CHAPTER III
LIFE AT KASHGAR
For stalking about the streets (of Leh) or seated in silent rows along the bazaar, were men of a different type from those around. Their large white turbans, their beards, their long and ample outer robes, reaching nearly to the ground and open in front showing a shorter undercoat girt at the waist, their heavy riding-boots of black leather, all gave them an imposing air; while their dignified manners so respectful to others, yet so free from Indian cringing or Tibetan buffoonery, made them seem like men among monkeys compared with the people around them.—Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand and Kashgar—Robert Shaw.
On the second day after our arrival the Macartneys and their children left for England, but, busy though my hostess was, she found time to show me everything in the house and offices, giving me all sorts of hints that proved invaluable later on.
I was delighted with Chini Bagh (Chinese Garden), as the Consulate was called, the well-planned, airy house being set on low cliffs above the river. The large garden was full of fruit trees in blossom, its most charming feature being a terrace shaded by lofty poplars, from which we had a fine view of the river winding away to our right and could look down upon fields green with spring crops and watch the gaily clad people moving along the network of roads and paths. In fact we were so far above the world that I was sometimes reminded of the “Lady of Shallot” and her magic mirror, the busy life passing below seeming almost like a vision when viewed from this post of vantage, where we ourselves were quite unobserved.
Another point that pleased me greatly about our new home was the fact that we could walk on the flat roof of the house, and every now and again, when the air was free of the all-pervading dust, we could enjoy a wonderful mountain panorama. The snow-clad monarchs rose up, peak behind peak, in indescribable grandeur, Kungur, as the natives called it, dominating the whole, and I little thought that a few months later I should be privileged to stand at the foot of these superb mountains and have an unforgettable glimpse of the “vision splendid.” The Russians always insisted that the great dome of Muztagh Ata (Father of the Snows) could be seen from Kashgar, but Captain Deasy definitely settled by his survey work that this mighty giant was hidden by Kungur.
DAOUD AND SATTUR.
Page 41.
However, there was far more prose than poetry in my life at Kashgar, particularly at first, when I was occupied in coping with the details of housekeeping. I laboured under the disadvantage of being unable to speak Russian to the cook, or Turki to the other servants, but fortunately old Jafar Bai, who was entrusted with the purchases of supplies in the bazar, spoke Persian, and as I have a working acquaintance with that language he could act as my interpreter. To counterbalance my lack of tongues I had a fair knowledge of cooking and a good deal of energy, a quality useful in dealing with the slackness of the Oriental, particularly in Mohamedan countries, where a woman is obliged to hold her own, as her sex is of so little account. I speedily discovered that Achmet, a Russian engaged at Tashkent for the high sum of five pounds a month, was hardly a cook at all and could only make two or three soups and prepare the same number of meat dishes; his bread, moreover, was uneatable, and not a single pudding or cake found a place in his repertory! This was bad enough; but his unwillingness to learn, his lack of respect and his ceaseless wrangling with Jafar Bai, whose office he wished to usurp, made housekeeping a tiresome business. Before long it dawned upon me that to pay the wages of a chef and to be forced to do most of the work myself was not good policy, and when I discovered that Achmet had a weakness for alcohol I made up my mind to dispense with his services.
The kitchen-boy left by Lady Macartney had all the qualities that my late cook lacked, and I now entered upon a peaceful existence as far as the kitchen was concerned. Daoud Akhun (David, the Reader of the Koran, as his name implied) was a burly intelligent youth, and speedily grasped my Persian interlarded with Turki words. But he had no claim to his title of Akhun, as he could neither read nor write, and consequently I had to prepare every dish two or three times before he could remember the right quantities and be trusted to make it alone. My little Colonial cookery-book gave all the recipes in cupfuls or spoonfuls, a method that might with advantage be followed in England, as it is a great saving of time and trouble.
Sattur, the butler of the establishment, was a gnome-like little man, perfectly honest, but with the mind of a boy of twelve. The others called him Mulla Sattur, his title, like that of my cook, being due to the fact that his father had been a mulla or priest, though he himself was entirely devoid of education.
He and his underling kept the house fairly well when looked after, but Orientals are incurably slack according to Western ideas, and it was a constant struggle to maintain a very moderate standard of cleanliness and order. At first I tried to teach him to sweep the painted floors by means of a damp cloth tied over a broom, instead of whisking the dust from one place to another; but he nearly wept, saying at intervals, “Not good, not good,” so averse was he to innovations. As a waiter he had a tiresome habit of stretching his arm across us when serving food or drink, and he had a constitutional inability to put on the lid of a biscuit-tin or close a door. It was a proud moment when, after many a reprimand, he knocked at my bedroom door instead of bursting in without notice! Apart from these small failings he was very likeable, most conscientious, and somewhat resembling a dog in his desire for praise if he did anything well.
