As if from a dream from the Thousand and One Nights, I shall remember entering Pasha Abdullah's house on this spring morning.

An old quarter of the rich and the lords with a grim appearance. Dark walls full of mystery and menace. A fortress door, then small thick circuitous winding corridors, as if to be less penetrable. But suddenly, delightful gardens between fine colonnades of white marble, an Eden with flowering trees in the midst of a wonderful old oriental setting.

The pasha's janissary walks in front of me through the silent house. From time to time, as etiquette demands, he utters a loud cry of alarm in front of me in order to keep the women of the harem hidden. Repeating this dire warning in the middle of the empty garden leaves me feeling sacrilegious as I enter some forbidden fairy kingdom. Without thinking, I look around for mysterious houris.

The pasha welcomes me in a room worthy of Aladdin. Following the Damascene style, it is composed of two distinct parts on different levels: the first is the entrance including only a fountain in a huge wonderful marble basin; and the second, further back, two or three steps higher, furnished with couches and cushions which in this elevated position look like thrones. The flooring is of marble mosaics. On the walls, finer mosaics, mixed with mother of pearl, alternate with panels of the tilework which has not been produced since Tamerlane made his destructive way through. Each panel is framed by arabesques of rare design and depicts a spray of fanciful flowers breaking free from some strange vase with a long slender neck. The ceilings are very high; they are coloured and gilded, with wheel-windows and domes and are of an unimaginable geometrical intricacy, an extravagant kaleidoscopic fantasy. They are moreover delightfully faded and kept in the shadows high above everything by means of cleverly placed lighting rising from below. Wall niches contain hookahs sparkling with precious stones and silver ewers, covered in large turquoises like drops of blue milk. On the cushions and couches, there are matchless antique velvets and the kinds of embroidery which are scarcely to be found anymore.