Mabmud becomes escctt
thought, they picked iny shoes off the floor and put them
under my mattress, for I had not yet learnt that one sleeps on
all one possesses in Luristan.
Next morning might have been an autumn day in Scotland.
A faint mist trailed in and out of the woollen roofs of the
tents and along the ground, among sparse willow trees that
followed the course of a little stream. While the women
lighted the fire indoors, the men stood to get warm against a
sheltered wall in the early sun. Mahmud, a shifty-eyed
brother of our host, offered to take me over the pass to
Alishtar. " Your man from Nihavend will not be necessary,"
said he. " He can go home."
Now I had been thinking this myself, but did not like the
idea so well when presented by someone who might be
planning unpleasantness. It meant risking a lonely pass in
unprepossessing company with one's escort diminished by
half, and Hajji's frightened looks, and the assembled tribesmen
coldly taking note of them, made matters worse. I thought,
however, that a man who smokes much opium is very litde
use in a crisis: and if the Lurs meant mischief they had every
facility for carrying it out whatever our arrangements. I
said I should be delighted, and tactfully added that I would
remember the tribe's kindness to the Governor in Alishtar.
Hajji tried some half-strangled remonstrance, cowed by the
hostile eyes upon him. As for the guide from Nihavend, he
burst into tears. " A man like that would bring bad luck to
anyone," our new guide said as we watched him lope away
across the fields.
We followed our track of the day before, along the Badavar
River, by the village of Noah, through cultivated land: then
turned south, where there are no villages, but rolling downs
for miles, covered with thorny bushes of gum tragacanth
which the Lurs collect and sell in the towns: every plant has