HAMADAN.
Morning rides—Engage servants—Dispensary—A bear-garden—Odd
complaints—My servants get rich—Modakel—The distinction
between picking and stealing—Servants—Their pay—Vails—Hakim
Bashi—Delleh—Quinine—Discipline—I commence the cornet—The
result of rivalry—Syud Houssein—Armenians—Cavalry officer—Claim
to sanctity of the Armenians—Their position in the country—Jews.
As the weather got warmer we began morning rides; we used to start
regularly at six _A.M._ Pierson kindly gave me a hint occasionally, and
we had some very enjoyable canters about Hamadan, the environs of which
are very pretty and full of foliage; in this other Persian towns are
generally rather deficient. We usually managed to get in before the sun
got too high, had a second tub, and dressed for breakfast.
I engaged three servants, Abdul-Mahomed, personal or head-servant;
Abdullah, a groom-boy; and Ramazan, as sweeper and dispensary attendant.
As the staff under my official charge was very small, and they were
unmarried healthy men, my Government work was very trifling; but a
constant crowd at the door, desirous of seeing the new Hakim,[9] made me
anxious to take the advice given me while in Teheran, and make the most
of my opportunities ere the novelty had worn off. I gave out, then, that
I was prepared to see patients from eleven _A.M._, and a courtyard that
we did not use in any way, (it was originally the women’s quarter of our
house,) was kindly placed at my disposal by Pierson, who also gave me the
advantage of his knowledge of Persian as an interpreter.
I saw my servant was very busy indeed, and that all the morning a file
of people were flocking into the courtyard, in which I had installed my
dispensary. Precisely at eleven I proceeded to seat myself; what was my
astonishment to find some two hundred people sitting in groups, my two
servants vainly endeavouring to keep some sort of order; the noise was
great, and practical joking and laughter were in the ascendant.
Pierson’s presence, however, awed the rioters, and silence was after a
time obtained, some few of the more noisy among the males being ejected.
I soon found that many of the so-called patients had merely come from
curiosity, while others had old injuries to complain of, and did not
expect medicines, but miracles.
The replies to the question, “What is the matter?” were sometimes highly
ridiculous, one man informing me that he had a serpent in his inside,
while another complained of being bewitched.
Among the ladies, Pierson, who bravely stuck to his self-imposed
duty of interpreter, informed me that the principal request was for
aphrodisiacs, drugs to increase _embonpoint_, and cosmetics; while many
women of apparently great age were urgent for physic for improving their
appearance. Many cases of eye-disease presented themselves, and not a few
of surgical injury, which had been treated only in the most primitive
manner. It was only by four in the afternoon that I succeeded in getting
rid of the rabble-rout that had come to my dispensary.
Rome was not built in a day. As the novelty wore off and the sightseers
ceased to come, the sick, who generally amounted to from two hundred to
two hundred and fifty a day, more or less, became more tractable, and my
servants better able to manage them.
I made stringent rules as to seeing all in the order of their coming,
and separating the men from the women. Although I saw many thousands of
patients in Hamadan, yet I found that I made no appreciable addition to
my income; those who could pay, didn’t; and the only grist that came to
the mill my two men absorbed. These now bloomed out in silken raiment,
and my head-man, whose pay was twelve pounds a year, and clothe and feed
himself, actually kept a servant of his own, and adopted a slow and
dignified pace, which, as he day by day increased in wealth, became more
and more apparent.
I, after some weeks, on some provocation or other, determined to
discharge Ramazan, who immediately told me, with many protestations,
that on account of the great love he bore me he could not leave me, and
was desirous to stay at half-wages. On my remaining obdurate he wished
to stop on nothing a month and “find himself.” He begged so hard that I
couldn’t turn him out, and forgave him. The fact was, that his pickings
from the daily crowd of patients was some ten times as much as his pay.
Often have I been asked by Persian acquaintances, “What is your pay?”
“Little enough,” I reply. “Ah, but what is your modakel?” _i. e._
pickings and stealings.
This system of modakel it is useless to fight against. The Persians, from
the king downwards, speak of “my modakel.” The governor of a province
buys his appointment: this is _the king’s_ modakel; he farms the taxes
for one hundred thousand tomans, and sells them for half as much again;
this is _his_ modakel; the buyer exacts two hundred thousand, the
difference is _his_ modakel.
I buy a horse, a carpet, or a pound of sugar, ten per cent. is added by
my servant to my bill. I sell a horse, and ten per cent. is taken on the
price by my servant. I pay a muleteer, and ten per cent. is deducted
from the hire. These things are the so-called legitimate “modakel” of my
servant, and I cannot avoid it. If pressed, or the thing is brought home
to him, he will not even hesitate to acknowledge it.
