Much ostentation comes out in the keeping of it; very pious people begin to fast before the month sets in. A really ascetic Moslem does not even swallow his saliva during the fast, and none but very old or sick people, children, and travellers, are exempt from the obligation to taste neither food nor water, and not even to smoke during daylight, for a whole month. The penance is a fearful one, and as the night is the only time for feasting, the Persians get through as much of the day as possible in sleep.
Welcome indeed is the sunset. With joy men fill their pipes and drink tea as a prelude to the meal eaten an hour afterwards. Hateful is the dawn and the cry an hour before it, "Water! oh, water and opium!"—the warning to the faithful to drink largely and swallow an opium pill before sunrise. The thirst even in weather like this, and the abstention from smoking, are severer trials than the fasting from food. The Persian either lives to smoke, or smokes to live.
Although travellers are nominally exempt from the fast from water at least, pious Moslems do not avail themselves of the liberty. Hadji Hussein, for instance, is keeping it as rigidly as any one, and, like some others, marches with the end of his pagri tucked over his mouth and nose, a religious affectation, supposed to prevent the breaking of the fast by swallowing the animalculæ which are believed to infest the air!
Beyond Riz, everywhere there are arid yellow mountains and yellow gravelly plains, except along the Zainderud, where fruit-trees, wheat, and the opium poppy relieve the eyes from the glare. We took leave of the Zainderud at Pul-i-Kala, where it is crossed by a dilapidated but passable and very picturesque stone bridge of eight arches, and the view from the high right bank of wood, bridge, and the vigorous green river is very pretty.
Little enough of trees or greenery have we seen since. This country, like much of the great Iranian plateau, consists of high mountains with broad valleys or large or small plateaux between them, absolutely treeless, and even now nearly verdureless, with scattered oases wherever a possibility of procuring water by means of laboriously-constructed irrigation canals renders cultivation possible.
Water is scarce and precious; its value may be gathered from the allusions made by the Persian poets to fountains, cascades, shady pools, running streams, and bubbling springs. Such expressions as those in Scripture, "rivers of waters," "a spring of water whose waters fail not," convey a fulness of meaning to Persian ears of which we are quite ignorant. The first inquiry of a Persian about any part of his own country is, "Is there water?" the second, "Is the water good?" and if he wishes to extol any particular region he says "the water is abundant all the year, and is sweet, there is no such water anywhere."
The position of a village is always determined by the water supply, for the people have not only to think of water for domestic purposes, but for irrigating their crops, and this accounts for the packing of hamlets on steep mountain sides where land for cultivation can only be obtained by laborious terracing, but where some perennial stream can be relied on for filling the small canals. The fight for water is one of the hardest necessities of the Persian peasant. A water famine of greater or less degree is a constant peril.
Land in Persia is of three grades, the wholly irrigated, the partially irrigated, and the "rain-lands," usually uplands, chiefly suited for pasturage. The wholly irrigated land is the most productive. The assessments for taxes appear to leave altogether out of account the relative fertility of the land, and to be calculated solely on the supply of water. A winter like the last, of heavy snow, means a plenteous harvest, i.e. "twelve or fourteen grains for one," as the peasants put it; a scanty snowfall means famine, for the little rain which falls is practically of scarcely any use.
The plan for the distribution of water seems to be far less provocative of quarrels than that of some other regions dependent on irrigation, such as Ladak and Nubra. Where it is at all abundant, as it is in this Zainderud valley, it is only in the great heats of summer that it is necessary to apportion it with any rigidity. It is then placed in the hands of a mirab or water officer, who allows it to each village in turn for so many days, during which time the villages above get none, or the ketchudas manage it among themselves without the aid of a mirab, for the sad truth, which is applicable to all Persian officialism, applies in the mirab's case, that if a village be rich enough to bribe him it can get water out of its turn.
The blessedness of the Zainderud valley is exceptional, and the general rule in the majority of districts is that the water must be carefully divided and be measured by "tashts," each tasht being equivalent to the use of the water supply for eleven minutes.