Explore "Saïd the Fisherman" by Marmaduke Pickthall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Abu Khalìl, the fat taverner, sat in the doorway of his shop, blinking at the sunlight on the rough stones of the castle wall. Piercing cries of importunate salesmen, warning shouts of donkey-boys and muleteers -- all the hubbub of the neighbouring market reached him as a hum of insects. He nodded with it after the manner of the very fat, to whom the world's bustle is a perpetual lullaby.
A few dogs lay stretched in the sun's eye as if they had a mind to be well roasted throughout. Beneath a dirty awning, spread to shelter a stall of candies and sherbet, a white-turbaned negro, its owner, was dozing in the yellow shade beside his wares, his cheek reposing on a certain dainty of white sugar, finespun and silky, which hung tangled tresses over the end of a wooden case. A tod of hyssop, springing from a rift in the old stonework, had dusty leaves and looked sickly in contrast with its pendant of deep shadow. A green lizard slumbered on a jutting stone. Abu Khalìl blinked at all these things until they mixed in rosy haze before his eyes. The lizard seemed to fall upon the awning, the negro and his sweetmeats were lifted up to meet it, the hyssop swelled to a great tree, and Abu Khalìl's head dropped forward with a grunt of surrender.