With all his virtues, he, on one occasion, nearly caused a disaster, as the following anecdote will show. Some years before our arrival, a British officer was in temporary charge of the Consulate, and as he was a bachelor the servants soon took advantage of the fact that there was no mistress. One day he found them going off to their respective homes laden with provisions from his store-room, and in righteous wrath he dismissed every one save Sattur, who had not joined in the depredations. The little fellow then united in his person the offices of cook, butler and housemaid, and apparently did so well that his master was emboldened to give a tea-party. The guests arrived, but the pièce de résistance in the shape of rock-cakes was so long in appearing that the amateur cook was summoned. Sattur then explained with some perturbation that he was sure something was wrong with the baking-powder, because, although he had mixed in a double quantity with the flour, the buns utterly refused to rise. The captain demanded to see this curious baking-powder, and he and his guests had a shock when he discovered that it was the arsenic which he kept to cure the skins of the animals and birds that he shot!
One of the great drawbacks of the Turki is that they never wash. There are no public baths, as in Persia, nor does the rule of a weekly bath on Friday before going to the mosque hold good here. The only thing I could do was to insist firmly on clean garments and well washed hands and faces. All the servants wore very long sleeves in which they hid their hands to show respect to superiors. They were in the habit of using these sleeves as dusters, but had to roll them up when they did any work.
Jafar Bai, the head chuprassi, willing and trustworthy, was my marketer, but variety in diet was difficult to obtain when we had only the toughest of mutton and the stringiest of fowls on which to depend. We were warned that the beef was usually diseased, and as many cases of illness had occurred from eating the fish caught in the river—some being diseased and others apparently having a poison-gland—we never ventured upon that form of food, and no game was to be had until the autumn.
Fortunately eggs were abundant, and we obtained some butter and milk from our two cows, attended by their calves, which took about half what their mothers yielded. As the small quantity of butter produced was barely sufficient for the table, I tried to supplement it by procuring cream from the bazar, but unluckily the Kashgaris do not practise cleanliness in any form. The cream was always distressingly dirty and had to be passed through muslin and then brought to boiling-point before it could be made into butter, and even then had an unpleasant smell and a dingy appearance. After various trials I resorted to suet for my cooking, and bought dumba, the big bunch of fat that forms the tail of the Central Asian sheep. On our arrival we found that owing to the War no white flour could be purchased in Kashgar, and we were obliged to have recourse to the native article, with its large admixture of grit and dust, before we could procure Russian flour from Osh.
The Swedes told me that when their mission was started in Kashgar some twenty years ago the prices of food were very low, there being practically no money in the country. In those days trading was done “in kind,” but prices had trebled or even quadrupled in the last few years. Even so, I did not consider them exorbitant when I could purchase a small leg of mutton for 1s. 10d., soup-meat at 2½d. a lb., a fair-sized fowl for 8d., and eggs at about four a penny. Sugar, Russian bacon, cheese and suchlike imported things were naturally expensive owing to the difficulties of transport. The weights were a jing (1⅓ lbs.), 16 jings making a charak (21 lbs.), while the Russian poud was 36 lbs.
The prices were usually computed in tangas, a coin worth about 2d., which, to my great surprise, did not exist. This mythical tanga equalled 25 darchin, while 16 tanga and 10 darchin made a seer—a coin worth about 2s. 8d. This sounds easy enough, but was complicated with the Chinese tael, the Indian rupee and the Russian rouble, all these coins being current in Kashgar.
The important question of the laundry was settled satisfactorily by a woman who arrived on Mondays and installed herself under a shelter in the yard where were basins and a fireplace. On Tuesdays the ironer made her appearance, the same woman being unable to see the clothes through both processes; and she was accommodated in a room with a long table, shelves on which to deposit the garments, and a supply of irons. Lady Macartney had warned me that this woman had a fondness for doing her work on a dirty cloth, and I soon found that she lived up to her reputation and would lay aside the clean sheet that I provided unless I looked in upon her at frequent intervals. Though she was a fair ironer she had no knowledge of starching, but we discovered a male artist who undertook to get up my brother’s shirt fronts and collars, though he utterly declined to wash them. I paid both women some tangas extra on condition that they washed and ironed all the servants’ cloths and dusters, my rule being to give out clean ones every Monday and Wednesday in exchange for their dirty ones; a plan that ensured as much cleanliness as I could reasonably expect.
