Alternatively, the remarkable common features in these accounts might suggest that what these European travelers were audience to constituted part of a scene/act that was well rehearsed and carefully produced. It is perhaps no accident that nearly all visitors start their accounts by describing the busy, loud and ornamented antechamber full of officials and members of the public coming mostly to present petitions to the Pasha. Then they give an account of the "presence-room", a grand hall "belle dans sa nudité" and bare of everything but a sofa in a corner of which sat a figure shrouded in shadows. During the ensuing conversation they were surprised to discover that the mysterious figure was none but the great Pasha himself, but since they could not see his face nor "detect the expression of his countenance," they were left literally in the dark.

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 59