ALI PASHA
THE Persian nation, which numbers seven or eight millions of dwellers on
its own soil, has many thousands scattered over the rich valleys of the
Caucasus. In Tiflis, in Baku, Batum, Kutais, the Persian, clad in
vermilion or crimson or slate-blue, is a familiar figure in the streets.
Their wares, their inlaid guns and swords and belts, their rugs and
cloaks, are the glory of all the bazaars of Trans-Caucasia. One’s eye
rests with pleasure on their leisurely movements, their gentle forms and
open, courteous gait; and they give an atmosphere of peace and serenity
to streets where otherwise the knives of hillmen, and the sullen
accoutrements of Cossacks, would continually impress one with the notion
of impending storm.
Ali Pasha, or, as his friends familiarly call him, Ali Khan, is one of
this gentle, harassed nation, a native of Ararat, having been brought up
within the shadow of that awful mountain upon which, it is said, the Ark
first grounded.
I had my first talk with him one evening shortly after I came to the
mill. It was a Saturday night, and the pastor’s family were preparing
for the Sabbath by holding a prayer-meeting round the samovar. The other
neighbours were skulking round the window listening to the hymn-singing,
so we were left to ourselves.
It was in the shade of evening. He was having his tea at his
ease—crimson tea, coloured by infusion of cranberry syrup. I was sitting
near by, writing a letter to England. He looked over with some interest,
and presently came and stood over me, regarding my fountain pen and
English calligraphy with a mild curiosity. I gave him the pen to
examine, he handled it carefully, and, having eyed it over with naïve
amazement, returned it in silence. He volunteered to show me Persian
writing, and presently brought forth from his dwelling two volumes of
prayers written in what was evidently Persian copper-plate, and by his
own hand. Each word, though symmetrical in itself, looked like a
pen-and-ink sketch of a wood on fire in a wind. Yet it was very
beautiful and reminiscent of nothing so much as of an old Bible copied
before the days of printing.
Ali Khan had purple beard and hair—his head looks as if it had been
soaked in black-currant juice. His face is smoky, his eyes grey,
benignant. He wears a slate-blue cloak, golden stockings, and loose
slippers; he is slender, and stands some five feet ten above the ground.
His finger nails and the palms of his hands are carmined.
He had never met an Englishman before, and eyed me somewhat
incredulously when I said I came from London. “The English are a
wonderful people,” he remarked. “Their ships call at all the ports of
the world, the armies of the great Queen are more countless than the
stars of heaven.” I explained that the Queen was dead, and that we had a
King now, but the Persian’s interests seemed to be little in foreign
affairs, and he was all eager to tell me of his prayers and fasts. No,
he was not a Babi, but a pure Mahommedan. There were sects of
Mahommedans, just as many as there were Christian sects. His church was
up on the hill, the one with the crescent moons on the spires. Soon a
big fast would commence, and he must eat no food during seventeen hours
each day.
I ventured to pronounce the words “Omar Khayyám.” He smiled, but did not
seem surprised that I had heard of him. “Our Omar.” Yes, he read Omar.
“And do your people read Omar much?” I asked. “It is in vain,” he
replied; “my people are very wretched, few can read, and few care to. It
is noble to be on horseback fighting with the Russians, or against the
Russians. No; boys used to go to school, but now they run wild, for
there is such disorder.”
A sort of sweet melancholy came over his face, and I asked him how he
came to be an exile from his country. “It is not a bad country to be
exiled from,” he began. “It would have been in vain if I had remained
there. Ali Mamedof wrote to me to come here, that there were many of my
countrymen here, and there were plenty who wanted coats. So I came by
the train to Tiflis, and then in a wagon through the mountain passes.”
He told me how he was taught in a little Persian school in Ararat, that
when he was twelve years old he had left school and taken a hand in his
father’s workshop and helped to weave Persian rugs. I pictured the large
open doorway of the booth, the two at work squatting on carpet stools
before the high bamboo frame on which the thing of wonder was being
wrought, the peacock in it, the half-finished peacock perhaps, with
gigantic tail, coming into being among living crimsons and lambent
blues, brilliant scarlets and lurid yellows.
His father had been taken off by typhus before the youngster had
experience enough to be able to carry on the business by himself; the
mother had died long since, so Ali was left an orphan. He got work from
a tailor, and sat in a little room with him, and worked all day with
assiduity not less than that of the sweated journeyman of England. But
things mended, and Ali Khan got orders of his own, and bought his own
Singer sewing-machine and his own cloth and black sheepskin, and then in
a little wooden room of his own squatted on his own carpet, and lived in
independence many a happy year.
Then the Russians had come. They built their railway even right
alongside the sacred mountain, and connected Ararat with Tiflis and
Batum and Baku, and, indeed, with all the North. Rugs and swords went to
Tiflis by train instead of by camel, and ready-made trousers and
cast-off clothes came back in exchange. Then with the ready-made
trousers came the Russian trader, and the almost ubiquitous German
commercial traveller. Russians and Caucasians came in, and Russian
officials and Cossacks, Russian police and passports. Ali’s trade grew
bad. His Russian customers were hard to please, the prospect of war and
massacre was what all the natives talked of, and many of his friends and
customers had been called away to fight at Tabriz and Teheran. Ali Khan
had looked despairingly at the future. Then Ali Mamedof had written, and
he had taken his advice.
He came and settled up in this territory, indubitably Russian, though on
the mountains, and found to his surprise some thousands of his
countrymen there. “Would you not rather be in Persia?” I asked. “Oh,
no,” he rejoined. “There is no security there, and there is no money
there. Ours is a poor country, and is full of enemies. Here is much
custom. I shall grow rich, and perhaps afterwards, when things are
quieter, I shall return to Ararat, to spend my old age there.”
“And the Shah?” I asked. “Oh, they’ve caught him,” he replied. “He’ll
come and live in the Caucasus also. It is much better for him.”
At this point he began to put his samovar up. It was nearing the daily
prayer time. He went leisurely into his dwelling again and shut the
windows, and passed into his inner room, where a square carpet lay.
Presently I heard the faint sound of his voice. I pictured him, as he
was no doubt, kneeling on his carpet, praying in the words of his
hand-written volumes to the one God—praying for the time of peace for
Persia, and for all the world, and at the same time resigned and gentle
before the Eternal Will.
So my acquaintance began with Ali Pasha. I think he was a noble man, and
by far the most refined and courteous of the dwellers at the mill. I
might almost add, though it would sound paradoxical, he was the most
Christian. Nowadays surely all men are Christian, even Mahommedans,
Buddhists and Confucians. It is only the name that they lack, the same
religion is in all of them.
There was a woman near by who worked at a brewery and worked very hard,
although she drank too much. Alimka and Fatima were her children, and
they were so starved that they would rob the chickens of the waste food
thrown in the yard. I noticed that Ali lent the woman money and helped
her with the children. And when a Punch and Judy show came into the yard
Ali subscribed more generously than anyone else so that the children
might have a treat. And when I took little Jason under my care Ali
backed me up. He even tried to rescue another bird and pass it on to me.
But he was very punctilious in the performance of the services of his
own religion. Special praying men came in to pray for him at different
times during the summer, and their loud keening sounded in my ears long
after I had gone to bed. Then when the Feast of Ramazan came he lived
the life of a hermit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------