Shortly before we left Kashgar for England our lady ironer departed without warning to another town, but the male artist kindly came to the rescue and took over her job. He used to make the most extraordinary noises, but I thought nothing of them until I came into the ironing-room one day, carrying a dress that was creased. He laid it out on the ironing-board and to my horror began to eject a fine spray of water from his mouth upon it, making at the same time the noise that had puzzled me!
There was not much social dissipation at Kashgar, though there was a colony of fifty Russians, together with a body of sixty-five Cossacks and their officer. Out of these only a dozen made up “Society,” and we met twice a week at the “Club,” providing tea and cakes in turn. Here four of the men and my brother played tennis on a mud court, an adjoining court being laid out for croquet, where the rest of us played a game with wide hoops, a “cage” in the centre and small-headed mallets that took me back to the days of my early youth. Every one “spooned” and pushed the balls into position in a way contrary to every rule of up-to-date croquet and got quite excited over the games. It was curious to see the thoroughly inefficient way in which the servants swept these courts. Their method was to kneel down and brush up the sand with little twig brooms that they held in one hand, while with the other they collected the dust into heaps before piling it on one of the skirts of their long coats and so carrying it off.
Prince Mestchersky, the Consul-General, and his wife and staff were most friendly, and we were invited to a round of dinners and lunches, Achmet’s incompetence giving me many an anxious moment when we returned the hospitalities lavished upon us. Unluckily for me, only four or five of the Russians could speak French or German, and as I have no gift of tongues my attempts to learn Russian were far from successful.
This was rather trying, as the Russian entertainments ran to length. I always remember the first lunch party to which we were invited. It was given in a garden at some distance from the Consulate, and I drove there well swathed in cloak and veils, to avoid arriving with the complexion of a mulatto from the clouds of suffocating dust that rose up from the road. Driving was also a penance, owing to the rough roads along which one was bumped and jolted until one ached all over. Our goal was an enclosure full of fruit trees in blossom and planted with flowers, in which two long tables, placed on mud platforms covered with carpets, were spread with different kinds of wine, fruit, sweetmeats and so on. The Russian colony, including the three ladies in their smartest dresses, was assembled on a third platform hung round with Chinese embroideries. Scarlet awnings were stretched above the tables to keep off the sun, and when all the guests had arrived we sat at the first table for an hour and a half, while many zakouskas and course after course of meat were handed round and interminable toasts were drunk.
I am a water-drinker, but soon found that I should give offence if I refused to return the toasts in wine; so I did at Rome as Rome does, held my glass up, clinked it with other glasses, and sipped as occasion required. The Tsar’s Prohibition Act had not found its way into Chinese Turkestan, and never have I seen such a bewildering array of bottles. The first toasts led off in vodka, after which different wines and liqueurs were served in unending succession. Among the guests was a savant who had spent some years in the Gobi Desert copying ancient inscriptions, and had halted at Kashgar on his return to civilization. His exploits with the bottle were so remarkable that my table-companion said he must be slaking his two years’ thirst at one go!
When we had sat till three o’clock at one table we were requested to adjourn to the second, where ices, sweetmeats, champagne and coffee, and of course cigarettes, were served. After an hour of this our host proposed that we should take a little promenade de digestion; so off we all went along dusty paths bounded by high mud walls and round freshly irrigated fields. To compass these latter we had to walk carefully on the top of the irrigation banks, the ladies finding this somewhat difficult owing to their heels of abnormal height. At one place we came to a ditch where the gentlemen insisted on helping us across, though it was a very small jump, but my companions had such extremely narrow skirts that they could not have done it unaided. On our return to the garden the Princess wished to wash her hands; so soap and towels were provided and in turn we held out our hands for a servant to pour water over them, our gallant host waving a bottle of eau-de-Cologne, with which he besprinkled the ladies.
My heart failed me when I saw tea in readiness, with cakes, biscuits and sweets galore, and I had to wrestle for some time longer with linguistic difficulties, thankful that three of those assembled could talk French fluently. When a surreptitious peep at my watch told me that it was half-past six, we took our leave amid many exclamations as to the extreme earliness of our departure from the lunch party!
