Hot air and Arab politics have quite a lot in common.
But there was a broad desert-breath about it all.

It wasn't like the little gusty yaps you hear in the city coffee-shops.

A lot of the talk was foolish, but it was all magnificent.
There was one sheikh named Mustapha ben Nasir dressed in a blue serge suit and patent-leather boots, with nothing to show his nationality except a striped silk head-dress with the camel-hair band around the forehead.

He was a handsome fellow, with a black beard trimmed to a point, and perfect manners, polished no doubt in a dozen countries, but still Eastern in slow, deferential dignity.

He could talk good French.