PERSIA
There is a story that when the Muhammadans took Persia and killed the
Parsee king Yazdigird, their _Khalif_ ‘Omar asked Yazdigird’s son where
he would like to live. He said he would like to settle in Persia out
of reach of any cultivated spot. ‘Omar accordingly sent him off with
an escort of soldiers to find a suitable place. After three years he
returned and said he could not find any place such as he had asked for.
‘Omar saw that he was doing all this with some purpose, and asked him
what it was. Yazdigird’s son answered that he wanted to show ‘Omar how
prosperous and well cultivated the land had become in the hands of
the Parsees, and begged him to see to it that it remained so under the
Muhammadans.
But it did not, and to-day a great deal of Persia has relapsed into
desert.
In our country all is green, and stones have to be put up to show where
one village ends and the next begins. In most parts of Persia you may
look over the plain and see the villages quite distinct--each a little
green blot on a vast sheet of sand or dry earth.
The very fruitfulness of the ground makes it less green than it would
otherwise have to be to support the population, for when three crops
can be got off the same piece of land in one year, only a third of
the amount of land that you would expect to be needed to support the
village is under cultivation.
The villages vary very much. Some count their population by hundreds,
while one village, marked on the map, contains just two families, seven
persons in all, including two children. Their nearest neighbours live
six miles off, over the sand.
How bare the world must appear to those two little children. Children
here who live in the country can hardly imagine any boundary to the
wonderful green tangle that they can see on every side of them. And
children who live in towns look out every day upon wonderful human
works, which, although they are not as marvellous as God’s country, yet
puzzle them very much as to how they were ever made. With a Persian
child it is quite different. In many places the children do not know
what wild growth is, and if you talk of continuous country, hundred
miles after hundred miles of field and wood and meadow, they think you
are telling an impossible fairy tale. While as for the little town
children, the buildings which they see all round them made of sun-dried
bricks and earth, the barrels and the thousand and one household
utensils formed of exactly the same material, or perhaps of clay very
roughly baked in a primitive kiln, seem to them hardly more artificial
and man-made than the corn in the walled gardens outside the city,
which they see watered twice a week.
They have a very different life from you and me.
Little Ahmad was a sturdy, jolly little lad of four when I knew him,
and, though he ought to have known better, he used to call after me (if
his parents were out of hearing) the rhyme so familiar to Europeans in
Persia--
_Ferangi,
Chi rang-i,
Palang-i,_
which, translated into English, means--
European,
What colour art thou?
Thou art a leopard.
He lived in a really beautiful house, built of sun-dried bricks and
clay, and whitened inside with a smooth coat of plaster of Paris.
The rooms were large and very nicely furnished with beautiful Persian
carpets, and a mattress and pillows of gay designs, and Ahmad, little
rascal though he was, would never have dreamed of treading on those
carpets with his shoes on; all shoes were left at the door. One small
table for the tea-urn completed the furniture. And upstairs? Upstairs
was the roof, such a lovely large flat roof, Ahmad loved it, and he
often terrified his mother by the way he leaned over the low wall to
look down at the street, for the house had no window looking to the
road. All the windows looked into the garden, which might be said to
be in the middle of the house, for the rooms were built round it. The
windows, too, were all doors; some of the rooms had as many as five
double doors all in a row, and when they were all open the room was
very airy and bright.
There was no grass, and no gravel path for Ahmad to play on, but there
was a nice wide brick-paved walk all round the garden, which gave him
plenty of room. In the centre were the beds, which were watered by
turning a stream in and flooding them once a week. There were watering
cans, but they were only used for watering the path and roof, and even
the rooms, to keep them cool, not for the flower beds. There was a
large tank, too, in the garden with gold fish in it, where Ahmad loved
to cool his feet on a hot day, and the days can be hot in Persia.
When it was dinner-time in Ahmad’s home a cloth was spread on the
floor, and he sat on his heels beside it, and had a loaf of bread for a
plate. It was flat and round, and about as thick as a plate, so it did
very well. But he had no spoon or fork.
