TO BAGDAD
At daybreak I woke, and immediately went to look at the rooms, one of
which I required to put my things in. Two were locked, a third and a
fourth had the roofs fallen in upon the floor, and a fifth I found I
could lock after a little repair, which I effected with a horseshoe
nail from the courtyard and a piece of wood broken from another door.
I dragged my things in, avoiding the holes in the verandah that looked
through into the stable below, and padlocked the door.
The bazaar was not yet open, and as I went out of the caravanserai door
the soldiers were just waking, and shouted at me to shut it again after
me. I turned to the right down the street, continuing the direction of
my journey of the night before, and came out upon the wide beach of the
north branch of the loop of the Lesser Zab, which makes Altun Keupri an
island. Here I had a good wash and a drink in the cold, sweet water,
and ate a scrap of bread I found in my pocket. I was rather hungry, for
except for a little bread and half a melon, I had had nothing since the
morning before in Kirkuk.
Turning back, I came again into the town and sought a coffee-house,
where I might glean some information as to how and where to find a raft
going to Bagdad.
There are four coffee-houses in the main street of Altun Keupri, of
which the largest and most popular sells only coffee. So I left this
on my right, desiring tea, and stayed at another. The attendant told
me that to get a kalak--or raft--I must address myself to the people
beyond the grain market, and instructed me how to go. The proprietors,
he said, were to be seen in a coffee-house by the beach, where the
rafts loaded.
So having paid my reckoning, I again went along the little main street
to the beach, at which I had washed earlier, but turned to the left
outside the town, and keeping along its outskirts came to the grain
market, a busy space where heaps of fine wheat lay upon the ground
neatly marked with the impression of a spade or some special implement
to prevent thieving, and picking my way among these came to two great
coffee-houses on the beach of the southern branch of the river. Here
under a pleasant canopy of green leaves outside the coffee-house I sat,
and, drinking tea, looked about me. There were many Arab kalak-owners
here, but the coffee-house proprietor, who spoke Persian, told me
of one that would leave during the morning. As I was talking my
acquaintances of the previous day entered, the stern father and silly
lad, and hearing our talk, said they were upon the same errand, and
that we might search together. At this I was extremely grateful, for
the stranger in a strange land hails with delight the prospect of a
travelling companion.
At the recommendation of the coffee-house keeper we sought, and soon
found, one Haji Uthman, a surly Arab, whom we found contemplating the
loading of a kalak from the shelter of a canopy of boughs upon the
beach. Upon asking him if he had a kalak leaving that morning, he
replied in the affirmative, and pointed to one just before him--then
turning his back upon us he entered into conversation with a dirty Arab
upon some trivial matter. He refused for some time to recognise that
we existed, till we turned to go away in disgust, when he shouted over
his shoulder that he would give us a passage to Bagdad if we wanted
one. The price he quoted as four mejidies a man, and when we protested
at this large sum, he again ignored us and engaged himself with other
matters. Once again we turned away, and this brought the price down
to three mejidies, but it required another rehearsal of the same act
to bring him to the proper price, two mejidies. Even then he only
consented with the most perfect ill-manners possible, telling us we
must sleep on our own luggage and not spread it about the raft on the
cargo.
[Sidenote: ENGAGING A PASSAGE]
He further demanded a mejidie from each of us, which we paid, and told
us to go away as quickly as possible and buy ourselves provisions, for
the kalak might start in a few minutes, and would wait for no one.
Hurried off in this abrupt manner, we separated, each to seek food
and luggage. On the way to the caravanserai I hired an old man with a
donkey, and together we went to the room and loaded my things on the
beast’s back, and entrusting him with the transport and custody of the
luggage, I left him to go to the bazaar, where I met the muleteer of
yesterday, Umar.
Him I pressed to my assistance, and as he heard that I was leaving
immediately, he thought of the most necessary thing, bread, so calling
a boy (he seemed to know everyone in the place), he told him to run
to his mother and tell her bake a large quantity of bread, and while
it was making to have a bag made to put it in. We then turned our
attention to the purchase of anything else the bazaar could supply for
the journey, and found the only lasting fruit to be small pears. After
much haggling we decided upon the goods of a certain man, and asked for
a huqqa of them, and in view of the fact that we were thus purchasers
on a large scale, were allowed to inspect each pear before accepting
it. So we joined in together in the task, biting one here and there,
feeling each and examining it for bruises and rot, and after what
seemed an hour, having made our version of the weight agree with that
of the seller, poured our purchase into a handkerchief, and set forth
to find cheese. Various kinds we saw and tasted, unsavoury lumps of
what would appear to be grey stone, and chose some the vendor swore was
at least a year old, and so warranted not to deteriorate with keeping.