Nice and friendly as the Russians all were, my brother and I led lives of such a different kind that we could not well coalesce. If we dined with them we could never leave before midnight, and they themselves said that they liked to stay on till five o’clock in the morning, the domestics serving up a supper, or rather an early breakfast, from the remnants of the dinner, and possibly they would stroll out to see the sun rise before they repaired to their homes. Owing to their love of late hours they did not rise till mid-day, and as they could not enjoy the cool of the mornings as we did, they used to “take the air” by moonlight.
They did not play bridge, and we could not learn their difficult card-game, nor was it possible to play a kind of loto with them, owing to ignorance of the language.
Those forming “society” lived apparently in one another’s houses all day long, never liking to be alone, and the little colony reminded us of the Florentines rendered immortal by Boccaccio, who, when the plague was raging, left their city and went to a lovely garden outside its walls, caring nothing for the misery and death they had so skilfully avoided. In this case it was not a plague, but the World War, that our neighbours appeared to ignore, except now and again when the Germans approached some place where they had relatives or friends.
I cannot refrain from giving the menu of one of the dinners we gave the Russians, in order to show what Daoud and I could accomplish when working together:
MENU.
Hors-d’œuvres.
Caviare on toast. Salmon mayonnaise. Fried sausages.
Tomato Soup.
Meat Courses.
Chicken aspic. Steaks à la tournados. Indian curry. Vegetables.
Sweets.
Trifle. Jam tarts. Ices.
Savoury—Cheese straws.
Dessert.
A dinner such as this required my presence in the kitchen the greater part of two mornings, and the food had to be arranged with an eye to Daoud’s capacities; for I fought stoutly against the Oriental habit of long waits between the courses. On these occasions I hired an assistant who did all that my cook would permit, and Sattur was supported by Jafar Bai and another chuprassi resplendent in scarlet and gold uniforms and snowy turbans. The clerk of the office, who spoke English and Turki, always read over the menu more than once to Daoud, and I insisted that the latter should repeat it in his turn, in order to be sure that he had memorized it correctly. When we were seated at table my anxieties were by no means over; for, in spite of my coaching beforehand, the waiters were fond of getting into one another’s way, and occasionally there were unseemly wrangles between Sattur, who considered that he was the head, and masterful Jafar Bai, who would sometimes wrench the bottles of wine from him as he was endeavouring to fill up the glasses of our guests. But on the whole our dinners were not inferior to those given by the Russians with their larger and more experienced staffs, and our guests enjoyed coming to us, as some of our dishes, such as curry, were more or less a novelty to them.
I have always liked entertaining, but in this case the language difficulty used to leave me quite exhausted at the close of the evening, and with the depressed feeling that I could not make things go briskly. Both my brother and I took lessons from a young girl, the companion of the Princess, but as she was uneducated and knew no language save her own, I confess I did not get much benefit from her instruction, although I tried to make her teach me by the Berlitz method. She was, however, a help to my brother, who had studied the language at Meshed, where he had had a good deal of social intercourse with the Russian Consulate, and who only needed practice to talk easily.
The other Europeans consisted of a small body of Swedish missionaries, men and women, headed by Dr. Raquette, who, besides his medical work, has published a Turki grammar and dictionary. All the Swedes talked English and gave us much information about Kashgar and its inhabitants, in particular Mr. Bohlin, who accompanied us on many of our rides. They had a hospital and dispensary, doing most useful medical work, and had the only printing-press in Chinese Turkestan, from which they issued books printed in Turki for use in their schools throughout the province.
A medical missionary in the East may be of incalculable benefit to thousands, and Dr. Raquette’s successful operations for cataract, in particular, brought him patients from far Khotan. Unfortunately the Kashgaris were much under the influence of their mullas and of the native doctors, who, not unnaturally, objected to foreign methods, the result being that they often came to the Swedes only when they were at the point of death. Moreover, though they looked robust they seemed to have little strength to resist the inroads of disease, and any serious illness carried them off very speedily.
The mission was started a quarter of a century ago, Dr. and Mrs. Höegberg, whom we met later at Yarkand, being its oldest members. At first it met with persecution, the Chinese stirring up the Kashgaris to besiege the little community in their house, but fortunately Mr. Macartney, as he then was, rode to the rescue with his chuprassis, and some Russian Cossacks aided him in the work of driving off the mob.
The Kashgari roughs then wreaked their vengeance on the new hospital that was being built on the site which it now occupies, and every kind of threat was used to induce the missionaries to leave Kashgar; but they stood firm, and finally the Chinese official who was their enemy was recalled, and forced to rebuild the hospital at his own cost. His successor announced the change of policy by inviting the members of the mission to a great banquet, at which the much-esteemed swallows’-nest soup was served, and so the hatchet was buried for good.
