lies a country still untraversed by highroad or railway line. Here
rise mountains clothed in the spring with a gay mantle of crocuses and
wild tulips, but on whose scorched sides the burning summer sun leaves
nothing but a low growth of thorns; here are steep valleys, where the
shadows fall early and rise late, strewn with rocks, crowned with
fantastic crags, scarred with deep watercourses; here the hawks hover,
the eagle passes with mournful cry, and the prisoned wind dashes madly
through the gorge. Here lie reaches of plain bounded on all sides by
the mountain wall, plateau after thorny plateau--a rolling wilderness
over which the headlands stand out as over a sea. Through the middle
of the plain flows a river, its stony bed cut deep into the earth;
silver trout leap in its pools, strips of grass border it--stretches of
pastureland in the midst of the desert--flocks of goats feed along its
banks, and from some convenient hollow rises the smoke of a nomad camp.
For beautiful as it is in its majestic loneliness, this country is not
one where men are tempted to seek an abiding dwelling. In the spring,
when the fresh grass clothes the bottom of the valleys, in the summer,
when the cool winds sweep the plain, they are content to pitch their
tents here; but with the first nip of autumn cold they strike camp, and
are off to warmer levels, leaving the high snow-carpeted regions empty
of all inhabitants but the wild goats and the eagles. To-day, perhaps,
the gloomiest depth of a narrow gorge, which looks as though from the
time of its creation no living thing had disturbed its solitude, is
strewn with black tents, flocks of horses and camels crop the grass by
the edge of the stream, the air is full of the barking of dogs and the
cries of women and children; but to-morrow no sign of life remains--the
nomads have moved onward, silence has spread itself like a mantle from
mountain to mountain, and who can tell what sound will next strike
against their walls?
The sight fills you at first with a delightful sense of
irresponsibility. Go where you will, the rocks will retain no impress
of your footsteps; dwell where you please, the mountains are your only
witnesses, and they gaze with equal indifference on your presence and
on your absence. But the fitfulness of human habitation among them,
the absence of any effort to civilize them, to make them shelter man
and minister to his wants, gives them an air of stubborn hopeless
sterility, very imposing, very repelling. Gradually the loneliness
will strike into your heart with a feeling almost akin to horror. We
are not accustomed to finding ourselves face to face with nature. Even
the most trivial evidences of the lordship of man afford a certain
sense of protection--the little path leading you along the easiest
slope, the green bench selecting for you the best view, the wooden
finger-post with ‘Zum Wasserfall’ written up upon it in large letters
telling you what other men have thought worth seeing. Other men have
been there before--they have smoothed out the way for you--you will
find them waiting at the end, and ready to provide you with shelter and
with food.... But here there is nothing--nothing but vast and pathless
loneliness, silent and desolate.
For the nomads can no more give you a sense of companionship than
the wild goats; they are equally unconscious of the desolation which
surrounds them. All day long the men lie before the low doors of their
tents lazily watching the grazing herds; towards evening, perhaps,
they will stroll along the banks of the river with a bent stick for
fishing-rod, dropping a skilful line into the pools where lie the
guileless trout of those waters. Meantime the women sit weaving the
coarse black roofs which shelter them, or twisting the yellow reeds
into matting for walls, working so deftly that in an incredibly short
time a new dwelling has grown under their fingers. In the clear
sunlight the encampment looks sordid enough; night, which with sudden
fingers sweeps away the sun, revealing the great depths of heaven and
the patined stars, reveals also the mysterious picturesqueness of
camp-life. The red light of the fires flickers between the tents; the
crouching figures of men and women preparing the evening meal seem
to be whispering incantations into the hot ashes. They rise, dim and
gigantic, with faces gleaming in the uncertain starlight; they flit
like demons backwards and forwards between the glowing rays of the
fires and the darkness beyond. You find yourself transplanted into a
circle of the Inferno, of which the shaggy dogs that leap out barking
to meet you are no less vigilant guardians than Cerberus himself A
woman with neck and breast uncovered catches you by the sleeve, and
offers to sell you a bowl of clotted cream or a vociferous fowl; her
dark eyes glisten through the dusk as she tosses the matted hair from
her forehead; perhaps if you stayed to eat at the bidding of this Queen
of Dis you would be kept eternally a prisoner in her mournful domains.