To eat such, it must be soaked in water for half an hour to soften it
and expel some of the salt with which it is impregnated. We poured the
cheese in with the pears, and my food for the journey--when I should
have my bread--was complete, and I should have laid out, fare included,
about four mejidies (or thirteen shillings) for a journey of eleven
days to Bagdad.
All things being now ready, except the bread, we returned to the
coffee-house, the terminus, so to speak, for all kalaks, and called for
tea. While discussing this, I heard “Ghulam Husain,” and was joined in
a moment by a tall Arab, who had accompanied me on the journey in the
spring to Sulaimania. Now I was not certain whether Umar knew what I
purported to be, and was glad that the old man and his son were not
present, for they knew me for a Christian, and to appear in a false
light before either them or the Arab would have been very undesirable,
particularly as the latter was an extremely fanatical fellow, with whom
I had had many a religious argument on the right of Shi’a and Sunni.
He ran upon me, and embraced me with the greeting of Islam, a kiss
upon either cheek, and talking in a loud voice in Turkish, began to
ask me where I had been, and what doing. All the time I was keeping a
weather eye lifting for the old man and his son, and endeavoured to get
away, but the Arab refused to let me go, saying that by a chance God
had thrown us together and we must not lose the time thus given us for
brotherly conversation. And so he held me talking, speaking of Shiraz
and Persia, subjects that attracted the idle in the vicinity, making us
the centre of a listening group. In the thick of it a kalak-man came
running to say that they were just leaving, and it occurred to me at
the same moment that I had not yet got my bread, so entreating him to
wait a few minutes I rushed off, glad to get away from the Arab, and
full of the new fear of being left behind to kick idle heels in Altun
Keupri for another week or so.
My shoes I had left on the kalak to mark the particular bales which I
claimed as my place, and I ran through the streets of Altun Keupri, my
feet scorching on the hot earth. I was wearing my old dressing-gown
and a Kurdish headgear, a distinguished costume, and as I ran the
tail caught between two donkeys’ pack-saddles, and I left half a yard
behind. Sweating, I arrived at the door of the baker, to find the
housewife counting out the flaps of bread and putting them into a bag.
I snatched it up and threw it across my back, astounded at its weight
and bulk; and still wondering how I could ever eat this mountain of
bread, I stumbled out of the yard, regardless of the good woman’s cries
to count the bread, and arrived at the beach just in time to get myself
and my load aboard by wading through four feet of water, and mark my
Arab friend emerging from the coffee-house to bid me a farewell that
he shouted as he ran. The current was full here, though, and we were
soon carried beyond earshot, and my attention was drawn to my immediate
surroundings by the congratulations of the old man, who had installed
himself at the opposite end of my row of bales, and sat viewing my torn
skirts with sympathy.
[Sidenote: LEAVE ALTUN KEUPRI]
For a half hour or so I was occupied in arranging a place upon the
bales, spreading my cotton quilt under me, making a pillow of my bread,
trying to arrange some means of forgetting that under me was not even
level ground, but what I have called bales, bundles of knobby sticks
of the hardest and spikiest wood on earth, I was sure, being taken to
Bagdad for sale.
This I managed to a certain degree, and at last sat quiet to fry under
the August sun, in a breathless day--and feel the sweat running down.
The raft turned round and round slowly, veritably roasting us all
like kebabs on a skewer. The temperature in these quiet reaches of
the river between low red hills was immense, and to think of it was
but to remember that worse was certainly to come when we reached the
Mesopotamian plains.
About an hour before sunset we tied up at a little village of
Kurds where we were to take more loads of roots, and all our nice
arrangements were upset, for we had to take our goods ashore to allow
of the shifting of cargo. The place was at the end of a long, still
reach of the river; and entrusting my goods to the old man, I retired
to a secluded spot and indulged in a bathe, the first swim I had taken
for a year, and the first bath of any sort for well over a month.
We ate our simple meals of bread and fruit there upon a stony beach,
and lay down to sleep upon the pebbles until early morning. And so for
three days we progressed, our way winding among low hills along the
picturesque Lower Zab through an almost deserted land. That we had left
Kurd and Turkoman behind was now evident, however, for we saw none but
Arabs, and very few of them.
