PERSIAN CARAVAN SKETCHES 



461 



Photograph by Et.-Col. Alfred Heinicke 



A TEA PARTY IN PERSIA 



Everybody carries something — one the charcoal, one a teapot, one the sugar, another the 

 samovar. Having selected the spot for the social hour, the women squat down and prepare 

 the tea and water-pipe. 



bets, a single drawbridge that spans the 

 deep breach between the town and the 

 former river bank and affords the only 

 possible means of entrance. 



All forlorn, it stands baking in the hot 

 sun. One expected to see vultures soar- 

 ing above it and could not refrain from 

 thinking of the time when a tyrannical 

 shah years ago flung the best of its young 

 men to death in the valley below. 



AN AEEABEE host and a typicae EEast 



The Khan of Yezdikhast had come out 

 to meet us, and hospitably escorted us to 

 the cool courtyard of his house, in the 

 valley at the further end of the town. 



That evening we sat with him and a 

 few notables of the village on rugs spread 

 out on the flagstones of the porticoed 

 platform overlooking a little enclosed 

 garden. 



A sumptuous feast had been prepared. 

 There was, of course, pilau, the piece de 

 resistance of any Persian dinner. It con- 

 sisted of rice cooked in grease and meat 

 cooked in pomegranate juice with nuts 



and fruits of various kinds. We had also 

 great slabs of Persian bread, other dishes 

 of rice, buttermilk and "sherbet'' ( sweet- 

 ened tepid water), which we sipped from 

 a communal wooden spoon. 



We ate with the fingers of our right 

 hands, as is the Persian custom, and all 

 would have been well but for the etiquette 

 which required our host to pluck off those 

 fatty portions which he deemed choice 

 morsels, roll them in a huge ball, and 

 deftly force them between our unwilling 

 lips. 



The pleasure of dining with this khan 

 was greatly diminished for me by discov- 

 ering, shortly after our repast was over. 

 the usage of a little domed building placed 

 over a small stream, the only apparent 

 source of water supply. "For washing 

 the bodies of the dead," I was told. This 

 would not have worried a Persian, how- 

 ever, who firmly believes that "all run- 

 ning water is pure." 



One of our road-guards shot a gray 

 ((nail with feathers as varicolored as those 

 on the necks of the male doves in Bagf- 



