Alisbtar Society
speak to her again, for the jealous old lady's eye was on us, and
it would only have brought down more punishment upon her.
The mother-in-law had the virtues of her defects: I imagine
that she had never in her life been afraid of anyone or anything.
Some wild tribesmen murdered her factor on an estate near
the Asadabad Pass, and the police gave it up as a bad job: but
she herself crept out of her bedroom one night, left the light
burning so that the villagers might not notice her absence,
and went to search for the assassins in the hills. After five
days she found them, got her own people to round them up,
and handed them over to the authorities.
The two ladies were very kind to me, and it was restful to
feel oneself in a perfectly safe place for a while, with the
possibility too of getting a wash. By the evening, I knew
all the society of AHshtar Fort. Kerim took me to call on the
Governor in his castle, and I was received in a long audience
chamber and introduced to the Chief of Police, a pleasant
Nihavendi with delightful manners whom I was to get to
know better later on. The Governor is also a Lur, from
Dizful, with the good manners of the well-born Persian, but
made rather melancholy by malaria, which is rampant near
the rice-fields. He asked Kerim about me, in a sad and tired
voice, and Kerim's sketch of my history, status, and future
intentions, all made up on die spur of the moment, was a
much more plausible affair than I could have managed for
myself.
The castle is a mud-brick square with round towers and filled
with buildings, where the Governor's apartments, the police
quarters and prisons, the clerk's offices and the school, are all
congregated. It looks neglected since the great days of Mir
Ali Khan. In the long audience room the paint is peeling off
the walls: they still have a dilapidated gaiety with hunting and
battle scenes, ladies in coaches marooned in rushing streams,