At the Court of the Amîr: A Narrative

by John Alfred Gray

The houses, being built in this way with thick non-conducting walls and roof, are wonderfully cool in spite of the intense heat of the sun in summer. They should be equally warm in the winter, but, unfortunately, the windows and doors never fit properly. There is no paint on the woodwork, for paint is far too expensive to be used in such a wholesale way, and the heat and dryness of the summer make great cracks appear. Except in the Amîr’s palaces there are no latches to the doors such as we have. The doors and windows are fastened by a chain which hooks on to a staple. The windows of a room occupy nearly the whole of the wall on the garden side of the room; and as passages are rare—one room opening into another—there are two or more doors to each room. The number and variety of draughts, therefore, can be imagined; so that with the thermometer at zero, or below, it is utterly impossible to keep a room warm with a wood fire in the fireplace—even if you have a fireplace, which is unusual.

The Afghans do not attempt to keep the room warm. They keep themselves warm, however, by means of the “sandali.” An iron pot or brazier is placed in the middle of the room and filled with glowing charcoal. Among poorer people simply a shallow hole is scraped in the earth of the floor, and in this the charcoal is put. A large wooden stool is placed over the charcoal and covered by a very large cotton-wool quilt, or rezai. The people sit on the ground round the sandali, pulling the quilt up to their chin. A big postîn over the shoulders keeps the back warm, and the turban is always kept on the head. In the winter there is not much work done, and the people sit by the sandali most of the day. Supposing you make a call, you find them, masters and servants (all men, of course), sitting round the sandali chatting together or playing cards or chess. The ladies have their own sandali in the harem—you don’t see them. Everyone rises as you enter, and room is politely made for you at the sandali. One of the servants goes off to prepare tea, making the water hot in the samovar. Another makes ready the chillim, or hubble-bubble. The tray is brought in with an embroidered teacloth over it, covering teapot, cups and saucers, and sugar-basin. The servant places the tray on the floor and kneels down by the side of it, folding up the cloth for a tea cosy. It is not etiquette for a servant to sit crossed-legged in the presence of a visitor or a superior. In the privacy of their own homes etiquette is, however, considerably remitted. He puts two or three big lumps of sugar into the cup and pours out the tea, breaking up the sugar with a spoon. He gets up and hands you the cup and saucer with both hands. To use one hand would be a rudeness. No milk or cream is drank with the tea, except in the occasional cup of “kaimagh-chai.”

You must drink two cups of this sweet tea—it is flavoured with cardamoms—and half a cup of tea without any sugar—“chai-i-talkh”—this is to correct the sweetness. If you make two or three calls in an afternoon, you feel it is as much as you can bear. In Afghanistan you may call upon a man whenever you like, but you must not leave his house without asking permission. I told them that in my country it was different: people were not allowed to call upon us without invitation, and they could go away as soon as they pleased. The Afghans seemed to think this was very discourteous, for they are nothing if not hospitable.

The Bath House.

All the larger houses have rooms for the Afghan bath; there is the bath-room proper, and a small dressing-room. It is not a hot dry-air bath like the Turkish bath, but a hot moist air, so that the heat is never so great as in the Turkish bath. The walls are cemented, and the floor either cemented or paved with an inferior marble that is plentiful near Kabul. The cement is made of equal parts of wood-ashes and lime moistened and beaten together for some days. In a recess in one wall is a cistern or tank of stone or cement, with a fireplace beneath it, which is fed from the stokehole outside the bath-room. Public bath-rooms are quite an institution in Afghanistan. They are rented by a bath-man or barber, who makes what he can out of them. Some of the bath-houses belong to the Amîr. The bath is by no means an expensive luxury: the poorer people pay about a halfpenny. Richer people who engage the services of the bath-man or barber to shampoo them, pay about eighteenpence. The plan I adopted was to engage the bath-room and the shampooer for the day. It cost but a few shillings.

