CARRYING THE NAKHL IN THE BIG SQUARE IN YEZD.
CHAPTER V
Character of the Yezdi—Systematised inconsistency—Loyalty to causes and individuals—Unreliability of evidence—Shame—Humour—Disregard of time—Language—Lack of initiative—Courage—The Yezdi soldier—Etiquette and manners—Triviality—Pride—Kindliness and cruelty—Dishonesty—Difficulty in obtaining anything—Tendency to fatalism—Latent strength of Persian character—Family ties—The Jus Paternum—Religious liberty—Open-handedness—Summary.
If it were not absolutely essential to the purpose of a book like this that there should be a more or less detailed analysis of the character of the Yezdi, I should certainly shirk making such an analysis. The Yezdi’s faults are numerous, glaring, and interesting. His virtues are not only fewer, but there is much less to be said about them. In the concrete man, these virtues show fairly prominently, the vices have their peculiar humour, and the whole is not unlovable. On paper, while discussing the different points of the Yezdi’s character one by one, it will be almost impossible to convey the general effect made by the entire human being.
When one first becomes acquainted with the Yezdi, one is inclined to regard him as so inconsistent in matters of morals as to be utterly devoid of all principle, bad or good. There is the same uncertainty about his actions that there is about the fall of an unloaded die. But just as the fall of the die is regulated by the law of averages, so the actions of the Yezdi are more or less consciously decided by what can only be termed systematised inconsistency, a kind of law of balance which seems to him to possess the merit of a principle. When he has done a certain number of good actions, which it must be confessed is frequently the case, then it is time for him to do some bad ones; and vice versâ, when he has done enough bad ones, he comes back for a time to good ones. This is partially the result of the theory of savabs; and the painful thing about it is that it makes moral trustworthiness impossible. If a man holds this pernicious theory as it was sketched in a previous chapter, then the more he has done right in the past the more he will feel justified in doing wrong in the future; and this in Yezd is no mere nightmare, but the literal fact. A good many of the Yezdis are frequently fair and straight in their dealings, but I do not know a single Mussulman among them, with regard to whom it would be fairly safe to depend on his doing the right thing on any particular occasion simply because he knew it to be right. There are men whose ordinary habits are fairly good, but to a man who considers that derelictions of duty can be absolutely paid for by past or future acts of merit not necessarily involving very much trouble, the temptation to yield to slightly increased pressure is very strong, and is likely to frequently overcome the bias of habit.
On the other hand, Persians have very strong notions of loyalty both to causes and to individuals. Nothing has brought this out more than the history of the Babi movement, which has certainly exhibited the strength of Persian character. Boys and young men have in this movement willingly undergone the most terrible tortures in the service of their spiritual teachers and the common cause. It ought to be understood that the motives of the Babi martyr are not quite the same as those which have generally influenced the Christians who have died for their faith. The Christian martyrs have generally died rather than do some act which they felt to be sinful, or leave undone something which they regarded as essential. A large number of the Babi martyrs on the other hand have died because they chose not to deny their faith, which according to their tenets was perfectly permissible to do. Now I know of at least one man, a Persian of high position, who was killed as a Babi, but who would have preferred embracing Christianity. What was his connection with Babiism I cannot say: he would, I believe, have embraced Christianity had it not been that he shrank from a religion where a direct denial of one’s faith must always be accounted sinful. Whatever he was, he certainly did not shrink from making his divergence from orthodox Islam dangerously plain, and in this way he met his death. My purpose in mentioning the fact is to show that it is most difficult to induce a Mussulman to accept a very hard and fast line. Of course the story is only an illustration and does not prove the point, because there must have been other considerations which made Babiism, or a degree of unorthodoxy which passed for Babiism, easier to such a man than Christianity. It is not necessary to suppose that he was only influenced by a dislike to unbending rules; for the inability to ever deny his faith might have exposed him to petty insults, which would have been to him worse than death. Also his position as a Christian would have been, humanly speaking, a more solitary one. Still, when all has been said, I am convinced that the constitutional dislike to a hard and fast rule played at least some part in bringing the man to his decision, and also that this dislike is more pronounced in the Mussulman Yezdi than in the Yezdi Parsi.
A Persian who attaches himself to an individual will often prove himself very trustworthy in all matters affecting that individual’s interest; and generally speaking, attachment to a European would be likely to produce a more dependable loyalty than attachment to another Persian. The feeling that a European friend would always himself act in a certain manner frequently leads a Persian to try and act in the same way towards him. I remember a Persian servant once replying to my wife, who had expostulated with him on the subject of some egregious falsehood that he had just told in the bazaars, “Of course, Khanum, I don’t tell lies to you, for you don’t like it; but these people expect me to lie, and one couldn’t tell the truth to them.”