I always thought that the apple-pie order of the mission buildings and the excellent fruit and vegetables grown in the garden were a good object-lesson to the Kashgaris, and indeed they were not insensible of this, as the following anecdote shows. When one of the missionaries had engaged a servant he heard an old retainer remark to the new recruit: “You must be sure not to be dirty, because these people are so clean that if they are forced to say an unclean word they go immediately and wash out their mouths!” My informant also told me that a servant of one of the lady missionaries, being short of cash, took all her plates to the bazar and sold them. When she turned upon him in righteous wrath, he remarked: “Oh, mistress, you are not blaming me properly,” and he actually poured out a string of most abusive epithets, inviting, nay imploring her to use them upon him!
Our days soon fell into a routine broken by the English post with its month-old newspapers, which we devoured eagerly. The Reuter sent across the passes from Gilgit gave us somewhat later information about the War, and the Russians received occasional telegrams; but their knowledge of geography was so limited that my brother had much difficulty in eliciting any clear statement as to what was going on.
Riding was our chief amusement, and we purchased two fine Badakshani horses of the breed described by Marco Polo, and were usually in the saddle by half-past seven. The morning air was delightfully cool, and the rides were wonderfully varied, a fresh one for each day of the month we used to say. There was also the sound of running water in the numberless irrigation channels as we rode under the trees along sandy tracks free from stones and ideal for cantering. An added charm was the fact that the walls enclosing gardens and fields were quite low, and as a rule the crops were not fenced in at all, save by low banks of earth.
At first we used to be accompanied on our walks and rides by Bielka and Brownie, the dogs that the Macartneys had left in our care. Bielka was a powerful white animal rather like a wolf, and unluckily had such an unconquerable dislike to Europeans that he had to be chained up whenever visitors came to the house. On our arrival Lady Macartney “introduced” us to him by providing us with bits of meat to give him as a peace-offering, and we became excellent friends.
It was amusing on our walks to watch him and Brownie, the fat, easygoing spaniel; for the latter, an arrant coward, would pick quarrels with the pariah dogs and then call his comrade to his aid, the enemy fleeing in confusion as soon as Bielka appeared. But when we found that, if a Cossack rode past, the great dog would rush at him like a fury and try to tear him from his horse, and when on the same walk we had to race to the rescue of a young Russian couple, the edict went forth that our would-be guardian must be left at home. It went to my heart to refuse him when he implored me to let him escort us; for he was most charming to his friends and kept the Consulate free of thieves, as he roamed about the place all night.
Though the Consulate was close to the city wall, we could turn almost at once into shady lanes, bordered with irrigation channels, along which willows, poplars and mulberries grew luxuriantly; while on either side stretched fields green with lucerne and springing wheat, barley and maize. But all the growth and prosperity of the Oasis was entirely dependent upon the water, and should this source of life fail great would be the devastation. One day we came upon a district where a big network of irrigation channels had run dry owing to the bursting of a dam, and hundreds of men were labouring against time to repair it and thereby save the trees and crops. The corvée system is in force in Chinese Turkestan, and although tyrannical according to Western ideas, it is certainly for the public benefit in such a case as this. The villagers are forced to repair all roads and water channels in their own districts, but the hardship comes in when their Chinese rulers undertake to reclaim land from the desert and commandeer men from considerable distances. They are supposed in such cases to be paid threepence a day for their food, but it is rumoured that this money usually goes into the pockets of the headmen.
The Kashgar Oasis is watered by the Kizil Su (Red River, so called from its colour) and its branch the Tuman Su, which make the city and its environs an island. In April there was little water in either stream, so we could ford them easily on horseback; but during the summer it was a different matter. We were warned to be on our guard for quicksands in these rivers. Mr. Bohlin was once nearly caught in one, but feeling his horse sinking beneath him he threw himself off in haste and wading waist-deep he pulled the animal ashore. On another occasion he observed several men trying to extricate a horse that had sunk so deeply that it took the whole day to free it. These quicksands are less to be feared in deep water which buoys the animals up. The Kashgaris always hurry their horses over any suspicious place, but as the dangerous areas are constantly changing, it is impossible to be sure of their whereabouts.
