Jimgrim by Talbot Mundy

Believe me, Cairo burning kerosene and candles is a very different place from Cairo lighted up. Brown's Hotel was like an old-time monastery; even the shadows on the walls leaped with a sort of restraint that reacted on people and made them move stealthily. The suggestiveness of that subdued men's voices, and a feeling of awe, not far from horror, very soon ensued.

Outside, the streets were in almost darkness, although the starlight helped the dim lanterns of the pickets and patrols and there was some light oozing through the cracks of doors and shuttered windows. The authorities had clapped on a curfew regulation and it was working with the surprisingly sudden efficiency with which most things British do function when the first, invariably contemptuous scorn of the unexpected has yielded to common-sense.