At intervals along the bank would be tiny patches of cultivation of
melons, where the falling summer river left a damp bank of silt, and
occasionally the owner would be there tending the fruit, but often
enough we would not see any signs of habitation for miles and miles
near a cultivation, which seemed ownerless and deserted. The day heat
was intense. As the river was too low to navigate at night, we were
enabled to sleep on the banks, and early morning saw us once more
afloat enjoying the half-hour of light before the sun rose. Then, too,
two hours followed of cool, the breeze overcoming the sun’s heat, but
during the morning this would drop, and we floated unsheltered from a
sun that seemed to scorch the bare flesh, and sent the perspiration
rolling down among the hair and into the eyes. Then one afternoon,
following a day during which we had been nearing a forbidding and
perpendicular ridge of mountain, we spun round a corner, across a bar,
and out into a very lake--the Tigris--which crept round a great bend
and flowed under the Jabal Hamrin range, a barren and desolate mountain
that harboured nought but Jabaur Arabs. Now we tied three of our small
rafts together, and there would be no more nights ashore. Till we
got to Bagdad we must sleep on our bundles of roots, and bear the
ever-increasing heat through days of still slower progress.
[Sidenote: ON THE TIGRIS]
The stream carried us under the great red bare rocks of the mountain,
and from behind them sprang out a score of Arabs, who ran along the
bank shouting to us to stop. One, stripping, swiftly dived and swam off
to us. He was a savage-looking creature, and swimming with a strong,
determined stroke, he overtook one of the rafts. Naked he sprang upon
it, and--like all the robbers of the East, in a terrible hurry--he
demanded tobacco and bread. These were given him and he pushed off
to another raft, taking toll again, when finding it drifting afar
he sprang off, and holding his spoil above his head, swam rapidly
to shore. Meanwhile his mates continued to threaten, and our Arab
kalak-men, intimidated, propelled their clumsy craft near the side, and
to satisfy the shrieking Arabs, collected a little tobacco from each
of us and swam ashore with it, considering themselves fortunate to be
allowed to go on without suffering further loss. These same Arabs had
and have a bad reputation, and will fire upon a kalak till the craft
comes alongside, when they will strip it, carrying away even the skins
and poles of which it is made.
The current took us away gradually from them, and the last we saw of
them was a fight going on for shares of the tobacco.
We had taken as a passenger at the Kurdish village a queer old man,
wizened and bent, clad in curious garments, flowing and old, who
carried a little bag and a tin water-pot. He had appeared on the beach
that evening when we had first halted, and announced himself a native
of Samarqand. In truth, he had a Mongol appearance. His little eyes
went up at an angle from the bridge of his flat nose, and his beard
grew in that straggly, meagre way typical of the Turkoman and Mongol
races. He spoke Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic, but was so old that
he had forgotten which was which, and, mixing them up, was utterly
unintelligible to the Arab kalak-men. All day he muttered to himself,
fingering his water-pot, or mending ancient garments with a wooden
needle. He had no bread, and ate sparingly of what we gave him. He made
this out to be his fifteenth journey to Mecca, but had quite forgotten
the pilgrim season. His talk was of many people and places, jumbled
together. Relics he had of each: a penknife from Meshed, a piece of wax
from Aleppo, a knob of some aromatic gum from a village in the remoter
wilds of northern Kurdistan.
“That,” he would say in his mouthing way, “is what they call in my
language a knife--‘buchaq,’ or Arabic ‘sikkin’--those Kurds call it
‘kiard.’ It is a good one, and I bought it for two metallik (a small
Turkish coin) in Meshed bazaar, near the Imam Reza mosque, of a good
Musulman that never let pass a day but he gave bread to such as myself.
It was here in this Bagdad I bargained for the knife of him, a tall
Kurd of Diarbekr, when--” and he would break off, and in the middle of
the morning, having forgotten his ablutions, stand up--back to Mecca,
instead of face to it--and say afternoon prayers.
On being addressed, he would give an answer to some thought in his
reminiscent brain, as like as not in Turkish, and finished in Kurdish,
which he spoke often enough--the rough Kurdish of Bayazid that we
southerners hardly understood. He reckoned to get to Mecca in a year’s
time, begging his way from serai to serai, or perhaps getting a passage
from Busreh to Jedda by a pilgrim ship. “Oh,” he said, “I found my way
from Bagdad to Palmyra and Medina twice, perchance I may do it again,
who knows?”--and he would ramble off into reminiscences of thirsty
days in the Arabian desert, mixed with the memory of the defiles of
Kurdistan and the freezing winter plains of Turkistan, lapsing now and
again into a queer dialect we could only suppose to be that of his
native place.