Having sent word a day or two beforehand, I used to start about ten o’clock in the morning, accompanied by all my Afghan servants, bringing bath-towel, soap and comb. It is the custom in Afghanistan when the master has engaged the bath-room, for the Afghan servant to seize the opportunity of having a free bath. Hindustani servants in Kabul do not presume to accompany the Sahib on such an occasion. The outside appearance of the bath-house is not very inviting. As a rule, there is a large pool of stagnant water near by—the waste water of the bath—and you dismount in a hesitating way. When you get into the small dark unpaved entry, and slip about on the mud, the inclination is to turn round and go out again. However, having got so far, you think you may as well face it out. You find the dressing-room clean and dry, and the bath proprietor (or tenant rather) comes out to receive you. He is dressed—or undressed—ready to shampoo you, his only garment being a waist-cloth. The servants pull off your boots, and help you to get ready, and then fix a waist-cloth, which reaches the knees, very tightly round the waist, fastening it with a particular twist. The bath-man taking your hand, raises the curtain over the arched door of the bath-room, and leads you carefully in. The reason is that the floor being very smooth and wet, you are exceedingly likely, without great care, to have a dangerous fall. When you enter, the air being damp as well as hot, you feel almost suffocated.

The Process of the Bath.

A good class bath-room is generally octagonal, with a vaulted and groined roof, not much decorated, but displaying a certain amount of taste in the building. The windows are arched and glazed, and very small, so that the room is rather dark. The Afghan servants quickly follow you in, attired in the same way as yourself, and though they treat you with due respect, all seem for the time, more or less, on an equality, and as they dash the water over each other, they chat and laugh quite unrestrainedly. The process of massage, or shampooing, which the bath-men thoroughly understand, is rather a long one; and it is not at all uncommon when bathing to spend a great part of the day—four or five hours—in the bath-room. For myself, I found two hours quite as much as I wanted. A cloth is folded up for a pillow, and you lie on a warm part of the marble, or cement floor. You generally see, at first with some disgust, a few large long-legged ants, running quickly about near the walls: afterwards you become indifferent, for, as the bath-man says, they are harmless, they don’t sting. There are such swarms of insects of all kinds in the East, that you divide them roughly into those that sting and those that don’t. The latter you take no notice of, the former you treat with more respect. The shampooer, having dashed on a little warm water, begins by stretching and kneading the skin of one arm, the rubbing being done in the direction of the blood current; the knuckles of the fingers he cracks with a sudden jerk. Then he goes to the other arm. Having treated all the limbs the same way, he places his two hands on the sides of the chest, and suddenly throws his whole weight on to them, which stretches the skin, and compressing the ribs, drives out the air from the chest with a grunt and gasp. Then he kneads and rubs the muscles of the chest, shoulders, and body. After that he brings you into sitting posture, and fixing you with his knee, he seizes one shoulder and twists you round as far as you can go, and with a sudden jerk in the same direction he makes the back-bone crack. A similar twisting is done the other way round. He then takes a coarse flesh glove and proceeds to rasp your skin off. The more he can get off, the better pleased he is. They left me the first time with a “fox bite” on the chest, which lasted for days. On subsequent occasions I called attention to the fact that I was an Englishman and not a cast-iron Afghan. After the flesh glove, come two courses of “soaping”—how it smarts! hot water being dashed on at frequent intervals. The Afghan shoe leaving a part of the instep exposed, the skin becomes thick and coarse, and a piece of pumice stone is used to scrub the feet with. This, after all the rest, was too much for me, and I rebelled, excusing myself by explaining that my life was of value to the Amîr on account of the number of sick poor in the city.

The Lack of Ventilation.

Finally you stand up, and two or three bucketfuls of hot water are thrown over your head. Your servant then comes up, wraps you in a bath-towel, and you go off to the dressing-room. There are no velvet couches to lie on, so you proceed to rub down and dress: then tea is brought, you have a cigarette, and ride languidly home. The Afghan bath is an excellent institution for cleanliness in a hot climate, but it certainly is neither exhilarating nor stimulating. There is little or no arrangement made for ventilating the bath-room, and it is customary, in the bitter cold of a Kabul winter, for poor people to obtain permission to sleep there at night. It is a not uncommon occurrence for one or two to be found suffocated in the morning.