But I tell you the jackal has to leave his hole to hunt." [*Coffee-shops] They did not like taking orders, even when they were expressed more or less indirectly; no follower of the new political freedom does like it, for it rather upsets the new conceit.

But he evidently knew his politicians, and they him.

They got up one by one and made for the door, each offering a different excuse designed to cover up obedience under a cloak of snappy independence.
Not one of them drew a retort from him, or as much as a farewell nod.
When the last one was gone, and the process took up all of half- an-hour, he sat and looked down his nose at me for several minutes without speaking.

You could have guessed just as easily what an alligator was thinking about, and I tried to emulate him, pretending to go off into the brown study that the Turks call kaif, out of which it is considered bad manners to disturb your best friend, let alone a stranger.

But manners proved to be no barrier in his case.
He began talking to me in Arabic--directly at me, slowly and deliberately, but I did not understand very much of it and it was not difficult to pretend I did not hear.