The valley isn't much to look at; no verdure,
only a brown, barren plain, surrounded on all sides by equally brown,
barren mountains. In the evening the Prince sends round a pheasant, and
shortly after calls himself and partakes of tea and cigarettes,
I accept Mr. McIntyre's invitation to remain and rest up, but only for
another day, my experience being that, when on the road, one or two days'
rest is preferable to a longer period; one gets rested without getting
out of condition. We take a stroll through the bazaar in the morning, and
call in at the wine-shop of a Russian-Armenian trader named Makerditch,
who keeps arrack and native wine, and sample some of the latter. In his
shop is a badly stuffed Mazanderaii tiger, and the walls of the private
sitting-room are decorated with rude, old-fashioned prints of saints and
scriptural scenes. It is now the Persian New Year, and bright new
garments and snowy turbans impart a gay appearance to the throngs in the
bazaar, for everybody changed his wardrobe from tip to toe on
eid-i-noo-roos (evening before New Year's Day), although the "great
unwashed" of Persian society change never a garment for the next twelve
months. Considering that the average lower-class Persian puts in a good
share of this twelve months in the unprofitable process of scratching
himself, one would think it must be an immense relief for him to cast
away these old habiliments with all their horrid load of filth and
vermin, and don a clean, new outfit; but the new ones soon get as thickly
tenanted as the old; and many even put the new garments on over certain
of the old ones, caring nothing for comfort and cleanliness, and
everything for appearance.
Pages:
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105