So this strange company floated to where a cliff cropped out of the
flat desert, and we came to dirty Tekrit, upon a slope under its lee,
a desert town, isolated in a barren stretch of nothingness upon the
loneliest river surely that ever ran. Filthy Tekrit, with its thirteen
shops which it calls a bazaar, and its two coffee-houses, one full of
Turkish parasites, who sit upon a little verandah high on a rock to
catch the warm evening breeze.
[Sidenote: TEKRIT]
Hideous straight-sided houses, a town of ugliness, full of well-dressed
Arabs sitting in the shade doing nothing--the favourite pursuit of all
Arabs--their women filing down in strings to fill the narrow-necked,
big-bellied water-pots the Arabs use from Mosul to the Gulf. Pretty
girls some of them were, that stopped carefully to wash their feet and
the water-pot before carrying it back. The young bride might be seen
there, soon entered upon the life of drudgery that would age her at
twenty-five, bearing gold ornaments hanging about her; and the hag,
who lived upon the charity of an idle and arrogant son, and gathered
her dirty rags about her shrivelled and blackened limbs. Essence of
barrenness, this Tekrit, a scorpions’ nest of venomous Arabs, a city of
dust built in the dust. Not a blade of grass, no sign of a green leaf.
Yet from somewhere came one selling fresh dates, and we bought the
sticky, half-ripe things as a luxury, while we crouched among the Arabs
under a falling wall to get away from the sun’s rays.
It has a kind of history, and its antiquity is undoubtedly great, like
that of most of the Mesopotamian towns. Persian and Arab historians
tell that it was built by Ardashir Babakan, the Persian king who ruled
in the 3rd century of the Christian era, and founded the great Sasanian
dynasty that ruled till Muhammad upset the growth of Christianity and
spread of civilisation, under the Persians. Others say that the founder
was a niece of that Bekr that built Diarbekr, but this can be little
but a fable.
On the cliff above Tekrit there are ruins, and in the vicinity of
the town there are signs of the time when Birtha, as the place was
called in ancient times, was a large and important place. During
early Christian times it was the residence of an important Christian
official, and is said to have contained as many as twelve churches. At
any rate, during the time of the khalifas of Bagdad it was important
enough to possess a good bridge, no relic of which now remains, and it
withstood a siege against Timur Lang.
Here, hoping to enter by the bridge into Mesopotamia and approach
Bagdad from the west, Hulagu Khan, the leader of the Mongol horde that
blighted all the Middle East, advanced upon Tekrit, but the Khalifa Al
Musta’sim b’Illah destroyed it before he reached the place, and a great
battle occurred between the two armies around the place. This was in
the first half of the 9th century.
Now it is a place of some fifteen hundred houses, whose inhabitants,
says a Persian traveller, “are a people friendly to darvishes,” and of
the Hanafi branch of the Sunni Musulman.
Here we took as a passenger an old woman going to Bagdad, a relation of
one of the kalak-men, who looked after her with great care. She, on her
part, took the ancient man under her special protection and provided
him from her plentiful store of bread. She pressed such delicacies as
sweet thin wheat cakes and dates upon us, and was extremely sympathetic
when she found I spoke but little Arabic and was a stranger from a far
land. It was she, too, that rigged up a shelter from the sun between
two rows of bales, and gave me some of her sticks, with which to do the
same, for which I was grateful, for the mid-day sun was now almost past
bearing without some shelter.
Next morning we woke to see the spire of Imam Daur, a small town upon
the left bank of the river, backed by one of the ancient mounts. This
Daur, or Dura as it was anciently called, has a very old history
indeed, for we read of it in the Bible:--“Nebuchadnezzar the king made
an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits and the breadth
thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province
of Babylon;” and here the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was
enacted. Here the Roman army, after Julian was dead, attempted the
passage of the Tigris, and part actually waded and swam across; and
here Jovian, who succeeded Julian, having retreated from Ctesiphon,
made a treaty with the Persians which gave them back the northern
Mesopotamian provinces. Here at the same ford attempted by the Romans,
we saw a caravan of asses being swum across the river, their drivers
effecting the transit by wading part of the way and swimming the rest.
