It was Djemal Pasha’s considered judgment that Yussuf cooked the best coffee in Jerusalem.  So whenever the despot was in the city he conferred on Yussuf the inestimable privilege of supplying him with coffee at odd moments, under threat of the bastinado if the stuff were not suitably sweet and hot.  The only money that ever changed hands in that connection was when the tax-gatherer came down on Yussuf for an extra levy, because of the added trade that conceivably might be expected to accrue through the advertisement obtained by serving such an exalted customer.  The tax-gatherer also threatened the bastinado; and as the man who likes that punishment, or who could soften the heart of a Turkish tax assessor, has yet to be discovered, Yussuf invariably paid.

But when Allenby conquered Palestine between bouts of trying to tame his Australians, and Djemal Pasha scooted hot-foot into exile with a two-hundred-woman harem packed in lorries at his rear, Yussuf remembered that old adage about better late than never.  He put Djemal’s name on the stone arch of the narrow door near the foot of David Street.  He did it partly out of the disrespect that a small dog feels for a big one that is now on chain; but he was not overlooking the business value of it.

The first result was that he did quite a lot of trade with British officers, who came primarily because they were sick of eating sand and bully-beef, and drinking sand and tepid water in the desert.  Later they flocked there by way of paying indirect homage to a governor who, whatever his obvious demerits, had at any rate never been answered back or thwarted with impunity.  (There was a time, after the capture of Jerusalem, when if the British army could have voted on it, Djemal Pasha would have been brought back and given a free hand.)

But the officers began to discover that Yussuf was charging them four or five times the proper price.  The seniors objected promptly, and deserted, to the inexpressible delight of the subalterns; but even the under-paid extravagant youths grew tired of extortion after a month or two, and Yussuf had to look elsewhere for customers.

Yussuf did some thinking behind that genial Turkish mask of his.  Competition was keen.  There are more coffee shops in Jerusalem than hairs on a hog’s back, and the situation, down near the bottom of that narrow thoroughfare in the shadow of an ancient arch, did not lend itself to drawing crowds.

But there were others in Jerusalem besides the British officers who yearned for Djemal’s rule again; and, unlike the irreverent men in khaki, they did not dare to voice their feelings in public.  All the old political grafters, and all the would-be new ones savagely resented a regime under which bribery was not permitted; and, as always happens sooner or later, they began to show a tendency to meet in certain places, where they might talk violence without risk of incurring it.