A DERVISH.
Many of them deal in charms, and are consulted as astrologers. Some are professed tellers of stories, to which I am told no European could degrade himself by listening, but which are most palatable to a village audience; and at this moment this unwelcome guest of mine has a crowd listening to a narrative partly told and partly acted.
They are credited with many vices, among the least of which are hazy ideas as to mine and thine, opium and bhang smoking to excess, and drunkenness.
They have recognised heads or chiefs, to whom they show great deference. One of their vows is that of obedience; and besides paying to the chief a part of the alms they receive, he gives them orders as to the houses they are to infest, and though the nuisance is not so common as formerly, a dervish at the door is still a sign of being great or rich, or both. Their cries, and their rude blasts on the buffalo horn, which is a usual part of their equipment, are most obnoxious. In the larger towns, such as Kûm and Kirmanshah, there are shops for the sale of their outfit—the tiger and panther skins, the axes, the knotted clubs, the almsbowls, etc.
Some are respectable, and enjoy much consideration, and I hope that many even of those whom a careful writer has called "disgusting vagabonds" are not humbugs; but the presumption is so much the other way that I am always glad when the ground admits of galloping past them, otherwise the dervish comes forward, with his knotted club much en évidence, with many compliments and good wishes, or else silently extends his almsholder, ejaculating Huk ("my right"). I usually have the means of appeasing, if not of satisfying him, but on the rare occasions when I have had no money the yells and maledictions have been awful.
The light and profane use of the Divine name is universal. The dervishes curse, but every one uses the name Allah wherever they can bring it in. The Ya Allah, as an expression of fatigue, or discontent, or interest, or nothing, is heard all day, and the boy who drives a cow, or a team, or a mule in a caravan, cries Ya Allah incessantly as an equivalent of "go along," and the gardener pushing his spade into the ground, the chopper with every blow of the axe, the labourer throwing up bricks, ejaculates the same. Mashallah, Inshallah, interlard all conversation. When men are building, the perpetual sing-song of phrases such as these is heard, "Brother, in God's name toss me a brick," the other replying, "Brother, in God's name here is a brick."
The vocabulary of abuse is also very large, and often involves serious reflections on the female relatives of the person abused. I hear such harmless phrases as "son of a burnt father," "son of a dog," "offspring of a pig," etc., on all occasions.
Murcheh Khurt is a large village with a good deal of cultivation about it, a mosque or more, a hammam, a chapar khana, and a caravanserai. Here again I found that the smart foreign soldier attracted all the notice, and that before the people ceased to wonder at him I had passed them. The chapar khana was full of men, so I have had to sink to the level of a recessed den with a manger in front in a ruinous caravanserai crowded with Persian travellers, muleteers, mules, horses, and asses, and the courtyard half-choked with ruins. I had not seen the inside of one of these dens before. Travellers have exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon them; possibly they deserve it in the "vermin season"; but there is nothing worse than a square and perfectly dark room, with unplastered walls blackened by the smoke and cobwebs of ages, and a door which will not fasten.
The air is cool and the sky blue, and sitting at the open door is very pleasant. Mahboud and two of the servants caught cold at Kuhrūd and are ill, and my Arab has a chill too. He is a very stupid horse. His gentle eyes never change their expression, and his small ears rarely move. He has little sense or affection, but when he is patted his proud neck takes on a loftier arch. Gentle as he is to people he is a brute to other horses. He would like to fight every one of them, to stand on his hind-legs and grapple them round the shoulders with his fore-feet and bite their necks, roaring and squealing all the time. He and Mahboud's horse are inveterate enemies, and one of the few difficulties of the journey is the keeping them from a regular stand-up fight.
This village is an oasis in the desert. I have been through its gates, barely wide enough to admit an ass loaded with brushwood, with the seraidar and Mirza, walked through its narrow alleys, and inadvertently stumbled into a mosque where a great crowd of women were listening to a story of one of the twelve Imams told by a mollah, looked down upon it and over the adjacent country from a house roof, visited several houses, in which some of the inmates were ill and desired "Feringhi medicine," had a long conversation with the ketchuda, who came to see me to ask for eye lotion, and with the seraidar, and altogether have had quite a pleasant day.