One of the things he liked best was rice, and when his mother put a few
handfuls on his bread he would eat it quickly and tidily with one hand,
without spilling any, which is not as easy as it sounds.
[Illustration: A STREET OF SHOPS]
Sometimes Ahmad went out for a walk in the town with his father, or
with his mother and a servant, and he passed along streets that had
not any names, and by houses that had not any names or numbers. There
was no pavement except sometimes a narrow strip in the middle of the
road for the mules and donkeys. There were no gardens in front of the
houses, there were no windows facing the road, all he saw was a sandy
road with a high mud wall on each side, and a heavy wooden door here
and there, the front door of a house.
Sometimes they came to a “_bāzār_” or street of shops. Here the
street was covered over with a mud roof so that goods and sellers and
purchasers might keep cool in hot weather and dry in wet weather. He
did not need to go into the shops, for the counters were all along the
street and there were no windows.
When the summer was getting very hot, it was decided that Ahmad and all
his family should go for a summer holiday to a village in the hills.
What a packing up there was! They packed the carpets, they packed the
beds, they packed the kettles and saucepans. Then a number of mules
were brought to the door and such a shouting and bustle began as the
loads were roped together, two and two, and slung across the big padded
pack-saddles. One mule carried two great covered panniers and these
were filled with cushions, and Ahmad’s great-grandmother got into one,
and his mother got into the other to balance her, and they pulled the
curtains well over the front, so that no one might see them. Ahmad
himself sat in front of a servant who held him safe, and some of the
bedding made a nice broad soft seat for them on the mule’s back. At
last all the mules were ready with their loads and off they set through
the streets, and soon they found themselves outside the town, going
mile after mile across the bare desert plain. This went on for fifteen
miles and then they reached a large village at the foot of the hills.
They had been riding five hours and were tired and hungry, so they
dismounted at the _caravansarai_ or inn. One of the servants took a
carpet off one of the loads and got a cloth and some food wrapped up
in a large handkerchief out of the saddlebags and spread a meal on the
ground, while another got the tea-urn and charcoal, boiled the water
and made the tea. After a few hours’ rest on the roof, the shouting and
loading began again and off they went, up the hill, which was terribly
steep in some places. Now they saw scattered and stunted plants growing
here and there, and finally, after another seven hours, they reached
their summer holiday quarters in a little hill village.
How Ahmad enjoyed the hills and fields and trees, the flowers and birds
and butterflies. A little brook ran down the valley and on either side
were cornfields and orchards and gardens, as many as the brook could
provide water for. And at night Ahmad would hear the shouting, as ‘Ali
Muhammad declared that Husain had had his fair share of water and now
it was his turn to have it for his orchard. For water is very precious
in Persia, and must be made the greatest possible use of, day and night
alike.
But the little children who live in the village are not so fortunate
as little Ahmad. They work all the summer at gardening, shepherding,
and other work; but in winter they have to stay in, and they live
upstairs and their sheep and goats downstairs. But the stairs are
outside and sometimes it is too cold for them even to go down to feed
the animals. If they can they make a little fire of sticks in the
oven, which is only a deep, round hole in the floor, and when the
flame has died down they sit round with their legs hanging into the
oven and cover over the opening to keep it warm as long as possible.
One very severe winter there was a report current in the town that in
this village the water was all frozen and that the animals were dying
because there was not enough fuel to melt the ice and give them water.
The poor children must have had a very hard time that winter.
Even in the town Ahmad is one of the fortunate children. Little Soghra
had a very different home. She lived with her grandmother in a single
small room. The floor was mud, covered in one place by a small ragged
piece of coarse matting. On this the grandmother lay, for she was old
and ill. The bedclothes were filthy and torn. One side of the room was
filled with a pile of pomegranate skins, which are used for making dye,
and there were several fowls wandering about. There was no furniture,
nothing but a few old pots and cups and a waterbottle. And yet Soghra
was a cheery little girl, and she and her grandmother were very fond of
each other.