The Chieftains Ladies
yodelling of the Alps but fiercer, as a purring tiger is like
a cat.
When we reached Alishtar Fort, we alighted in the court-
yard of Kerim Khan, the brother of the Mir Ah who had been
hanged.
We felt we were in a metropolis, for though it is a small
hamlet, the presence of the castle, the government and police,
a school with twelve scholars, and the beginning of a garage
in view of the future road, all make it busy.
Kerim Khan was at home, an engaging young man with
his PaUevi hat at a rakish angle: but the two ladies, his wife
and mother-in-law, were having a bath, and repeated messages
to ask for the key of the best room, and to say that we were
hungry, appeared to have no effect at all: an answer would
be sent that little Iran's face was just being soaped, or some-
thing of the kind. It was getting on for two o'clock and
my host and I, both faint with hunger, sat opposite each other
on a carpet in the second-best room, too languid to speak.
Kerim would shake his head at intervals and ask me to observe
how husbands are treated in Luristan: I would try to comfort
him by remarking that such things are known also to happen
elsewhere: and another message would be sent to the recalci-
trant ladies, with no effect at all.
They finally appeared, about four o'clock, very fresh from
their ablutions, and found us in a state of exhaustion disposed
to accept any apology so long as it were followed by food: and
the pilau was not long in coming. Kerim continued to
mutter to himself between the mouthfuls of rice, but it was
in the uncertain tones natural to one man when two deter-
mined females present a united front. The mother-in-law
was really alarming: she looked like something between a
frog and a grenadier and her manner revealed an independent
income. She told me that her first husband used to beat her