Charming as spring is in Chinese Turkestan, it has a serious drawback in the violent sandstorms that are particularly frequent during March and April, in fact it has been computed that there are only a hundred really clear days during the year. For several days after our arrival the air was thick with dust that veiled the sun and accounted for the strictures passed by travellers on the “grey atmosphere” and depressing climate of Kashgar. Either by day or by night a furious wind would arise, bringing clouds of sand from the desert and coating everything in our rooms with a layer of reddish grit that hurt our eyes if we chanced to be caught in the open. I was told, however, that the inhabitants liked this haze that enshrouded their city as being a welcome change from the brilliant sunshine, and also as tempering the heat that was beginning to be considerable during the middle of the day. We noticed great changes in the temperature, sometimes experiencing a drop of as much as twenty degrees from one day to another. This I found out to my cost when I had a tiresome attack of rheumatism caused by riding on a cold morning in the thin linen coat that had been just the thing on the previous day.
These sandstorms raging through the centuries are supposed to have made the loess formation which is so characteristic of Chinese Turkestan, and so amenable to the spade of the cultivator when irrigated. The countless layers of compressed sand are capable of producing splendid crops, and the apparently lifeless desert of Central Asia is able to support large populations if the beneficent agency of water be provided.
WATERING HORSES IN THE TUMAN SU.
Page 56.
The loess is also most useful in another way; for, when mixed with chaff and water, it forms the staple building material of Chinese Turkestan, and edifices of sun-dried loess bricks will endure through the centuries, if repaired at intervals. I have often seen a peasant mending a wall in most primitive fashion by filling the breach with wet mud, which he slapped into position with his hands. Naturally this style of building is suitable only in a dry climate, and a prolonged period of heavy rain, such as sometimes occurs in winter, works havoc with it, the flat roofs of houses staving in and walls frequently collapsing. To the traveller, the loess, though picturesque when broken up into crevasses and castellated forms, has its drawbacks. Unless cultivated it is inexpressibly dreary, in dry weather the traffic stirs it up into clouds of suffocating dust, and in wet it turns into a sea of slippery mud, in which the surest-footed horse may come down. If the rain be of long duration the soil is apt to turn into a veritable morass, which engulfs many a poor little donkey and chokes it to death.
I was fond of riding through the bazar on a Thursday, the day of the weekly fair, when crowds of people poured in from the many hamlets in the Oasis, making a feast of colour. Among the men there was a great mixture of types, the upper-class Kashgaris usually having handsome features and full beards and moustaches; a group of Afghans with hawk-like profiles and proud bearing would catch the eye, reminding me of birds of prey when contrasted with the flat-faced, ruddy-cheeked, hairless Kirghiz; and the lower classes with the high cheek-bones of the Mongol seemed a link between the Iranian and the Chinese.
The men wore long coats, purple, red, green, or striped in many colours, with gay handkerchiefs serving as waistbands. Snowy turbans denoted mullas and merchants, but the others in fur-edged velvet hats or prettily embroidered skull-caps made gay splashes of colour as they rode by on spirited stallions or donkeys. The women were, if possible, more brightly clad than the men; their under shirts and trousers contrasting with their coats and hats. One belle, for example, had an emerald green coat lined with a flowered pink cotton; her under-garment was a vivid orange, and her hat purple, with a spray of blossom coquettishly stuck under the brim. It seems almost incredible, but she fitted in well with her surroundings in the brilliant sunshine and the spring green of foliage and crops.
The only visible differences between the dress of the men and of the women were the long white cotton shawls of the latter which they wore over their heads, and the small face-veils usually made of hand-embroidery, sometimes with a handsome border and fringe. These coverings were fastened to the brim of the hat, and were usually flung back over it, only to be hastily pulled down by some very orthodox dame at sight of my brother; but if I happened to be riding behind him it would usually be pushed aside to enable its wearer to have a good look at the English khatun. Girls of good family veil and are kept secluded; but there were few “gentry” in Kashgar, for when the Chinese retook the province on the death of Yakub Beg nearly all the upper-class Kashgaris fled to Andijan. Both men and women wore abnormally long sleeves, answering the purpose of gloves in cold weather, and long leather riding-boots. The latter were often made of scarlet leather and were more like stockings than boots, and over them was worn a shoe with stout sole and heel. Indeed these long boots were seen everywhere and constituted a special feature of the country, being worn by men, women and children alike.
KASHGAR WOMEN AND CHILDREN.
Page 58.
