All of them wore more or less European clothing, with the inevitable tarboosh, each set at a different angle.

You can guess the mentality of the Syrian by the angle of that red Islamic symbol he wears on his head.

The black tassel normally hangs behind, and the steady-going conservatives and all who take their religion seriously, wear the inverted flower-pot- shaped affair as nearly straight up as the cranium permits.
But once let a Syrian take up new politics, join the Young Turk Party, forswear religion, or grow cynical about accepted doctrine, and the angle of his tarboosh shows it, just as surely as the angle of the London Cockney's "bowler" betrays irreverence and the New York gangster's "lid" expresses self-contempt disguised as self-esteem.
The head-gears were set at every possible angle in that coffee- shop of Yussuf's, from the backward tilt of the breezy optimist to the far-forward thrust down over the eye of malignant cynicism, which usually went with folded arms, legs thrust out straight, and heels together on the floor.
Yussuf brought me coffee without waiting to be asked.

I paid him a half-piastre for it, which is half the proper price, and utterly ignored his expostulation.

He touched me on the shoulder, displayed the coin in the palm of his hand and went through a prodigious pantomime.