180 BOKHARA THE NOBLE. 



white -turbaned Mullah brushes haughtily by; little 

 groups of Bokharans, picturesque in long gaudy- 

 coloured robes, squat on the house -roofs or on the 

 stone steps in the shade of the trees, leisurely sipping 

 green tea and smoking the kalian. Here and there a 

 scantily clad figure, attracted by the cool depths of the 

 water, sits dangling a not too clean foot in it, while he 

 performs sundry ablutionary operations for an equally 

 not too clean body. Presently he is joined by a friend 

 with his water-skin, who passes the time of day with 

 him as he allows it to fill. The water is for drinking, 

 and might suggest unpleasant thoughts elsewhere, but 

 you see nothing strange in it here. 



It does not do, indeed, to look too closely or too 

 critically at the men and manners of the East. You 

 look here for the whole effect of the picture, not 

 individually at its component parts. It is the golden 

 sunshine from an azure sky, the brilliant colouring 

 and graceful outline, the deep contrasts in light and 

 shade that fill the imagination and delight the eye. 

 To look too closely would be to reveal the brazen 

 sky of an Eastern summer, the dirt and squalor of 

 mud-built shanties, the ghastly horror of unthinkable 

 disease. 



For here more, perhaps, than elsewhere have the 

 people been chastised for the abomination of their lives 

 and the unutterable evil of their ways. The scourge of 

 the rishta lies heavily upon them,^ the terrible wasting 

 and putrefaction of the flesh caused by leprosy and other 

 kindred disease is only too painfully in evidence, and men 

 sink prematurely to the grave, stricken with that "curse 



^ A worm which installs itself under the skin, causing unsightly dis- 

 figurement unless carefully and adroitly extracted. " So common is this 

 malady in Bokhara," writes Lord Curzon, " that every fifth person suff'ers 

 from it." — Eussia in Central Asia. 



