Coming back from the Hospital we met an old lady walking. She was well dressed but wore no veil. I knew her very well to speak to, but who she was I didn’t quite know. I had heard that she was nurse to the Amîr when he was a child. She seemed equally at home in the Harem and in the Durbar. The Armenian related the incident at the Hospital, and she was suitably indignant and sympathetic. Perhaps she did not treat me with that profound respect one would think was the due of a distinguished Foreigner, for she called me “Buchcha,” “Youngster”!!! I overlooked it; for the opportunity of speaking to a lady was rare, and I enjoyed it in direct proportion to its rarity.
The next Durbar evening during Ramazàn was cold and showery. His Highness sat at the window of the Palace. I was invited inside. The scent was sweet from great clusters of roses arranged in vases. After dinner (we had two kinds of ice pudding, among other things) an Usbàk was ushered in, bringing a design he had drawn on paper for a wall decoration—flowers and leaves treated conventionally.
His Highness examined the design and said it was not bad and it was not good. This just about expressed my own opinion. The drawing was good but the colours were gaudy and clashed with one another. His Highness said he had some work of that kind done by a Kabuli which he would show me, and he sent for it.
It was an illuminated Manuscript book, and the cover inside and out was painted with flowers and birds treated decoratively. It was beautiful. The drawing was excellent; the colouring was quite harmonious, and the balance of each design was, to my eye, perfect. I said I had never seen anything of the kind better. The book itself, I was told, was His Highness’s diary.
During the evening some presents were laid at His Highness’s feet. Among them were two huge loaves of white sugar, about 20 lbs. each. These he directed to be given to me. Knowing something about the meaning of the custom, I was very pleased.
Before we left, His Highness said that shortly after the termination of Ramazàn we should leave Mazar for Kabul.
His Highness had promised me leave of absence for some months after his arrival in Kabul, and when I got home that night I grew enthusiastic in my description to the Armenian of the wonders and sights of London. After talking some time, I said I had seen a man seize the back of a chair with his teeth, hold it out straight, and put another on the top of it. The Armenian was not to be outdone. He said he had seen a man take a charpoy—a bedstead—balance it on one leg on the tip of his tongue, and then dance! He also described to me a curious European sweetmeat that he had met with in his travels.
“I saw him in Lahore,” he said. “Like this you catch him, tear him up, and he is call ‘Bang’!”
I concluded that he wished to describe the ordinary Christmas cracker.