Coleridge.
Pleasures of town life—The Khani’s court—Bactiari shepherds—Shustar—Its palace, its river, and its garden—A telegraph clerk.
April 4.—Dizful, though still alive with a population of 30,000 persons, and a certain amount of traffic, for it is the corn market of the tribes westwards on the Ottoman frontier, and eastwards on the Bactiari, now possesses but the shadow of its past prosperity, if we may judge from the neglected condition of its magnificent bridge and the ruined walls which remain to mark its former circumference. Between these and the limit within which the present inhabited town has shrunk, lies a widish strip of unoccupied land. Here we have our camp in a hollow out of sight from the road, and here we had hoped to remain unnoticed and undisturbed. But alas, it was Friday, and the whole population turned out at daybreak, and there was no chance of escaping discovery. All the inhabitants of Dizful, men, women, and children, have been idling about, holiday-making in their best clothes all day long, with apparently nothing to do but stare at us. I am sure they consider the arrival of a party of strangers as a God-send, for from early dawn until an hour ago, at the asr when the governor sent three soldiers to disperse them, they have literally swarmed round our tent like their own flies. Not content, as Arabs are, with looking on from a reasonable distance, these Persians persist in trying to thrust their way inside the tent, and not succeeding, they sit down in rows so close to it that we cannot stir without pushing somebody away. Besides, they cannot look with their eyes; they must touch everything with their fingers, and they must laugh and talk, and have answers to all their foolish questions. They mean no harm, but it is very tiresome, and has hindered us not a little in our repairs and preparations. The camel saddles and bags wanted mending, the camels had to be doctored for mange, with an ointment which had first to be mixed, the horses to be shod, the stores looked through, purchases to be made of rope and provisions, and all this with several hundred persons at one’s elbow; each ready with advice and interference.
Our appearance, I have no doubt, is a great temptation to them, for there can be few things more unutterably dull than one of their festivities. Pigeon-flying is here as much the fashion as it is at Aleppo, and there is the same element of gambling in the performance. The birds are let loose from their separate dovecots, and allure each other home; such at least is the explanation given us of the excitement shown in watching them. Whoever gets most birds from his neighbour wins. Then there are dervishes and seyyids in green clothes who go about selling sugar-plums and collecting alms; and a few of the richest have horses on which they gallop about. We, however, in our Arab dresses, are a perplexity and an endless source of inquiry to all; and our dogs, and our falcon, and our camels, excite almost as much interest as they might in Hyde Park or the Champs Elysées. We should have done far better to stay the other side of the river, where there is an honest bit of desert much more in keeping with our establishment, and where nobody comes. Rasham, too, to add to our troubles, got loose and flew wildly about over the crowd, and could not be caught till Wilfrid climbed to the top of a tower there was in the city wall, and lured him down. We were almost at our wits’ end with the mob when the governor’s guard arrived, and restored order. I profit by the quiet thus secured, and by the last hour of daylight, to write my journal.
Besides the vulgar populace, several polite and well-to-do inhabitants have called on us; the most agreeable of them, a party of four, came in the morning, and afterwards spent the day sitting under the shade of the ruined wall close by, where Wilfrid returned their visit. In the afternoon they came again. They were Ardeshir Khan, a very dignified and very fat man; Pasha Khan, next in dignity and fat; Yusef Khan, thin and very dark; and lastly, Aga Shukra Allah, red-haired and speaking a little Arabic, and thus able to converse with us and interpret for his friends.
The wife of one of these gentlemen sent to propose to come and see me, and on my accepting, arrived immediately with a score of attendants. We sat together on my carpet, which I ordered to be spread near the tent; but with the best will in the world, our conversation was but halting; Hajji Mohammed is not a fluent dragoman, and he grows deafer every day. A seyyid also called on us and brought his little girl, named Khatún, a funny little thing of five, to whom I gave a silver kran; then some rather ill-mannered persons calling themselves Sabæans. [179]
Two or three people have been riding about on horseback; one on a very handsome little bay horse, said to be of Nejd origin, brought back by a pilgrim, as it is the fashion for pilgrims who can afford to do so, to bring back a colt from Nejd.
This year’s pilgrims they tell us have not yet returned, and we are the first to announce their arrival at Meshhed Ali. We hoped to have heard something here of our friend Ali Koli Khan, but are disappointed. He intended to go by water from Bagdad to Mohammra or Ahwas, and so to Shustar and home—the usual route, in fact—for ours is not a road travelled by respectable people. Dizful communicates with the outer world only by Shustar. It is of no use, however, waiting for Ali Koli. We cannot spare the time, and must pay our visit to Huseyn Koli Khan now or not at all. No one can tell us exactly where to find the Bactiari chief, some saying he is at Shustar, some at Teheran, while all agree that some of his people are encamped between this and Shustar, and to Shustar we consequently mean to go.
Our last visit was from the governor or deputy-governor, who being, we suspect, not quite sober, (for the Persians drink wine) behaved so oddly that Wilfrid had to beg him to take himself off there and then. On the whole, our day’s rest at Dizful has been hardly a pleasant one.
April 5.—Shaking the dust of this very tiresome city from our feet, we resumed our march to-day. We are depressed at the poor reception we have received after all in Persia, the country we have heard of so long as famed for its politeness, but perhaps we ourselves are to blame. Hajji Mohammed tells us we should have travelled in a different way, and he is probably right. The Persians, he says, judge only from what they see, and have no idea that people travelling without servants can be respectable. We should have come with a retinue, an escort of fifty men and half as many servants. Then we should have been fêted everywhere. But it is too late now, and we must travel on as we can.