One only has to hear the haunting sound of traditional Middle Eastern music, played on instruments little changed for hundreds of years, and images of Sheherazade and her tales of 1001 Arabian Nights immediately to spring to mind. In her story: ‘The Porter And The Three Ladies Of Baghdad’, this passage: “Now the warmth of wine having mounted to their heads, they called for musical instruments, and the portress brought them a tambourine of Mosul, and a lute of Irak, and a Persian harp. And each mendicant took one and tuned it, this the tambourine and those the lute and the harp, and struck up a merry tune while the ladies sang so lustily that there was a great noise. And whilst they were carrying on, behold, someone knocked at the gate, and the portress went to see what was the matter there.” inspired me to paint a still life using some of the instruments she describes and I added a Berber rug, a brass-studded wooden chest and an orange to help portray their Arabic origin. The painting in acrylics on plaster is another in a series of wall murals I was commissioned to paint for the interior of an Arabic restaurant in Central London and it measures approximately 5’ x 4’.