“It is the custom, sahib. Could you have bought the thing cheaper than I,
or sold it so well, even with the modakel? No, you could not; then why
object? What stimulates me to do the best I can for you? My modakel; you
cannot fight against it.” And he is right; the ten per cent. is extracted
from all, Europeans or Persians; and it is no use to kick against the
pricks. But more than this is considered robbery (_if detected_).[10]
In the last five years of my life in Persia I kept all these servants
mentioned in the note, with the exception of a _nazir_, who is, as
a rule, a purely useless man, and only an increaser of his master’s
expenses for the sake of the addition to his own profits. Thus my cook,
through whose hands the whole expenses, eight hundred kerans a month,
or at times a thousand, used to pass, made, say, ninety kerans as his
percentage; out of the sums paid for shoeing and repairs and sale of
manure (a valuable perquisite), the grooms made theirs; while for every
penny expended by my servant a percentage was taken in money or goods.
Even the laundress would _take_ (_not steal_) a tenth or more of the soap
given her. But then it was no use fighting against it, for it was not
etiquette for the better-class European to be seen in the bazaar, save
for special things, as curios, and such a proceeding would entail a great
loss of consideration, and cause him to be classed as a “mean white.”
Again, one’s head-servant, though he took this percentage, made it a
point of honour to do his best for you _after that had been deducted_,
and no one else but himself was permitted to rob on a large scale.
I have struggled against the system repeatedly. I have even caused
muleteers to be paid in my presence, and have given them a present for
civility, and have then ordered the men off the premises, not allowing my
servants to leave the house; or I have paid by cheque on a native banker;
but I am sure the servants got their commission, and shared it in certain
proportions arranged among themselves.
Another source of revenue to servants is the system of vails. This is,
I am glad to say, being lessened. At one time the Europeans encouraged
it. I remember, after I had been about a year in the country, going
to stay with Pierson in Teheran, on a visit of five weeks: I gave his
head-servant to distribute amongst the rest two hundred and fifty kerans,
or ten pounds. The man’s face did not express a lively satisfaction,
though that was merely policy; and as I was riding out of the gate, the
“dog-boy,” a youth retained to feed the five or six dogs my friend kept,
seized my bridle, and asked me roughly, “Where was his present?” This
was more than mortal man could stand; I thonged the fellow, going back
afterwards to explain and apologise to his master, who turned him out
then and there.
Thus a servant, though he nominally feeds and clothes himself, has his
wages, his profits, his presents which each servant gets from his master
at the New Year—generally a month’s pay—his vails, and his master’s old
clothes; as these fetch a high price in a bazaar, they are an important
item in the servant’s budget. In addition to this, he gets a small
allowance when travelling, and on the road his master feeds him. So that,
taken altogether, his position is not a bad one, the emoluments of my
head-man, for instance, being more than those of a native country doctor
in fair practice.
I felt considerable satisfaction at this time at the visits to my
dispensary of the “hakim bashi” (chief doctor), or rather one of those
who had that title in Hamadan. He expressed himself as eager to learn,
and knew a few words of French. I was, of course, delighted to give him
any information I could, and he seemed very grateful for instruction; he,
however, turned out afterwards to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and was
very nearly the cause of my stay in Persia being brought to an abrupt
termination, a matter which will be duly detailed.
One day one of the servants brought a “delleh”[11] for sale, a sort of
weasel, and of similar size; he was of an olive-green colour, with a
bushy tail, having patches of yellowish-white on the body: a boy dragged
him in by a string. He was so fierce no one would go near him, and was
evidently carnivorous.
He was kept on our platform tied to a ring, till one day he gnawed his
thong and bolted into a hole. In this hole he remained, just showing
his nose in the daytime, but coming out at night, when he was generally
pursued by our dogs, who roamed about the place loose.
I had been in the habit of feeding the beast on raw meat, of which he was
immoderately fond, and after some little trouble I taught him to come to
call. The animal got very tame, though extremely pugnacious when teased,
bristling his long soft fur out, like the mongoose, biting savagely, and
emitting a short sharp cry of rage.
He used to beg for his food, sit in our hands, allow himself to be
stroked, and became a great pet with both of us; but, as he showed a
great disinclination to be tied up, we allowed him to live in his hole in
the wall. As he grew fat from good living, he discontinued his nocturnal
excursions, presenting himself at meals with great regularity; his
intelligence was great, and the servants, who hated him, and looked on
him as “nejis,” or unclean, kept carefully out of his way; as did the
dogs, most of whom had been bitten severely, and the suddenness of his
movements and the sharpness of his cries terrified them.