With the dawn the mystery vanishes--the place through which you passed
last night is only a dull little camp, after all--and this woman
clothed in dirty rags, is it possible that she can be the regal figure
of last night?
But daylight will not bring you into closer fellowship with the
nomads; even if you fall into speech with one of them, there are few
common topics on which you can converse. He will question you as to
your nationality. Are you a Russian? he inquires, naming probably the
only European nation he knows. You try to explain that you are English,
and come from far across the seas; and he listens attentively, though
you know that your words throw no light on his boundless ignorance.
Presently he will change the conversation to matters more within his
understanding. What news is there of the Shah? Is he coming this
summer to his camp at Siah Palas? Has the sickness struck him? The
sickness! So with terrible significance he speaks of the cholera which
is ravaging the country, and goes on to tell you that he and his family
are flying before it. ‘From over there they have come,’ pointing to
distant valleys. ‘The sickness fell on them; eleven of their men died,
and since they moved down here two more have been carried off.’ A
sudden picture of grim fear flashes up before you at his simple words.
With what shapeless terror does the plague fill the feeble little camp!
With what awful solemnity must the dead body invest the frail, small
hut! What wailing cries take the place of all the cheerful sounds, and
with what hurried dread is the corpse committed to an unremembered
grave! Many processions of villages on the march pass you now, flying
from the terror of death--a little herd of goats and horses driven
by the children, a few camels carrying the rolled-up bundles of
reed-dwellings, on the top of which sit the men of the family, women on
foot following in the rear, a convoy of yellow dogs barking round the
tiny caravan into whose narrow compass all the worldly goods of so many
human beings are compressed.
But the nomads are not the only inhabitants of the valley; there are
one or two more luxurious encampments. An Indian prince has pitched his
camp there, and greets you as you pass, fishing-rod in hand, with an
amicable ‘Good-evenin’, sar.’ His scanty English, confined though it
be to this one salutation, somewhat destroys the local colour of the
scene. Noble Persians fly in the summer to this cool retreat, pitching
elaborate tents of French or Indian manufacture by the edge of the
river, stabling thirty or forty horses in the open air, riding through
the country attended by an army of servants whom they carry with them
even on their fishing expeditions, and who follow close behind their
masters when they venture waist-high into the stream in the enthusiasm
of sport. The grandees bring their women with them; white canvas walls
enclose the tents of wives and daughters whom captivity holds even in
these free solitudes, and their negro attendants are familiar figures
by the river sallows, where their shrouded forms hover sadly. They
understand camp life, these Persian noblemen; they are as much at home
among the mountains as in their gardens and palaces. Their lavish
magnificence is not out of keeping with the splendours of nature....
But you are only playing at nomads, after all, and when the moonlight
strikes the wall of rock behind your camp, you try to banish from your
mind the recollection of painted theatre scenes which it involuntarily
suggests, and which makes it all seem so unreal to you.
Unreal--unreal! ‘The fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to
do.’ In vain you try to imagine yourself akin to these tented races, in
vain you watch and imitate their comings and goings; the whole life is
too strange, too far away. It is half vision and half nightmare; nor
have you any place among dwellers in tents. Like the empty bottles and
greased papers with which a troop of Bank-holiday Philistines sullies
the purity of a purple moor, your presence is a blot on the wild
surroundings, a hint of desecration.
Return to your cities, to your smooth paths and ordered lives; these
are not of your kindred. The irretrievable centuries lie between,
and the stream of civilization has carried you away from the eternal
loneliness of the mountains.
_THREE NOBLE LADIES_
WHEN the Shah takes a girl into his andarun it is said to be a matter
for universal rejoicing among her family, not so much because of the
honour he has done her, as because her relatives look to using her
influence as a means of gaining for themselves many an envied favour.
