and a dusk steals along the narrower streets, a kind of mystery in
which we can see cloaked figures and yet not quite discern whose
figures they be. And just when it would be dark, and out in the desert
there would be nothing to see but a black horizon and a black sky on
top of it, just then the swinging lanterns are lighted up and lights
come out in windows one by one and all the colours of the raiments
change. Then a woman perhaps will slip from a little door and go away
up the street into the night, and a man perhaps will steal by with a
dagger for some old quarrel's sake, and Skarmi will light up his house
to sell brandy all night long, and men will sit on benches outside his
door playing skabash by the glare of a small green lantern, while they
light great bubbling pipes and smoke nargroob. O, it is all very good
to watch. And I like to think as I smoke and see these things that
somewhere, far away, the desert has put up a huge red cloud like a
wing so that all the Arabs know that next day the Siroc will blow, the
accursed breath of Eblis the father of Satan.

Aoob:

Yes, it is pleasant to think of the Siroc when one is safe in a city,
but I do not like to think about it now, for before the day is out we
will be taking pilgrims to Mecca, and who ever prophesied or knew by
wit what the desert had in store? Going into the desert is like
throwing bone after bone to a dog, some he will catch and some of them
he will drop. He may catch our bones, or we may go by and come to
gleaming Mecca. O-ho, I would I were a merchant with a little booth in
a frequented street to sit all day and barter.

Bel-Narb:

Aye, it is easier to