mashrubiyeh

Gingerly he kicked off the nondescript black shoes he had worn with his disguise that afternoon and essayed a perilous toehold while he reached for the interstices of a mashrubiyeh window just overhead.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

And then the stealthy opening of a door -- it was the very door by which Yussuf had precipitated himself upon the struggle at the supper table some age-long hours ago -- gave him a glimpse into the far glooms of the reception room, where its long side of mashrubiyeh windows revealed now between its fretwork tiny chinks of a paling sky.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

Broken by the circles, the squares, the minute interstices of the mashrubiyeh, she saw the city taking on the hues of sunset.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

"Oh, I wished her joy -- native phrases -- that sort of thing," he answered mechanically as they drew back into an embrasure of the mashrubiyeh that formed one side of the great room.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

Kneeling at the gate, over the dark flow of the water, she drew him down beside her, and thrusting out her veiled head, she pointed upward and to the right to a jutting balcony of mashrubiyeh, where a pale light showed through the fretwork.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

If they kept the mashrubiyeh on the windows and the yashmak on their faces they ought to keep the kohl on their eyes and the henna on their fingers and education out of their hidden heads.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

Swiftly she thrust the box from sight, into the hollow in the mashrubiyeh made in old days to hold a water bottle where it could be cooled by breezes from the street.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

Barred on the garden, and on the street the impregnable wooden screens of the mashrubiyeh, those were the rooms where this girl beside him was to spend her life -- until that most indulgent father wearied of her modernity and transferred her to other rooms, as barred and screened, in the palace of some husband! ...

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

And then, as if some careless property man had overlooked them in changing the act, two window balconies of closely carved old wood, of solidly screening mashrubiyeh wood, jutted out from one cream-tinted wall, and above a gilded sofa, upholstered in the delicate fabric of the Rue de la Paix, hung a green satin banner embroidered in silver with a phrase from the Koran.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley

So he went on, worming cautiously along old gutters and ledges and jutting balconies until at last he was clasping the lower grill of that mashrubiyeh from which her light gleamed.

The Fortieth Door Mary Hastings Bradley