Another kind of display was a fight with short cloth-covered wooden sticks held in the right hand, while in the left was kept twirling a longer rod with ball ends.
Men carried children on their shoulders, and two little jesters—youngsters with whitened faces and tall pointed caps and dresses covered with jingling bells—dodged under legs and squeezed their way along.
At night, as if there were not quite enough mystery in the moonlight, the air was thick with dust from the trampling feet. I have said nothing of the "Buraks" which were as wonderful chimeras, half mythic creatures on which it is supposed the commander rode, beings with human faces and strong fore-limbs, half like peacocks with great spreading tails. Many of them were borne among the crowd on frames or platforms carried shoulder high.
Here was a space kept for the Barati dancer. In a green vest and a white loin-cloth he danced with a small skull-cap on his head. He carried whirling in his hand the "Barati," a long rod with balls of fire flaring at each end. At one side of the space kept for this dancer, three men held up a frame on which hung specimens of many of the ancient arms, "Buttas" of various kinds, and "Danarh" too, and "Patapazis"—small shields.
Men pushed the circle outward to widen it for a yet wilder dance. "Genari Hadri!" "Genari Hadri!" the crowd yelled for encouragement. A man went round pouring fresh oil on the torches called "Kuppi" and my eyes streamed with the smoke and dust. The fretwork of the projecting upper parts of the houses looked white in this light. Two large "Tasias" passed and many drummers. Then a posse of police, with their tall red hat-like turbans, pushed through the crowd with long sticks.
Out of the great round earthen coolers into the small brown pots, attendants at the "Sabils" or drinking-stands, kept on ladling. Under one, two children lay fast asleep, their dark heads as close together as the golden ones of Goblin Market, while a little girl in green kept watch over them.
These "Sabil" stands are given, some of them, by filles de joie, who are often lavish in charity.
A man was selling coloured plaster figures—he had a great basket of them—two pi for a big one. Paper lanterns called "Kandils" of many shapes, two feet high, hung from the houses. You must understand thousands of people were walking through and through the old city that night, and the people of the houses vied with one another to show each something more bizarre than the rest.
Some men carried trophies of swords and green streamers arranged in fan-shape on the top of a ten-foot bamboo pole. This is called "Zulfikar," and at intervals the bearer stopped, raised the pole and balanced it on his chin. "Genari Hadri!" shouted the crowd again, and the "Zulfikar" man marched on with his set of drummers in front of him. Then came men singing Marsias, i.e., verses about the death of Hassan and Hussein—poems of regret: and men of the Shia sect did beat their breasts.