But it was fun, in spite of Suliman.

It was like seeing the world through a peep-hole.

Men and women you knew went by without suspecting they were recognized, and in a puzzling sort of way the world, that had been your world yesterday, seemed now to belong wholly to other people, while you lived in a new sphere of your own.
We had to go slowly as we approached the Jaffa Gate, for the crowd was dense there, and a line of Sikhs was drawn across the gap where the street passes through the city wall.

It was the gap the Turks once made by tearing down the wall to let the Kaiser through, when he made that famous meek and humble pilgrimage of his.

The Sikhs were searching all comers for weapons, and we had to wait our turn.
Outside the gate, on the left-hand as you faced it, was the usual line of boot-blacks--the only cheap thing left in Jerusalem--a motley two dozen of ex-Turkish soldiers, recently fighting the British gamely in the last ditch, and now blacking their boots with equal gusto, for rather higher pay.