We all three laid our shoulders against the door and shoved hard.

Evidently that was not expected; it swung back so suddenly that we were hard put to it to keep our feet.

The man who had opened the door lay prone on the floor in front of us with his legs in the air, and Anazeh laughed at him--the bitterest sign of disrespect one Arab can pay to another.
"Since when does the word of a Damascene exclude an honourable sheikh from a mejlis in El-Kerak ?" asked Anazeh, standing in the doorway.
He was in no hurry to enter.

The dramatic old ruffian understood too well the value of the impression he made standing there.

The room was crowded with about eighty men, seated on mats and cushions, with a piece of carpeted floor left unoccupied all down the centre--a high-walled room with beautifully vaulted ceiling, and a mullioned window from which most of the glass was gone.
The walls were partly covered with Persian and other mats, but there was almost no furniture other than water-pipes and little inlaid tables on which to rest coffee-cups and matches.