On one occasion I was invited to the house of a Turki lady who was kind enough to display her wardrobe for my benefit. All her dresses were beautifully folded and kept tied up in large cloths. A woman of fashion wears five garments visible to the eye, the first two being the long gown and the trousers under it. The gown is made of Bokhara or Chinese silk, brocade, Russian chintz and so on, and over it is worn a waistcoat, often of cloth of gold or silver, edged at the neck with the handsome gold thread embroidery made at Kucha. Then comes a short coat with long sleeves, usually of velvet woven in Germany and decorated with a broad band of gold embroidery. One black brocade coat that I saw was embroidered round the neck with big tinsel butterflies set with artificial stones. The fifth garment is a long velvet or brocade coat covering its wearer to the heels; I noticed a handsome one of magenta velvet, the buttons being big bosses of scarlet coral set in gold filigree and small pearls, a product of the Yarkand bazar. Draped on the head is a big white shawl, often of pretty gauzy material, that falls to the heels, and upon this are set the dainty skull-cap and the big velvet fur-edged cap. To this latter is attached the face-veil of fine-drawn thread edged all round with gold embroidery, the very handsome broad band of needlework at the top being concealed by the brim of the hat. This seemed a waste to my practical English mind, but the lady to whom I pointed this out explained that such was the fashion.
Many of the young Kashgari women were most attractive in appearance, and some of the little girls quite lovely, their plaits of long hair falling from under a jaunty little embroidered cap, their big dark eyes, flashing teeth and piquant olive faces reminding me of Italian or Spanish children. One most beautiful boy stands out in my memory. He was clad in a new shirt and trousers of flowered pink, his crimson velvet cap embroidered with gold, and as he smiled and salaamed to us I thought he looked like a fairy prince. The women wear their hair in two or five plaits much thickened and lengthened by the addition of yak’s hair, but the children in several tiny plaits.
The peasants are fairly well off, as the soil is rich, the abundant water-supply free, and the taxation comparatively light. It was always interesting to meet them taking their live stock into market. Flocks of sheep with tiny lambs, black and white, pattered along the dusty road; here a goat followed its master like a dog, trotting behind the diminutive ass which the farmer bestrode; or boys, clad in the whity-brown native cloth, shouted incessantly at donkeys almost invisible under enormous loads of forage, or carried fowls and ducks in bunches head downwards, a sight that always made me long to come to the rescue of the luckless birds.
WATER-CARRIERS AT KASHGAR.
Page 60.
It was pleasant to see the women riding alone on horseback, managing their mounts to perfection. They formed a sharp contrast to their Persian sisters, who either sit behind their husbands or have their steeds led by the bridle; and instead of keeping silence in public, as is the rule for the shrouded women of Iran, these farmers’ wives chaffered and haggled with the men in the bazar outside the city, transacting business with their veils thrown back.
Certainly the mullas do their best to keep the fair sex in their place, and are in the habit of beating those who show their faces in the Great Bazar. But I was told that poetic justice had lately been meted out to one of these upholders of the law of Islam, for by mistake he chastised a Kashgari woman married to a Chinaman, whereupon the irate husband set upon him with a big stick and castigated him soundly.
Market day at Kashgar presented an ever-changing kaleidoscope. Here a turbaned grandfather bestriding a tiny donkey, his grandson clinging on behind him and holding tight to his waistcloth, would cross the imposing-looking bridge, a favourite haunt of the numerous beggars. On the river bank the dyers would be beating long pieces of cloth in the shallows; horses would be drinking standing knee-deep in the water, and at the ford loaded asses could be seen staggering across, and men and women with their garments kilted high wading to the opposite bank. Donkeys carrying covered tubs were ridden by children who scooped up the water in gourds and filled the receptacles that were to supply their households for the day. Small mites hardly able to do more than toddle, were fearless riders, sometimes two or even three children being perched on the same animal. The excellence of the river brand accounts for the fact that cholera is unknown in Kashgar, and the inhabitants do not suffer from the goitre that is so prevalent in other cities of Chinese Turkestan.
The little stalls in the bazar exposed all sorts of commodities for sale. Melons that had been stored all through the winter; horseshoes or murderous-looking knives laid out on benches; here were small piles of almonds, walnuts and pistachios, there macaroni of native make and rice; and at one corner of the road the dyers hung up their blue and scarlet cloths to dry. As far as I could see the vendors made no effort to press their wares, and there seemed to be no fixed hours of work, men apparently sleeping, gossiping or drinking tea at any time of day. In the bakers’ shops the ovens were big holes flush with the floor of the shop, and the baker stuck the flat cakes of dough against their sides and pulled them off when ready, with the aid of a long-handled iron instrument. The bread, the little be-glazed rolls in the form of rings, and the heaps of flour were all plentifully besprinkled by the dust of the traffic; and during the cold weather the children would squat all day close to these ovens and frequently tumble in and get terribly burnt, poor little things. There was always business doing at the forge, where the horses being shod were lashed so tightly to an ingenious wooden framework that they could not move. Unluckily the Turki farrier is more inclined to make the hoof fit the shoe than vice versa, and as a result often cuts away the wall in most unscientific fashion, as we sometimes found to our cost.
