We had got beyond the point where one met others on the road; we had now become our own world, a self-contained planet travelling with the sun through space. When he disappeared over the horizon line we pitched our camp and waited for his reappearance on the opposite side. At the first glimmer announcing his arrival the tents were hauled down, the arabas loaded up, and by the time his face peeped over the line we were in our saddles, ready once more to follow him to his journey's end.
It is a great half-desert plain, this part of Anatolia; desert only where it is waterless, and very fertile where irrigation is possible. In places it seemed to form one huge grazing ground; now it would be herds of black cattle munching its coarse, dried-up herbage; now flocks of mohair goats, now sheep, herded by boys in white sheepskin coats, tended by yellow dogs. Then we knew that a village would be somewhere about, although we did not always see it; for here too the villages are the colour of the surrounding country and perhaps only visible in very clear sunlight.
Or it might be that we would ride slowly through a cluster of mud huts, and the yellow dogs would rush out and bark furiously at us, while the men and children stared silently, too listless even to wonder. At times we would stop in a village for our midday meal, sitting in the shade of its yellow mud walls. The Zaptiehs would stand round us and keep off the dogs until some of the village men would appear and call them away with a half-scared look—for the Zaptieh is the tax-collector, and they suffer from extortion at his hands.
We visited the women in their houses, and found them always interested and friendly. Turkish was becoming more intelligible to us, and the conversation usually took the same form:—
"Who is your father?"
"He is a Pasha in a far country."
"Where are your husbands?"
"We have no husbands."
"How is that?"