Mats! thought Abdullah. This was an insult. One of the carpets on display in front of Abdullah’s booth was a rare floral tufted one from Ingary—or Ochinstan, as that land was called in Zanzib—and there were at least two inside, from Inhico and Farqtan, which the Sultan himself would not have disdained for one of the smaller rooms of his palace. But of course, Abdullah could not say this. The manners of Zanzib did not let you praise yourself. Instead, he bowed a coldly shallow bow. “It is possible that my low and squalid establishment might provide that which you seek, O pearl of wanderers,” he said, and cast his eye critically over the stranger’s dirty desert robe, the corroded stud in the side of the man’s nose, and his tattered headcloth as he said it.

“It is worse than squalid, mighty seller of floor coverings,” the stranger agreed. He flapped one end of his dingy carpet toward Jamal, who was frying squid just then in clouds of blue, fishy smoke. “Does not the honorable activity of your neighbor penetrate your wares,” he asked, “even to a lasting aroma of octopus?”

Abdullah seethed with such rage inside that he was forced to rub his hands together slavishly to hide it. People were not supposed to mention this sort of thing. And a slight smell of squid might even improve that thing the stranger wanted to sell, he thought, eyeing the drab and threadbare rug in the man’s arms. “Your humble servant takes care to fumigate the interior of his booth with lavish perfumes, O prince of wisdom,” he said. “Perhaps the heroic sensitivity of the prince’s nose will nevertheless allow him to show this beggarly trader his merchandise?”

“Of course, it does, O lily among mackerel,” the stranger retorted. “Why else should I stand here?”

Abdullah reluctantly parted the curtains and ushered the man inside his booth. There he turned up the lamp which hung from the center pole but, upon sniffing, decided that he was not going to waste incense on this person. The interior smelled quite strongly enough of yesterday’s scents. “What magnificence have you to unroll before my unworthy eyes?” he asked dubiously.

“This, buyer of bargains!” the man said, and with a deft thrust of one arm, he caused the carpet to unroll across the floor.

Abdullah could do this, too. A carpet merchant learned these things. He was not impressed. He stuck his hands in his sleeves in a primly servile attitude and surveyed the merchandise. The carpet was not large. Unrolled, it was even dingier than he had thought—although the pattern was unusual, or it would have been if most of it had not been worn away. What was left was dirty, and its edges were frayed.