Children of Persia :: CHAPTER II PERSIA

CHAPTER II PERSIA

There is a story that when the Muhammadans took Persia and killed the Parsee king Yazdigird, their Khalif ‘Omar asked Yazdigird’s son where he would like to live. He said he would like to settle in Persia out of reach of any cultivated spot. ‘Omar accordingly sent him off with an escort of soldiers to find a suitable place. After three years he returned and said he could not find any place such as he had asked for. ‘Omar saw that he was doing all this with some purpose, and asked him what it was. Yazdigird’s son answered that he wanted to show ‘Omar how prosperous and well cultivated the land had become in the hands of the Parsees, and begged him to see to it that it remained so under the Muhammadans.

But it did not, and to-day a great deal of Persia has relapsed into desert.

In our country all is green, and stones have to be put up to show where one village ends and the next begins. In most parts of Persia you may look over the plain and see the villages quite distinct—each a little green blot on a vast sheet of sand or dry earth.

The very fruitfulness of the ground makes it less green than it would otherwise have to be to support the population, for when three crops can be got off the same piece of land in one year, only a third of the amount of land that you would expect to be needed to support the village is under cultivation.

The villages vary very much. Some count their population by hundreds, while one village, marked on the map, contains just two families, seven persons in all, including two children. Their nearest neighbours live six miles off, over the sand.

How bare the world must appear to those two little children. Children here who live in the country can hardly imagine any boundary to the wonderful green tangle that they can see on every side of them. And children who live in towns look out every day upon wonderful human works, which, although they are not as marvellous as God’s country, yet puzzle them very much as to how they were ever made. With a Persian child it is quite different. In many places the children do not know what wild growth is, and if you talk of continuous country, hundred miles after hundred miles of field and wood and meadow, they think you are telling an impossible fairy tale. While as for the little town children, the buildings which they see all round them made of sun-dried bricks and earth, the barrels and the thousand and one household utensils formed of exactly the same material, or perhaps of clay very roughly baked in a primitive kiln, seem to them hardly more artificial and man-made than the corn in the walled gardens outside the city, which they see watered twice a week.

They have a very different life from you and me.

Little Ahmad was a sturdy, jolly little lad of four when I knew him, and, though he ought to have known better, he used to call after me (if his parents were out of hearing) the rhyme so familiar to Europeans in Persia—

Ferangi,

Chi rang-i,

Palang-i,

which, translated into English, means—

European,

What colour art thou?

Thou art a leopard.

He lived in a really beautiful house, built of sun-dried bricks and clay, and whitened inside with a smooth coat of plaster of Paris.

The rooms were large and very nicely furnished with beautiful Persian carpets, and a mattress and pillows of gay designs, and Ahmad, little rascal though he was, would never have dreamed of treading on those carpets with his shoes on; all shoes were left at the door. One small table for the tea-urn completed the furniture. And upstairs? Upstairs was the roof, such a lovely large flat roof, Ahmad loved it, and he often terrified his mother by the way he leaned over the low wall to look down at the street, for the house had no window looking to the road. All the windows looked into the garden, which might be said to be in the middle of the house, for the rooms were built round it. The windows, too, were all doors; some of the rooms had as many as five double doors all in a row, and when they were all open the room was very airy and bright.

There was no grass, and no gravel path for Ahmad to play on, but there was a nice wide brick-paved walk all round the garden, which gave him plenty of room. In the centre were the beds, which were watered by turning a stream in and flooding them once a week. There were watering cans, but they were only used for watering the path and roof, and even the rooms, to keep them cool, not for the flower beds. There was a large tank, too, in the garden with gold fish in it, where Ahmad loved to cool his feet on a hot day, and the days can be hot in Persia.

When it was dinner-time in Ahmad’s home a cloth was spread on the floor, and he sat on his heels beside it, and had a loaf of bread for a plate. It was flat and round, and about as thick as a plate, so it did very well. But he had no spoon or fork.

One of the things he liked best was rice, and when his mother put a few handfuls on his bread he would eat it quickly and tidily with one hand, without spilling any, which is not as easy as it sounds.Sometimes Ahmad went out for a walk in the town with his father, or with his mother and a servant, and he passed along streets that had not any names, and by houses that had not any names or numbers. There was no pavement except sometimes a narrow strip in the middle of the road for the mules and donkeys. There were no gardens in front of the houses, there were no windows facing the road, all he saw was a sandy road with a high mud wall on each side, and a heavy wooden door here and there, the front door of a house.

A STREET OF SHOPS

Sometimes they came to a “bazar” or street of shops. Here the street was covered over with a mud roof so that goods and sellers and purchasers might keep cool in hot weather and dry in wet weather. He did not need to go into the shops, for the counters were all along the street and there were no windows.

When the summer was getting very hot, it was decided that Ahmad and all his family should go for a summer holiday to a village in the hills.

What a packing up there was! They packed the carpets, they packed the beds, they packed the kettles and saucepans. Then a number of mules were brought to the door and such a shouting and bustle began as the loads were roped together, two and two, and slung across the big padded pack-saddles. One mule carried two great covered panniers and these were filled with cushions, and Ahmad’s great-grandmother got into one, and his mother got into the other to balance her, and they pulled the curtains well over the front, so that no one might see them. Ahmad himself sat in front of a servant who held him safe, and some of the bedding made a nice broad soft seat for them on the mule’s back. At last all the mules were ready with their loads and off they set through the streets, and soon they found themselves outside the town, going mile after mile across the bare desert plain. This went on for fifteen miles and then they reached a large village at the foot of the hills. They had been riding five hours and were tired and hungry, so they dismounted at the caravansarai or inn. One of the servants took a carpet off one of the loads and got a cloth and some food wrapped up in a large handkerchief out of the saddlebags and spread a meal on the ground, while another got the tea-urn and charcoal, boiled the water and made the tea. After a few hours’ rest on the roof, the shouting and loading began again and off they went, up the hill, which was terribly steep in some places. Now they saw scattered and stunted plants growing here and there, and finally, after another seven hours, they reached their summer holiday quarters in a little hill village.

How Ahmad enjoyed the hills and fields and trees, the flowers and birds and butterflies. A little brook ran down the valley and on either side were cornfields and orchards and gardens, as many as the brook could provide water for. And at night Ahmad would hear the shouting, as ‘Ali Muhammad declared that Husain had had his fair share of water and now it was his turn to have it for his orchard. For water is very precious in Persia, and must be made the greatest possible use of, day and night alike.

But the little children who live in the village are not so fortunate as little Ahmad. They work all the summer at gardening, shepherding, and other work; but in winter they have to stay in, and they live upstairs and their sheep and goats downstairs. But the stairs are outside and sometimes it is too cold for them even to go down to feed the animals. If they can they make a little fire of sticks in the oven, which is only a deep, round hole in the floor, and when the flame has died down they sit round with their legs hanging into the oven and cover over the opening to keep it warm as long as possible. One very severe winter there was a report current in the town that in this village the water was all frozen and that the animals were dying because there was not enough fuel to melt the ice and give them water. The poor children must have had a very hard time that winter.

Even in the town Ahmad is one of the fortunate children. Little Soghra had a very different home. She lived with her grandmother in a single small room. The floor was mud, covered in one place by a small ragged piece of coarse matting. On this the grandmother lay, for she was old and ill. The bedclothes were filthy and torn. One side of the room was filled with a pile of pomegranate skins, which are used for making dye, and there were several fowls wandering about. There was no furniture, nothing but a few old pots and cups and a waterbottle. And yet Soghra was a cheery little girl, and she and her grandmother were very fond of each other.

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