House & Garden 
HOUSES IN THE MOUNTAINS 
This leads up directly to what impresses 
the foreigner as a dominant factor in all 
that appertains to the Persian home. In 
the animadversions upon general conditions 
in Persia, with particular reference to the 
gardens, attention has been called to the 
partition of the house in order to secure 
complete seclusion for the women’s apart¬ 
ments. This cardinal point seems to have 
had a marked effect upon all Persian living. 
Whether the Iranian be more secretive, or 
exclusive, than the rest of the world, I do 
not know, but the atmosphere of any Persian 
house is strongly impregnated with that 
suggestion. The street walls themselves are 
violently repellent to the stranger. The house 
seems here to be, in an intensified degree, the 
castle, and it is hard not to attribute it all to 
this exaggerated measure of sequestration 
sought for the wives and female servants. 
Upon first entrance into the private 
demesne the idea is forcibly brought to one. 
Obsequious servants meet you at the street 
door and escort you with a strange mixture 
of stolid pleasure and demonstrative humility 
to the master, who comes forth from his recep¬ 
tion room to greet you with “ Guhd aafiz,’’ 
the Shiah form of salutation. In these latter 
days there is hand-shaking; in a less liberal 
age the good Mussulman would have shud¬ 
dered at thought of such a thing. The host 
ushers you into the house—that is, into his 
part of it—generally to a veranda, or a room 
or a small suite of rooms facing the main 
garden. The Westerner’s first impression is 
that the place is very bare. If the host be 
of the ultra-conservative school, of which 
HOUSES NEAR THE CASPIAN 
there are still many adherents, the room 
contains virtually nothing save the rugs upon 
the floor and the kalin kiars which, in lieu of 
wall paper, conceal the blank whiteness of 
the walls and ceiling. On the rugs are strewn 
cushions, usually near the windows looking 
out on the garden. Upon these you are 
asked to seat yourself. Lately, in the north¬ 
ern cities, such as Teheran and Tabriz, it is 
the custom to provide chairs, especially for 
European or Ferenghi visitors. They are 
usually the black, bent-wood, cane-seated 
affairs made in Austria, though in more 
palatial homes the heavy Morris chairs have 
vogue. Discomforting as it is, to the be¬ 
ginner, to squat on the floor Persian-wise, the 
chairs somehow seem outrageously out of 
place, and the torture of the native method 
is preferable. It may be that from two to 
half a dozen male callers are there, in their 
robes of black and with the black wool kulah 
caps firmly anchored on their shaven heads. 
Cautious, they are, silent, alert, intelligent, 
studious of the stranger, and calmly con¬ 
temptuous, for all their assiduous politeness. 
Among them all, Moslem and Infidel alike, 
the host moves with a grace and tact that is 
inimitable. Than the cultivated Persian there 
is not a more finished host in the world. The 
social instinct is strong in him ; hospitality is 
his sixth sense, as craft is his seventh, 
Upon the arrival of guests, servants swarm, 
expressionless, voiceless, shoeless and there¬ 
fore soft-footed. They need no orders. In 
every function incident to entertainment they 
are automatic. Small tabourets are brought, 
and dishes of carved silver in heavy relief— 
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