In the land of the lion and sun, or, modern Persia

by C. J. Wills

I frequently laugh at our housekeeping experiences in those early days. We paid our cook ten kerans a day each for our messing, but every little extra was debited to us with stern accuracy; as, one day we made a pound of toffee, and at the month’s end were charged, “For making the Feringhi sweetmeat, fifteen shillings!” These items and the pay of my servants and my horse-keep made me fear that I should not be able to live on my pay; but I soon found that the cook was simply charging us four times the cost of our living. As Pierson was now leaving for Teheran, I was able to manage with a humbler cook on a less extravagant scale, and live better.

An amusing instance of the inveterate habit of making modakel now occurred prior to Pierson’s departure. In the early days of the Telegraph Department in Persia the line was supported by wooden poles, generally poplar, and much trouble was found in buying these. It would have been impossible for a European to buy them at all, and as the natives had to be employed, it taxed all Pierson’s ingenuity to prevent wholesale robbery taking place. The poles had to be paid for, and the buyer and seller generally managed to put their heads together to make the “Dowlet Ingleez” (English Government) pay a very fancy price.

Some poles were suddenly very urgently required, and the Sarhang or Colonel, the chief of the officials of the Persian office of the telegraph in Hamadan, the moonshee[12] or interpreter, a member of our staff, a native of Baghdad, and Pierson’s head-servant or nazir, were sent together to buy poles to the tune of kerans two thousand four hundred, in the villages in the neighbourhood, on the principle that each would act as a check on the other. These gentry divided their money into two portions, half to be profit and half to buy poles.

The poles were purchased; but when they returned, the moonshee desired an interview with Pierson.

After pointing out his own integrity and high sense of honour (this man’s English was peculiar; it had been acquired of the sailors in Baghdad, and was freely interlarded with oaths; but, worst of all, he had never learnt the use of the words very, more, and most, substituting the more homely expression which is used by Anglo-Saxons for sanguinary, as a word meaning all three; his conversation was thus less choice than forcible), he communicated to Pierson that half of the sum said to be expended had been set aside as plunder, but that he was no party to such arrangement. When I heard of the matter I set it down to disinterested virtue, but Pierson, whose experience of the Oriental was larger than mine, determined to sift the matter.

Hardly had the moonshee retired than the nazir requested a private interview, and stated that he too felt impelled by virtuous indignation to discover to his master the wicked conspiracy of the Colonel and the moonshee, who had agreed to divide the hundred and twenty tomans illicitly gained into three shares, making forty for each; but that the Colonel suggested to him that it would be better to give the moonshee nothing, which would leave them, the sarhang and himself, sixty each.

“Of course, I report the affair to the sahib, and he will use his discretion,” he said. The next morning Pierson sent for the Colonel, who denied the whole matter, produced receipts duly sealed for the payment of the whole two thousand four hundred kerans, and indignantly protested his honesty: “Comme officier Persan—décoré par sa Majesté!” (he spoke French fluently.) On an inquiry being instituted, it came out that the original idea was, as the moonshee said, to divide the plunder into three shares. Then, as the nazir said, into two—hence the honesty of the moonshee; and at last the Colonel resolved to keep the whole himself, which accounted for the virtue of the nazir. The money was disgorged, and the chief of the Persian Telegraph in Teheran fined his subordinate in Hamadan forty pounds, or one hundred tomans. So there is not always, in Persia at least, “Honour among thieves.”

Pierson left for Teheran, and I was alone in Hamadan with no one to speak to but the two corporals of engineers, who were the office staff, and the two others, who were inspectors of the line. I was then very ardent, and pushed my dispensary work, having many and interesting cases, and finding my patients, especially among the poor, increasing in number. Ramazan was gayer in his attire than ever, and my knowledge of the colloquial increased rapidly. I had, however, to freely have recourse to pantomime, as my only interpreter, the moonshee, now Pierson was away, seldom came near me.

But I had, without knowing it, raised up enemies among the native doctors. I found that, if I could not get money from my better-class patients, I could get experience; and I had commenced a system of seeing every one gratuitously. Of course I had no lack of patients, but the effect was, that the consulting-rooms of the native doctors were emptied, as the Persians would always prefer gratuitous physic with the additional “tamasha” (show) of a European doctor, to paying those who practised medicine strictly as taught by Aflatoon (Plato), Abu Senna (Avicenna), Galenus (Galen), and Pocrat (Hippocrates). This state of things was naturally intolerable to the profession in Hamadan, and my pseudo-friend, the Hakim-bashi, with the rest of his brethren, took steps to frighten me, in order to make me cease my obnoxious system.

I had been sitting quietly in the courtyard when my servant ran in to say that there was a mob at the door. I went on the roof and found it was so; some two hundred ragamuffins were assembled; they hooted me, and said a good deal evidently of an uncomplimentary nature. After a while stones began to come. I returned with a gun, which I valiantly discharged over their heads, shouting “Bero!” (“Be off;”) for I felt that, if I did not get rid of the small mob, a big one would soon form, at whose hands I should fare badly. However, the gun effectually frightened the fellows off, and the space outside my door was cleared. I got on my horse to go to the telegraph-office and seek advice. Off I started, accompanied by my servants (three) and all Pierson’s dogs.