Nabila Mosque is associated with the setting of Lin’s meetings with Abdel Khader Khan: a great house whose rooms and inner courtyard combine restrained decoration with conspicuous wealth. The location’s significance lies in that contrast. Spaces arranged for quiet conversation and hospitality become the setting for encounters with the power of a criminal empire.

The Meeting Room

At one meeting, Abdel Khader Khan welcomes Lin into a large room where nine men sit in a circle around a low marble table. Cream tiles, an Isfahan carpet, pale blue and white mosaics, and arched windows overlooking a palm-filled courtyard give the room a composed, almost ceremonial character. Its sparse furnishings are cushions and the table; its sole decoration is a black-and-gold depiction of the Kaaba at Mecca. The room’s austerity is deliberate rather than a sign of poverty: the men gathered there command, as the narration observes, the wealth and power of a small criminal empire.

The House and Courtyard

On a later visit, Lin enters the great house on Mohammed Ali Road through its open street door. Nazeer directs him to exchange his street shoes for house slippers, then guides him through a tall, narrow corridor and past closed rooms into an inner courtyard. Open to the sky, the oval courtyard is paved with heavy Maharashtrian stone and bordered by pillared arches, flowering shrubs, plants, and five slender palms.

A fountain occupies its centre. Water rises from a huge uncut boulder, forms a lily-shaped plume, and falls over the stone into the surrounding pool. Abdel Khader Khan sits nearby in a cane chair, reading before closing his book to greet Lin. The fountain’s rhythmic movement and the garden’s enclosure lend the meeting place calm and privacy, while the passage through the house makes entry feel controlled and intentional.

Narrative Significance

The interiors give physical form to the authority surrounding Abdel Khader Khan. Their order, religious imagery, and cultivated simplicity stand beside the material reach of the criminal organization, without disguising it. Hospitality is expressed through precise gestures—removing shoes, being shown a seat, receiving a greeting—but the setting also belongs to a world of wealth and power. The contrast makes the house more than a backdrop: it frames Lin’s access to Khader Khan as both personal welcome and entry into a larger underworld.