Persian sweets are very soft and in the dry climate quickly get hard and lose their first freshness, and to offer a Persian stale sweets is like offering you stale cakes. They are at their best only on the day they are made, and the servant sent to buy sweets will sit down with his tray of plates at the shop-door and wait till the new sweets are ready, when they can be put quite fresh and new on the plates on which they are to be served. In Yezd, where the best sweets are made, our servants seemed to regard the moving of sweets to a fresh plate much as we should the removal of a pie to a fresh pie-dish, and many sorts are certainly the worse for being shifted after they have got cold. All better-class Persians make their own sweets at home and consider “shop sweets” very inferior.
The fame of Persian sherbet has spread far, and nearly every visitor to Persia looks forward to a treat when he tastes it. But it by no means comes up to expectation. It is often made fresh in the presence of the guests, so the recipe is no secret. A sugar loaf is put in a basin, by preference a pot pourri bowl, and cold water is poured over it, and it is allowed to melt with an occasional stir. A little rosewater is then added to flavour it, and it is handed round in glasses, with ice if possible. At meals, however, the bowl is placed on the tablecloth,—there is no table,—and a large carved wooden spoon is passed to each in turn from which to drink it.
Sometimes lime or orange juice is offered as an alternative flavour to rosewater, which makes it much more palatable to Europeans. But insipid as the ordinary sherbet is, it seems the most delicious compound imaginable when it is taken, well-iced, after a long walk with the thermometer at 100° in the shade. Perhaps that is why it has been so much praised.
Another favourite beverage is sekunjibin, which is like raspberry vinegar with mint instead of raspberry.
Sherbet and good things to eat figure largely in Muhammad’s description of the joys of Heaven. His ideals were ideals that did not need much growing up to. He expected his followers to have childish ideas and childish desires even in heaven.
CHAPTER VII
PERSIAN PRAYERS
Persian boys and girls need not say their prayers till they are seven years old. Sometimes they begin sooner, but that is considered unnecessarily good. They are not to be beaten for not saying them till they are ten, and I have not seen many children under ten years old saying their prayers. We cannot remember learning to pray, for as soon as we could understand anything about God, we were taught to ask Him to take care of us, to ask Him to forgive us when we were naughty, and to help us to be good, to thank Him for His kindness and His gifts. It is so simple that a child of three or four can come to God in this way, we need not wait till we are seven to bring simple petitions to our Heavenly Father. But little Ghulām Husain’s prayers are far from simple. He has first to learn to wash his face, hands and arms, and feet and legs. “That does not need much teaching,” you say. “He can surely wash himself at that age.” But there is a right and a wrong way of washing in Persia before prayers. There is a right and a wrong side of your face to wash first, there is a right and a wrong hand and a right and a wrong foot to wash first. If a Persian is very religious and careful there is even a right and a wrong side of his arm and leg to wash first, but few Persian children are as careful as that. No soap is wanted, just plain water, or, if there is no water, sand. So our our little Ghulām Husain learns his washings, and now he is ready to learn the prayers themselves, which are all in Arabic so that he does not understand them.
He is shown the direction of Mecca to which he must always turn when saying them, and he is taught when to stand, when to kneel, when to bow himself till his forehead touches the ground, and when to make various gestures. And when he has learnt all this he is ready to begin saying his prayers regularly, and he is told that if he says them correctly, and with the right movements, they will be pleasing to God, and count as good works. He must say them three times a day, and he cannot choose his time. When the prayer-call sounds from the mosque roofs, and is taken up by people on the house roofs, he must leave what he is doing, and wash and say his prayers—the same prayers every time. First in the early dawn, before sunrise, he hears the call, and he must get out of bed for washing and prayers. In the summer it may be as early as four o’clock, in winter not till six or seven. Then, again, when the sun-dial on the mosque marks noon, the call is heard, and again at sunset, and each time the prayers must be said within half an hour. Half an hour’s grace is allowed, so if Persians have visitors when the prayer-call sounds, they are able to go in turns to say their prayers, so as not to leave the visitor alone.
