Akbar owns a shady belly-dancing night-club. Here revolutionaries and sin-cravers and our own heroes mingle in the dark shadows, and in hushed tones they discuss secret and diabolical machinations.
It is this nightclub where the scene is set. It’s down a side alley in a neighbourhood of sin, and then underground down a flight of stairs to where the noise and music and the scent of kebabs come from. Inside, a voluptuous temptress dances seductively on a raised platform to earthy and sensuous music. Men crowd around the stage and cheer her on. The lighting is all wicks and candles, and the air is smoky dense and hallucinatory with the dark plumes of intoxicating effluvium from the hookahs many of the seated men are smoking hashish in. This is the lawless part of town, and there is that overwhelming scent of danger and transgression everywhere.
