Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

CHAPTER III
KABUL

The Mihman khana or Guest-house—Description of hamams (Turkish baths)—Description of people met with on roads and streets—Amir Abdul Rahman—Description of palace and audience chamber, and his reception of me—Situation of Kabul and description of country around—Kabul city, its bazars, streets, and filth—Water-supply and drainage systems—Sanitary arrangements—Pariah dogs and crows scavenging city.

On the morning after my arrival, I was walking in the garden when the court interpreter came to tell me that the Amir Sahib had ordered that I was to be favoured with an interview that afternoon. This was my second visit to Kabul, and I was no stranger to the Amir, who had the gift of not forgetting any one he once saw.

The Amir had given orders that I was to be treated with great honour and courtesy, and the house in which I had been given quarters was the new Mihman khana or Guest-house, in which the Amir himself had been stopping until a few days before. It is an extensive square building with large rooms, originally intended for one of the Amir’s summer palaces, and is situated on the outskirts of the new city. An extensive garden surrounds the house, and the whole is enclosed by a high wall, and in one of the walls is a covered gateway, on either side of which are rooms for the use of the outer guard. Outhouses are built on the inner side of the wall for the use of the servants, and at the end of the outhouses is the kitchen, and adjoining that the hamam (Turkish bath), without which, no large house in Kabul is considered complete. It was in this hamam that I had the day before enjoyed the first comfortable bath since leaving Kandahar.

The hamam consists of two rooms, one opening into the other, with domed roofs, the floors flagged with large stone slabs, and the ceilings and walls plastered with cement. The rooms are heated from a fireplace built outside, the flue from which branches out under the inner chamber, and up through the walls of the outer one. The wall at the fireplace end of the inner chamber is double, and the intervening space is occupied by two cisterns, the one for hot water being immediately over the fire, and the other for cold water alongside it, and pipes fitted with taps convey the water to the inner room. The inner chamber is the hot one, and is used for ablutions, while the outer one is for cooling down in and dressing. It is not advisable to spend too much time in these hamams, as the air, for want of proper ventilation, is rather foul, and also, as the stone flags are not too well jointed, the gases from the fire get in, so that a prolonged visit generally ends in a bad headache. They are, nevertheless, a great convenience in the cold weather, which is much more severe than the average English winter, but they take about two days’ firing to get properly heated, and must be fired every day if wanted for regular use. Once heated, however, it requires but little fuel to keep the temperature up.

Accompanied by the translator, I rode off soon after midday to keep the appointment made by the Amir, but about halfway to the palace we were met by a messenger bringing a note. It was from the Amir, saying, that as he had risen late, he would not be able to see me at the appointed time, and therefore told me to come an hour later. To have a letter putting off the appointment to a later hour is an extreme mark of honour, for usually when one is ordered to be present at an appointed time, one has to sit and wait if the Amir is not ready to receive.

I spent the intervening hour in riding about the streets and roads on the outskirts of the city, where the palaces of the Amir and princes are situated, and where the officials and courtiers and others have their houses and gardens. This part, which lies to the north-west of the old city, is generally called Deh Afghanan, from a small village of Afghan people which lies in that direction; and here the roads are broad and well laid out, but at that time they were not metalled, and after rain or snow, the horses’ feet sank inches deep in mud and slush, and pedestrians had to walk warily. At the present time the principal roads round Kabul are metalled, and riding or walking is not the mud-besplashing process it once was.

The people met with were unwashed and unkempt in appearance. Even those who were apparently high in rank, and came along the road on horseback, with five or six servants running beside them, looked as though they had washed their faces just before leaving the house, and had forgotten to wash their necks. The clean, fresh look of those who bathe regularly was missing, and, although I found afterwards that the better classes bathe but once a week or less, and the others once in a few months, it may, perhaps, be the dark sallow skin of the neck which gives the unwashed appearance. Also the dress of the people being part English and part Afghan, and their habit of putting on a clean shirt once a week only adds to the appearance of untidyness, and makes them look as though a good all-over scrubbing would do them good.

The Amir was stopping in the Boistan Serai, a small palace built outside the gardens which surround the fortified palace of Arak, and alongside the Queen-Sultana’s palace, which is called the Gulistan Serai. Boistan and Gulistan both signify garden, the translation of the former being “place of scents,” and the latter, “place of flowers.” Kabul itself might be termed “boistan” in another sense, which a ride through its bazars would indicate.