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.

Dates, pomegranates, and areca nuts cut up and mixed with sugar-paste pinned with cloves into a betel leaf--these constituted the dessert.
The Arabs ate with strict decorum, according to their custom, beginning the banquet with a _Bismillah_ of thanks and ending with an _Al Hamd_ that signified repletion.