SHOEING IN THE KASHGAR BAZAR.
Page 62.
Partridges and the pretty little desert larks kept in small round cages called and twittered, but their notes would be drowned by the performance of a group of professional singers who had drawn a crowd round them. The leader in turban and silk attire, with a huge silver buckle on his belt, sang, or rather shouted, a solo with many a trill and tremulo, making excruciating facial contortions, the monotonous chorus being taken up by the rest of the troupe. Some of these were greybeards, others mere boys, but all had the appearance of undergoing acute torture as they yelled at the top of their voices, and brought to mind my old maestro who was in the habit of suddenly holding a mirror in front of me if I wore a pained expression as I sang.
Yet the Kashgaris have the reputation of being very musical, and even to my western ears there was considerable charm in many of their songs; but try as I might, I could never pick up any of their airs, probably owing to the fact that their notation is quite different from ours. They do not understand part-singing, but play several instruments, such as sitars, drums, pipes and tambourines. In the spring and summer men and boys would sing up to a late hour at night, and with the first glint of dawn I was often roused by cheerful peasants chanting on their way to work in the fields.
The people say that travelling dervishes bring fresh tunes to the towns, and that when the spring repertoire, for example, has been learnt by the inhabitants it will be succeeded by new tunes for the autumn and winter. There are sometimes no words to these refrains, each singer supplying his own, in the fashion of the Italian improvisatori. No woman of good repute may sing in public, and only once did I hear a little girl of some eight or nine years old singing away to herself and evidently much enjoying the exercise. Whistling is not allowed even to children, but I could not find out whether the Kashgaris believed, as do the Persians, that it summons the demons.
As the Kashgari woman is spoken of as khatun, mistress, and sometimes as khan, or master, of the house, I thought that she had a far better position than her Persian sister; yet the law of Islam presses heavily upon her in many ways. Owing to the emigration of men from the Oasis there is a large surplus of women, and marriage is consequently cheap for a suitor. Parents often sell their daughter to the highest bidder in the matrimonial market without allowing her any freedom of choice. True, divorce may be had for a couple of tungas (about fourpence), but as the woman may not re-marry until a hundred days have elapsed, she often has difficulty in keeping herself meantime, although the man is supposed to return the dowry that he received with her at her marriage. If she has children she must take charge of any under seven years of age, but if they are above that age the husband looks after the sons and the wife has the daughters, the husband paying a maintenance allowance.
There is a law that, if the husband divorces his wife, the latter may take all the movables in the house, and as in the case of a merchant much of his wealth consists of carpets and brass utensils, he often finds it cheaper to take a second wife rather than divorce the first, who would make a clean sweep of the household plenishing. I confess that this law rejoiced me, as I always resented the state of inferiority to which Islam subjects my sex, and was glad that it gave them the advantage for once.
A KASHGAR GRANDMOTHER.
Page 64.
Kashgar is a great resort of traders, and the degrading custom of temporary marriages is in full force, a man often marrying a woman for a week or even a couple of days, the mulla who performs the ceremony arranging for the divorce at the same time. The missionaries told me that most of the women in Kashgar had been married several times, and this constant divorce leads to the wives taking whatever they can from their husbands and secreting it against a rainy day. And one cannot blame them; for, if a man wants to get rid of his helpmate, especially if she be old, he often ill-treats her in order to force her to divorce him and thus free him from the necessity of restoring her dowry. If she does this she may find herself in evil case without means of subsistence, and possibly unable to remarry.
How the children fare in all these matrimonial complications must be left to the imagination. Fortunately marriage is a far more stable institution in the villages, where monogamy is the practice and divorce uncommon. Here the women are more on an equality with their husbands, though on one occasion Mr. Bohlin saw a man guiding a plough to which he had harnessed his wife and a donkey!
The Chinese also practise polygamy; but they never divorce a wife if she be the mother of a son, and I understand that they do not approve of the practice at all, regarding it as the ruin of family life and as full of evil consequences to the children.