The beast, too, had another mode of defending himself, which I am glad to
say he only resorted to once when hard pressed. Two of the dogs had got
him in a corner, when suddenly they both bolted, and the delleh made for
his hole in a dignified manner. He had employed the mode of defence used
by the skunk, and the particular corner of the courtyard, and the two
dogs and the delleh were unapproachable for a fortnight.
However, the animal had no stronger odour than any other carnivorous
beast, _save on this occasion_, and it probably was his only means
of safety. After he had inhabited his hole some months, while he was
gambolling on our platform, I saw the head of a second delleh cautiously
protruded and rapidly withdrawn. He had been joined by a female, and
after a week or two, she too became quite tame. Like the ferret and
mongoose, these animals waged war against whatever had life, hunting
fowls, etc., with the peculiarly stealthy gait so well known.
I noticed now that a considerable number of my patients, and Persian
acquaintances, and all the servants, were continually pestering me for
quinine. The reason was that the high price of this drug, pure as I had
it, was a temptation, and as each impostor got a small quantity, my store
sensibly diminished.
I was loath to stop distributing the drug altogether, as I had been
particularly instructed that the giving away of quinine to the sick was
beneficial, indirectly, to the good feeling which we desired to produce
towards the English in Persia.
However, I made a rule only to give away the drug _in solution_, or, in
the case of servants of our own, in the dry state _in the mouth_.
This had the desired effect, and as a rule one dose of the bitter drug
caused the most grasping of the domestics to hesitate before applying
for a second. This system I adopted during the whole time I was in the
country, only giving the crystals to the European staff, and the quinine
being distributed each year in ounces, where before it had been pounds.
In fact, I did away with one of the sources of _legitimate_ (?) _modakel_
of the servants, who had traded on my innocence and simulated fever
(intermittent) to obtain what was such very “portable property.”
One morning, while we were at breakfast under the “talar,” we saw
a European enter the compound, and a little scene ensued that was
sufficiently amusing. I must premise that in those early days of the
Persian Telegraph Department, when communication was infrequent, owing to
the continual destruction of the line, orders could only be conveyed by
letters, which often never reached their destination.
The unknown sahib, without announcing himself, or asking if the
superintendent were visible, stalked up on to the platform and thrust a
paper into Pierson’s hand. On it was an order to Mr. P⸺ to proceed to
Hamadan and take charge of the office there. And he (Mr. P⸺) had that
moment alighted from his horse, having marched some twelve stages from
Ispahan.
Pierson took the paper, read it, and said, “Well?”
The stranger replied, “I’m P⸺.”
“Have you nothing else to say?” said Pierson.
“No; I’ve come to take charge of the office here.”
Pierson now called for ink, and wrote “Mr. P⸺ will proceed at once to
Shiraz, and take charge of the office there,” and signed it.
“You need not discharge your mules, and will start to-morrow. Good
morning to you.”
Mr. P⸺ was equal to the occasion; he walked out of the place without a
word, and he _did_ start the next day (on his march of sixteen stages).
So much for discipline.
Pierson, who played the concertina, cornet, and piano, suggested to me
as a pastime that he should teach me the cornet. To this I assented; and
the first thing was to learn to blow. This is not so easy as it seems,
and as the noises I produced were not pleasant, Pierson only allowed my
practising in the house when he was not at home. The flat roof at sunset
was my place to practise, and here I blew to my heart’s content. I only
blew one note of various loudness, and to my astonishment found I had a
rival, whose lungs were stronger than mine; he, too, blew one note in
rapid succession. I blew—he blew—but his were decidedly the stronger
sounds, and he blew longer. I kept up my blowing, but soon came down,
feeling my inferiority.
The next night I was alone, my rival absent. I blew my one note in rapid
succession till I could blow no more. Suddenly I heard cries, and sounds
of beating, and shouts of men and women—a row evidently. I blew on.
Next morning the British Agent, Syud Houssein (these native agents are
appointed by the English Legation in lieu of consuls throughout Persia at
the great cities; they are really news-writers, but act as consuls, and
look after English interests), came to Pierson, with a long face, saying
that a complaint had been made to him by the Governor, of the conduct of
the sahibs in his (Pierson’s) house.
It appears that when the bath is full of men, and the time allotted to
them expires, the bath is cleared, and the bath-man, _on its being
empty_, blows on a buffalo horn for a few minutes a succession of notes.
