Troops of poor villagers from every miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day, beating drums, firing long guns, driving their presents before them--bullocks, cows, and sheep--and trying to make believe that they rejoiced and were glad.

Naomi appeared to be conscious of many tents pitched in the marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets, and of much bustle everywhere.
Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali's excitement.

The children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish, had been summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was to be dancing and singing and playing on musical instruments and Ali himself, who had lately practised the kanoon--the lute, the harp--under his teacher, was to show his skill before the Governor.

Therefore, great was the little black man's excitement, and, in the fever of it, he would talk to every one of the event forthcoming--to Fatima, to Habeebah, and often to Naomi also, until the memory of her infirmity would come to him, or perhaps the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him, and then, thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them like a fury, and they would scamper away.
When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs.

Every child carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then a girl with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling them close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly happy in their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through the iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women stood together closely covered in their blankets--the mothers and sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther--then down the crooked passage, past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.
This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a great company of children, their fathers and their teachers.