[248]. The width of the former is fourteen inches; and the height of the latter, the same.[same.]
[249]. Or “Bi-smi-lláhi-r-rahmáni-r-raheem” (In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful).
[250]. One of the servants is holding a water-bottle: the other, a fly-whisk, made of palm leaves.
[251]. Our Saviour and His disciples thus ate from one dish. See Matt. xxvi. 23.
[252]. Or he merely sops his morsel of bread in the dish. See Ruth ii. 14; and John xiii. 26.
[253]. The bámiyeh is the esculent “hibiscus:” the part which is eaten is a polygonal pod, generally between one and three inches in length, and of the thickness of a small finger: it is full of seeds and nutritive mucilage, and has a very pleasant flavour. A little lime-juice is usually dropped on the plate of bámiyehs.
[254]. The black and white bádingán are the fruits of two kinds of egg-plant: the red is the tomato.
[255]. Because used for unclean purposes.
[256]. So called from the Persian “khósh áb,” or “sweet water.”
[257]. It is drunk with ladles of tortoise-shell or cocoa-nut.