Monday, September 22, 2008

Tamara de Lempicka Women at the Bath painting

Tamara de Lempicka Women at the Bath paintingTamara de Lempicka Girl Sleeping paintingTamara de Lempicka Femme a la Colombe painting
me her cigarettes.”
She asked about my I had told her I exported dates.
The date market was steady, I assured her.
When I was in the Moulay Abdullah I almost believed in this aspect of myself as a philo-progenitive fruiterer; St. John’s Wood and Mountrichard Castle seemed equally remote. That was the charm of the quarter for me—not its simple pleasures but its privacy and anonymity, the hide-and-seek with one’s own personality which redeems vice of its tedium.
That night there was a rude interruption. The gramophone suddenly stopped playing; there was a scuttling among the alcoves; two seedy figures in raincoats strode across the room and began questioning the proprietress; a guard of military police stood at the street door. Raids of this kind, to round up bad characters, are common enough in French Protectorates. It was the first time I had been caught in one. The girls were made to stand along one wall while the detectives checked their medical certificates. Then two or three soldiers stood to attention and gave a satisfactory account of themselves. Then I was asked for my carte d’identité. By the capitulations the French police had little authority over British subjects, and since the criminal class of Morocco mostly possessed Maltese

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