For aught I know to the contrary, the girl, too, may think herself
a fortunate creature, and the important position of the one man she
may possibly govern may console her for the monotony of her kingdom;
but however delightful as a place of abode the royal andarun may be,
in one respect it must fall short of the delights of the kingdom of
heaven--there cannot fail to be endless talk of marrying and giving
in marriage within its walls. The number of the Shah’s wives is
great, and he is blessed with a proportionately large family; it must
therefore be difficult to find a sufficiency of high-born suitors
with whom to match his daughters. Moreover, there may be a trace of
reluctance in the attitude of the suitors themselves, for the privilege
of being the Shah’s son-in-law is not without its disadvantages. If
the nobleman selected happen to be wealthy, the Shah will make their
close relationship an excuse for demanding from him large gifts; if
at any subsequent period he should have a mind to take another wife,
the etiquette of the Court will stand in his way; and still worse, if
he be already married, he will find himself obliged to seek a divorce
from his wife that he may obey the Shah’s command. The negotiations
preceding the match must be complicated in the extreme, and great must
be the excitement in the andarun before they are concluded.
With one such household we were acquainted. The husband, whose title
may be translated as the Assayer of Provinces, was a charming person,
who had spent much of his youth (much also of his fortune) in Paris.
He was a cultivated man and an enthusiast for sports; a lover of dogs,
which for most Persians are unclean animals, and a devotee to the art
of fishing. He had suffered not a little at the hands of his royal
father-in-law, and had withdrawn in indignation from all public life,
spending his days in hunting and shooting, in improving his breed of
horses, and in looking after his estates. His residence abroad had made
him more liberal-minded than most of his countrymen. He paid special
attention to the education of his daughters, refused to allow them to
be married before they had reached a reasonable age, and gave them such
freedom as was consistent with their rank. They were two in number; we
made their acquaintance, and that of the Princess their mother, one
afternoon in Tehran.
Now, an afternoon call in Persia is not to be lightly regarded; it
is a matter of much ceremony, and it lasts two hours. When we arrived
at the house where the three ladies lived, we were conducted through
a couple of courts and a long passage, and shown into a room whose
windows opened into a vine-wreathed veranda. There was nothing Oriental
in its aspect: a modern French carpet, with a pattern of big red roses
on a white ground, covered the floor; photographs and looking-glasses
hung upon the walls; the mantelpiece was adorned with elaborate vases
under glass shades, and on some brackets stood plaster casts of
statues. We might have imagined ourselves in a French château, but for
the appearance of the châtelaine.
The Princess was a woman of middle age, very fat and very dark; her
black eyebrows met together across her forehead; on her lips there
was more than the suspicion of a moustache; the lower part of her
face was heavy, and its outline lost itself in her neck. The indoor
costume of a Persian lady is not becoming. She wears very full skirts,
reaching barely to the knee, and standing out round her like those of
a ballet-dancer; her legs are clothed in white cotton stockings, and
on her feet are satin slippers. These details are partly concealed
by an outer robe, unfastened in front, which the wearer clutches
awkwardly over her bulging skirts, and which opens as she walks,
revealing a length of white cotton ankles. In the case of the Princess
this garment was of pale blue brocade. She wore her hair loose, and a
white muslin veil was bound low upon her forehead, falling down over
the hair behind. She was too civilized a woman to have recourse to the
cosmetics which are customary in the East; the orange-stain of henna
was absent from her finger-nails, and in the course of conversation she
expressed much disapproval of the habit of painting the eyes, and great
astonishment when we informed her that such barbarism was not unknown
even in England.
It must not be imagined that the conversation was of an animated
nature. In spite of all our efforts and of those of the French lady
who acted as interpreter, it languished woefully from time to time.
