But we rode past the mosque.

It was full.

I would not have liked a contract to crowd one more in there.

Perhaps a New York Subway guard could have managed it.
The babel coming through the open door was like the buzzing of flies on a garbage heap.
I was trying to sit upright in that abominable saddle and look dignified, as became the honoured guest with a twenty-man escort, when a courteous-looking cut-throat wearing an amber necklace worth a wheat-field, forced his way through a crowd and greeted Anazeh like a long lost brother.

I examined him narrowly to make sure he was not Grim in disguise, but he had two fingers missing, and holes in his ears, which decided that question.
After he had welcomed me effusively he led us through a rat-run maze of streets to a good-sized house with snub-nosed lions carved on the stone doorposts and a lot of other marks of both Roman and crusader.