Near by was a barber's shop, combined with a bathing establishment. We went inside and as I wished to see the baths the barber got a small lamp and took me to the back of the shop where the baths were: stone boxes like tiny cachots with wooden doors. There was just room for a man to stand upright or squat upon the floor, and in the middle of the wall on one side was a small hole in which the bowls of water could be placed from without.
A woman at the corner of the street was cooking or "popping" maize. She put the maize into a bowl-shaped depression over the fire with some black sand which was afterwards sifted back from the corn. She was paid by retaining a small portion of each lot brought for her to cook.
Near by was the mosque of Dilawar Khan, of brick-work and decorated plaster, and a tank of turbid green water in the middle with red goldfish swimming about in it. Mr Agha Khan said that Dilawar Khan was a Khardar of the Chaghattai kings. I noticed a long wooden trough inside the mosque. "It is to put the shoes for safety," said Agha Khan; "there are many thieves here who would take them if left outside," which indexed one side of the Peshawar character and showed that the Pathan's passion for thieving is greater than his respect for religious observance.
We watched some goldsmiths for a while and then a baker making round flat cakes called "gird" of wheaten flour and water and others of the Afghan pattern shaped like a flat spoon. These are called "Nan," and have ghee (butter) mixed with the flour so that they cost two annas each whereas the girds cost but two pice. The oven is like a spherical kiln in the floor with the fire inside on the bottom and a small round opening at the top on the floor level where the baker sits. When he has kneaded the dough and marked his cake with various thumb-marks for decoration, he takes a rafida, a kind of small stiff pillow, wets it and on it puts the cake. Then, reaching down through the oven-hole with his hand, he slaps it up on to the curved wall and leaving the cake adhering brings out the pillow again. Then when the bread is cooked, with a hooked bamboo stick called a kundi he brings out the baked loaf. "I am very wise and clever to do this work," said the baker, "this is not easy work."
Next we called at a dispensary where a native doctor, trained at a medical school at Lahore, told me he sees an average of 200 patients per day. Eyes and throats were the most frequent trouble. We saw another mosque—one founded by Gangeli Khan, another official under the Chaghattai kings—with a fine old Imam. The Imam must be ready at all times to go to the house of one dying and read the Arsin as well as to wash the body and perform various ceremonies after death.
In another part of the city I went to see a house in the street called Undar Shahr which had been recently raided by Zakka Khels. Two bankers, Nan Dan and Chela Ram, had the upper floor where the raid took place. Going through an open passage-way in this building I came into an Afghan merchant's go-down, where raisins brought from Kabul were being sampled by a group of men sitting upon the floor. Among these merchants, bargaining with them, I saw, somewhat to my surprise, an enterprising Teuton!
With regard to the raid and the probability of its having been engineered by friends living in the city, I was told the following native proverb:—
"Chori Yaru naukri
Baj Wasila nahi."
Of which the meaning is:—
"Theft, love and service
All require a go-between."