Our hostess could speak some French, but she was too shy to exhibit
this accomplishment, and not all the persuasions of her companion could
induce her to venture upon more than an occasional word. She received
our remarks with a nervous giggle, turning aside her head and burying
her face in her pocket-handkerchief, while the Frenchwoman replied
for her, ‘Her Royal Highness thinks so and so.’ When the interview
had lasted for about half an hour, cups of tea were brought in and
set on a round table in the midst of us; shortly afterwards the two
daughters entered, sweeping over the floor towards us in green and
pink satin garments, and taking their places at the table. The younger
girl was about sixteen, an attractive and demure little person, whose
muslin veil encircled a very round and childish face; the other was
two years older, dark, like her mother, though her complexion was of
a more transparent olive, and in her curly hair there were lights
which were almost brown. Her lips were, perhaps, a little too thick,
though they were charmingly curved, and her eyes were big and brown and
almond-shaped, with long lashes and a limpid, pathetic expression--just
such an expression as you see in the trustful eyes of a dog when he
pushes his nose into your hand in token of friendship. Nor did her
confiding air belie her: she took our hands in her little brown ones
and told us shyly about her studies, her Arabic, and her music, and
the French newspapers over which she puzzled her pretty head, speaking
in a very low, sweet voice, casting down her black eyelashes when we
questioned her, and answering in her soft guttural speech: ‘Baleh
Khanum’--‘Yes, madam,’ or with a little laugh and a slow, surprised
‘Naghai-ai-r!’ when she wished to negative some proposition which was
out of the range of her small experience.
During the course of the next hour we were regaled on lemon ices,
and after we had eaten them it was proposed that we should be taken
into the garden. So we wandered out hand-in-hand, stopping to speak
to an unfriendly monkey who was chained under the oleanders, and who
turned a deaf ear to all our blandishments. In the garden there was
a large pond, on the banks of which lay a canoe--an inconvenient
vessel, one would imagine, for ladies attired in stiff and voluminous
petticoats! Tents were pitched on the lawn, for our hostesses were on
the eve of departure for their summer camp in the mountains, and had
been examining the condition of their future lodgings. The garden, with
its tents and its water, was like some fantastic opera stage, and the
women, in their strange bright garments, the masqueraders, who would
begin to dance a _pas de trois_ before us as soon as the orchestra
should strike up. But the play was unaccountably delayed, and while we
sat under the trees servants appeared bringing coffee, a signal that
the appointed time of our visit had come to an end, and that we might
be permitted to take our leave. The girls accompanied us into the
outer court, and watched us through the half-open doors till we drove
away, wishing, perhaps, that they too might drive out into the world
with such unfettered liberty, or perhaps wondering at our unveiled
shamelessness.
We went to see the three ladies again when we were in the mountains.
Their camp was pitched about a mile lower down the river than ours, on
a grassy plateau, from which they had a magnificent view down the long
bare valley and across mountains crowned by the white peak of Demavend.
No sooner had we forded the river in front of our tents than a storm
of wind and rain and hail broke upon us, but we continued dauntlessly
on our way, for the day of our visit had been fixed some time before,
and it was almost pleasant after the summer’s drought to feel the rain
beating on our faces. When we reached the Persian camp we dismounted
before a canvas wall which surrounded the women’s tents, a curtain was
drawn aside for us by a negro slave, and we were taken into a large
tent, where the Princess was sitting on a rolled-up bed for sofa. We
greeted her with chattering teeth and sat down on some wooden chairs
round her, carrying on a laboured conversation in the French tongue,
while our wet clothes grew ever colder upon us. We remembered the
steaming cups of tea of our former visit, and prayed that they might
speedily make their appearance, but, alas! on this occasion they were
omitted, and lemon ices alone were offered to us. It is not to be
denied that lemon ices have their merit on a hot summer afternoon, but
the Persian’s one idea of hospitality is to give you lemon ices--lemon
ices in hail storms, lemon ices when you are drenched with rain, lemon
ices when a biting wind is blowing through the tent door--it was more
than the best regulated constitution could stand. We politely refused
them.