[Sidenote: IMAM DAUR]
The third or fourth day out of Tekrit we saw the golden domes of
Samarra--“Surra-man-ra” (“That maketh glad the heart of him who espies
it”). It is a big place upon a cliff that juts out into the broad
Tigris; tawny, like the desert out of which it rises, its great mosque
standing clear above all, with that clean, new appearance that any
strong building must possess in this clear, dry atmosphere. No trees
adorn its streets, they are as desert as the plain outside. Only upon
the opposite side are a few gardens, and the remains of a bridge of
boats, which affords sufficient excuse for the Turks to take a toll
from all who pass down the stream.
The ancient fame of Samarra is departed, the crowds of Persians that
once inhabited it are departed, leaving behind a mixed population,
noted for its immorality and rascality.
Persian historians affirm that Samarra was built by Shapur the Sasanian
in the middle of the 3rd century A.D., but that after the power of the
Sasanians waned and disappeared in the 7th century before the rising
might of Muhammad, the town fell to ruins and was neglected till the
reign of Al Mu’tasim, khalifa of Bagdad, who made it his capital, and
one of the famous cities of the East. This position it held till the
time of the Khalifa Mu’tamid, who re-established the Khalifate at
Bagdad. The period of the occupation of Samarra by the khalifas was a
decadent one. Following immediately the brilliant times of the famous
Harun ar Rashid and Al Ma’mun,[70] who died in A.D. 813, Mu’tasim,
whose mind was fanatical and his ambitions those of a rapacious
plunderer, by his employment of Turkish mercenaries took the first step
upon that road that led to the decline of the dynasty, which, however,
was never extinguished till the Mongols sacked Bagdad and murdered Al
Musta’sim in A.D. 1240.
Here Mu’tasim built a great mosque, and enlarged the city so much that
the Persian historians describe it as having “stretched its length
and breadth, so that they said it was seven leagues long and a league
broad.”[71]
Here, too, was the famous minaret of Mu’tasim, which figures in the
romantic stories of Wathiq, of whom the most fantastic tales have been
told.
The fanatical nature of Mu’tasim has already been mentioned, and this
was the moving factor in the pursuit of one of the greatest heresiarchs
that ever threatened early Islam. This was Babak, who was known as
the Khurrami, and who defeated in battle many of the bravest and most
accomplished generals of the Khalifate. He was, however, captured by
Afshin, a leader of great renown and bravery. To arrive at a knowledge
of what the tenets of Babak were is now almost impossible, as the
only record we have is the prejudiced accounts of Musulman writers,
who naturally endeavour to fix upon him every loathsome and repulsive
doctrine that is possible. At any rate, it would appear that Babak
was supported in his wars by the northern Kurds, many of whom, not
converted from the corrupt form of Zoroastrianism they had originally
professed, were perfectly ready to throw the weight of their arms
against any power that would force upon them new rulers and a new
religion, particularly when those same were their hereditary enemies,
the Arabs.
Professor Browne, one of the greatest authorities, writes at length
on the subject of his beliefs,[72] which appear to have included the
doctrines of metempsychosis, and a pretension to divinity.
[Sidenote: SAMARRA]
When captured, he was sent to Samarra, where he was killed, his body
being crucified on the cliff that overlooks the Tigris. And the
grimmest feature of the whole tragedy is the ultimate fate of Afshin,
the conqueror and captor of Babak, for he was suspected of having
abetted the rebel Mazyar (who was crucified beside Babak), and was
tried at Samarra on the charge of himself being a follower of Babak,
and of pretending to the Divine Title. He was found guilty of these
and other crimes, and while Mazyar was executed and his body hung next
that of Babak, the unhappy Afshin languished in a prison. Then he too,
dead, took his place between them, and his ashes--for the body was
subsequently burned--were cast upon the waters of the Tigris.
These things happened in the years A.D. 839 and 840, and with the
accession of Mutawakkil (A.D. 847), a tyrant and profligate, the
dynasty declined, and Samarra began to acquire that name for evil that
it has never lost.
Yet it ranks high among the holy cities of Arabian Iraq, for here the
tenth and eleventh saints of the Shi’a succession lived and died.
During the time of the Khalifate at Samarra, there lived the saint Ali
bin Muhammad bin Ali bin Musa bin Jafar bin Muhammad bin Zain ul Abidin
bin Husain bin Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet himself. This was the
“Tenth Imam,” and he was succeeded by his son Husain al Askari, the
Eleventh Imam, whose offspring Muhammad “as Saghir” (“the Lesser”), is
that Twelfth Imam, the mysterious saint who has passed from the living,
but upon whose coming again the Shi’a waits, and around whose second
advent are clustered such masses of prophecies and tales as would fill
volumes. He is the “Mahdi,” at the mention of whose name the Persian
rises and bows, for--who knows--he may see, as he is in the world of
spirits, invisible but extant. He disappeared in the year 873 in a
cellar in Samarra--a place where the dwellers retreat during the heat
of the day. According to some he departed in Hillah, near Bagdad.