This is the signal to the expectant women, and so on, when the time for
the ladies expires, for the men. _The bath-man was my unknown rival._
The day before, the bath being full of women, I proceeded to our roof
to indulge in cornet practice. My efforts, alas! were so like the solos
of the bath-man, that the Hamadan men of our quarter rushed to, and
into the sacred precincts of, the bath. The women who were inside were
furious at the unexpected intrusion, and called on their male relatives
for protection. A fight ensued, which only ceased on both parties uniting
to give the innocent bath-man a sound thrashing; which having thoroughly
accomplished to their satisfaction, and broken his buffalo horn, they
retired, _hinc illæ lachrymæ_. The matter was soon explained, and a small
present consoled the beaten bath-man, and I gave up the cornet.
Syud Houssein was a dignified little man, with the dark complexion and
scanty black beard that is supposed to characterise the true descendants
of the prophet. I fancy myself that while his duties consisted merely
in looking after the few Persians who were British subjects in Hamadan,
and writing a monthly news-letter to the Legation at Teheran, he was
quite happy; but that the actual presence of the unbeliever in the city
itself was not very palatable to him. However, we ever found him kind and
courteous, though he avoided breaking bread with us, save in secret and
when there was no escape.
There are a great many Armenians in Hamadan, and there are villages in
the immediate neighbourhood of the place inhabited only by them. They
have mostly adopted the Persian dress and language, Armenian being in
disuse as a language among those living in Hamadan, and there being no
distinctive mark by which one can tell them in either indoor or outdoor
dress; unlike the Armenian of Teheran, who adopts the dress of those of
his nation who are Russian subjects, or the Julfa (Ispahan) Armenians,
who affect the fez to simulate the Turkish subject, or at times pretend
an ignorance of Persian, and disguise themselves as sahibs. A ludicrous
instance of this occurred once when I was coming into Shiraz chupparee.
In the distance I saw under some trees, by a running brook, where
generally travellers from Shiraz bid their friends farewell, what
appeared to me an officer in the full-dress uniform of the English (?)
army. I was intrigued, and as the trees were off the road I cantered up
to the group.
I found one of our Armenian signallers in an engineer officer’s
full-dress scarlet mess jacket, jack-boots, a full-dress uniform cap,
lambswool drawers (sewn up in front) to simulate buckskins, a huge
cavalry sabre, and _three_ revolvers. The fact was that he had assumed
what he supposed to be the correct get-up of an English officer of
rank, in order that if any highway robbers met him (the country was
very disturbed at the time) on his seven days’ march to Abadeh, they
might refrain from attacking him. He arrived safely. Unfortunately these
assumptions of the appearance of the European by Armenians does not add
to the respect which the real sahib receives.
Some of the tales these people tell to increase their own importance in
the eyes of their oppressors, the Persians, are ingenious and amusing.
When I was living in Julfa, an Armenian village close to Ispahan,
which had been for divers reasons made the headquarters of the Persian
Telegraph Department in that place, I was called upon by a great
personage, the farmer of the taxes, a Persian, one Rahim Khan.
After the usual compliments, he remarked, in conversation, that “I must
be very glad to live in so holy a place as Julfa. Full, too, of churches.”
I demurred.
“But amidst your co-religionists, men whom you so much revere.”
This was too much. I told him that “we could not respect the Armenians,
but that we pitied them for the many years of oppression they had
undergone, which probably had brought out the bad points in their
characters.”
He would not be denied. “But you _revere_ them?” he persisted.
“Quite the contrary.”
He burst into a laugh. “Ah! dogs, and sons of dogs as they are,” he
replied; “only the other day one of them told me, on my congratulating
him on the presence of their protectors, the English—for you know, sahib,
before the Feringhis came, _they were as are now the Jews_—that _they_
were not complimented, but rather the Europeans; for, said the dog, ‘we
are to them what your Syuds (descendants of the prophet) are to you,
noble sir’—in fact, holy men.”
This anecdote is characteristic of the Armenian.
The Hamadan Armenian is brighter and more civilised than his Ispahan
_confrère_, his frequent journeyings to Russia having sharpened him,
while, there being only two priests in the place, he is not bigoted. He
has adopted the manners and dress of the Persian, also his language, and
is so far less exposed to annoyance by the reigning people; in fact, in
Hamadan he is not looked on or treated as an outcast; while in Julfa the
national dress, specially apparent in the female attire, the national
language, and their ignorance and lack of politeness, make them a people
apart.
The gist of the matter is, that in Hamadan and its environs, the Armenian
is simply a Persian, not a Mahommedan; while in Julfa he is an Armenian
of the Armenians; “and the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”
As to the Jews, their position is terrible. Probably in no country in
the world are they treated worse than in Persia. Beaten, despised, and
oppressed, cursed even by slaves and children, they yet manage to exist,
earning their living as musicians, dancers, singers, jewellers, silver-
and gold-smiths, midwives, makers and sellers of wine and spirits. When
anything very filthy is to be done a Jew is sent for.