alarbi

Updated: May 20, 2025

Fireplaces do not exist, though from December to March the thermometer has sometimes, on single occasions, touched freezing-point at night. Earthenware pans of charcoal, used for cooking, can be carried upstairs for warmth. The other rooms in Alarbi Abresha's house were all more or less replicas of the best room shorn of its gilt. A Moor does not spend his day indoors.

Isabel Savory - In the Tail of the Peacock

Alarbi Abresha has been nicknamed "the Duke of Westminster" the wealthiest man in Tetuan. A slave responded to the hammer of the great knocker, demanded who knocked, and then opened the door. Alarbi Abresha was out; but his son, a youth badly marked with small-pox, received us, dressed in a jellab of pale blue, tasselled, and worked in white. Mr. Bewicke asked after the house.

Isabel Savory - In the Tail of the Peacock

The amount which a Moor can eat is prodigious. Alarbi Abresha, Junior, meanwhile, took us on into his father's guest-house, a suite of magnificent rooms, decorated in execrable taste, the barbaric glories of the old Moorish style giving place to modern French vulgarity. A courtyard house can be a strange mixture.

Isabel Savory - In the Tail of the Peacock