These religious circumstances, combined with an ancient fame and a
present very fine mosque, make Samarra a favourite place of pilgrimage
for Shi’a and Sunni alike--particularly the former--but all will agree
with the Persian traveller who says, “The numbers of Sayyids[73] and
beggars passes all description”; and again, “The inhabitants of Samarra
are said to be Hanafites, but it is really impossible to assert of what
race or of what belief they be, for they are of an extreme meanness
and servility of character, and of an avarice such that the beggars of
Samarra are a bye-word in all Islam.”[74]
As the golden dome faded from sight in the distance and the growing
night, I realised that my journey as a poor man was nearly over, for
we were approaching Bagdad. During the succeeding two days we passed
cultivations, and gardens, and date groves, signs of the city we were
approaching. From afar we sighted Kazemain, that holy place, too
often described to call for mention here, and at last, one evening,
our kalak-man told us that midnight would see us at the bridge above
Bagdad, below which kalaks may not pass.
I began to think how I might enter Bagdad as a European, for I wished
to go straight to the only hotel, and appear next day among the
Europeans, with some of whom I had affairs, and some acquaintance.
So, behind the bales, in the dark, I donned a suit of white clothing
I had kept ready, minus a collar--for it was summer, and heat excuses
many such details. I donned a pair of socks, a luxury to which I had
long been a stranger, and had a soft felt hat, much squashed and
battered--but still a Ferangi hat--ready in a handkerchief. Drawing the
old dressing-gown around me, I climbed up on my bundles of roots and
lay down and slept awhile. About two in the morning I woke, for the
kalak bumped against a bank, and I saw we had arrived. My friends were
collecting their goods, and the old Kirkukli asked me how and where I
proposed to go? to which I replied, I would depart in a “quffa,” or
round bitumen-covered coracle, to the house of a friend lower down the
river. This craft one of the kalak-men found for me after some minutes,
and I took a farewell of my friends, the last friends I should have in
a world I was leaving--not without pangs, for I had become one of them,
and found myself often enough contemplating with disgust the prospect
of striding about as a Ferangi--the “vulgar and blatant abomination” at
which Turkoman, Turk, Arab, Kurd, and Persian stand astonished.
[Sidenote: EUROPEAN AGAIN]
I slipped into the quffa, my fez still upon my head, still “effendi,”
and sat quiet, waiting till we should arrive at the back-stairs of
Bagdad’s only hotel, a humble house kept by a Christian. When we
arrived I hurried to the door, and standing in the shade of the portal,
bade the men of the quffa wait beside my luggage. In the dark and
shadow I slipped the European hat upon my head, threw the dressing-gown
over my arm like an overcoat, and stood, a European in appearance, if
somewhat shabby.
The door opened, I entered, and pleading fatigue sat in a dark corner
while the baggage was brought in and the boatman paid. I was shown to
a room, and slept for an hour, and woke in the morning to a hot bath
and a meal of European bread, milky tea, and boiled eggs, the sight of
which discomfited me, so that I passed them away and called for tea
from a tea-shop--milkless, and in a small glass--not a footbath of a
cup.
I spent most of the day trying to get used to sitting upon a chair, but
it was horribly uncomfortable, and my legs would gather under me in
spite of myself.
I felt stranger and more lonely than I had done ever before. Gone was
the coffee-house and the bazaar, of the multitudes of which I was one,
and equal, with whom I spoke and laughed, and fought and wrangled. They
were far away, and I must learn to look upon them as upon strange and
inferior beings, if such were now possible, and taking place again on
the platform of Western birth, once more go on my way affecting to
ignore their joys and sorrows--which had so lately been my own.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER XII:
[70] It is noticeable that the mother and wife of Ma’mun were
both Persian, and during the period of the khalifas of Abbasid
extraction--the most brilliant--it was the Persian influence which
contributed a great deal towards its liberality and high literary
standards.
[71] _Bustan us Siaha._
[72] _A Literary History of Persia_, vol. i., pp. 323–328.
[73] Persons claiming direct descent from the prophet.
[74] _Bustan us Siaha_, p. 303.