Edward Hopper Night Windows painting

Edward Hopper Night Windows paintingEdward Hopper Lighthouse Hill paintingEdward Hopper Hotel Room painting
qasidah, poems of wayward mistresses, desert adventure, the hunting of the onager. In a day or so it will be time for the annual poetry competition, after which the seven best verses will be nailed up on the walls of the House of the Black Stone. The poets are getting into shape for their big day; Abu Simbel laughs at minstrels singing vicious satires, vitriolic odes commissioned by one chief against another, by one tribe against its neighbour. And nods in recognition as one of the poets falls into step beside him, a sharp narrow youth with swords. Entertainment -- dice, belly-dancers, palm-wine, the smoking of hashish and afeem -- is the prerogative of the fourth quarter of the tribe, the Owners of the Dappled Camels, who also run the slave trade. Abu Simbel looks into a dance tent. Pilgrims sit clutching money-bags in their left hands; name eventually; it, too, is changed by the dream. Here he is, Karim Abu Simbel, Grandee of Jahilia, husband to the ferocious, beautiful Hind. Head of the ruling council of the city, rich beyond numbering, owner of the lucrative temples at the city gates, in camels, comptroller of caravans, his wife the greatest beauty in the land: what could shake the certainties of such a man? And