An important event had taken place in the household during the last
two months: a marriage had been arranged between the eldest daughter
and a young Persian nobleman, whose wealth and influence matched
themselves satisfactorily with her rank. He, too, was spending the
summer in the mountains; his camp lay a little beyond ours, and we were
therefore able to observe the daily visits which took place between him
and his future father-in-law, when they rode, attended by troops of
mounted servants, backwards and forwards along the stony bridle-path
on the opposite bank. Doubtless great discussions of the approaching
marriage and of the art of fly-fishing took place in those August days.
We stood in the centre of this Oriental romance, and felt as though we
were lending a friendly hand to the negotiations. Certainly, if good
wishes could help them, we did much for the young couple.
The Assayer of Provinces spent most of his time trout-fishing. He
used to make us presents of gaudy flies manufactured by his negro
slave (himself a most successful fisherman), and we found that these
attracted the trout of the Lar considerably more than our March browns
and palmers. The eldest daughter shared her father’s taste. When she
and her sister joined us in her mother’s tent that thundery afternoon,
we fell into a lively discussion of the joys and the disappointments of
the sport, comparing the number of fish we had killed and the size of
our largest victim. The Persian girls had never gone far afield--they
contented themselves with the pools and streams near their tents--but
that they should fish at all spoke volumes for their energy. To throw
a well-considered fly is a difficult art at best, but to throw it when
you are enveloped from head to foot in sweeping robes must be well-nigh
impossible.
This second visit passed more cheerfully than the first. The fresh
mountain wind had blown away the mists of ceremony, there was no
interpreter between us, and we had a common interest on which to
exchange our opinions. That is the secret of agreeable conversation. It
is not originality which charms; even wit ceases in the end to provoke
a smile. The true pleasure is to recount your own doings to your
fellow-man, and if by a lucky chance you find that he has been doing
precisely the same thing, and is therefore able to listen and reply
with understanding, no further bond is needed for perfect friendship.
Unfortunately, this tie was lacking between us and the monkey, who
was also in villeggiatura by the banks of the Lar, and in consequence
we got no further forward with him than before. Our presence seemed,
indeed, to exasperate him more than ever. He spent the time of our
visit making spiteful dashes at us, in the vain hope that the gods
might in the end reward his perseverance and lengthen his chain
sufficiently to allow him to bite us but once before we left.
But the gods have eternity in their hand, and we must hasten, for
our time is short; long ere the monkey’s prayer was answered we had
risen and taken leave of the three ladies. We left them gazing after
us from behind their canvas walls. Their prisoned existence seemed to
us a poor mockery of life as we cantered homewards up the damp valley,
the mountain air sending a cheerful warmth through our veins. The
thunderstorm was past, the sun dropped in clear splendour behind the
mountains, leaving a red glory to linger on the slopes of Demavend, and
bearing the fulness of his light to the Western world--to our own world.
_THE TREASURE OF THE KING_
CHOLERA had swept through Tehran since last we set foot in its
streets, and they seemed to us more than usually empty and deserted in
the vacant sunshine that autumn morning. But the Ark, the centre and
heart of the city, was crowded still. Though many of the tiny shops
had been closed by owners whose own account had been closed summarily
and for ever, the people who remained went about their business as
cheerfully as before, gesticulated over their bargains, drew their
long robes round them in dignified disgust as we passed, and sipped
their glasses of tea with unimpaired enjoyment. The motley crowd was
yet further diversified by the scarlet coats of the Shah’s farrashes,
the many-coloured garments and fantastic headgear of the servants of
the palace, and the ragged uniforms of the soldiers who hung about the
street corners--an army scarcely more efficient, I should imagine, than
its rudely-painted counterpart upon the walls. These rough drawings
satisfy the eye and tickle the artistic taste of the King of Kings. He
is not difficult to please. Take a wooden soldier for model (carefully
omitting his little green stand), magnify him to the size of life, put
the brightest colours into his uniform and his cheeks, and you will be
furnished with a design which is considered worthy of decorating not
only the principal gateways of Tehran, but all the streets leading to
the palace.