A Fortnight in NW. Lunstan
of, we made a circle round the fire by lantern-light, and
talked of progress, the old days how bad and how pleasant,
the new how good and how dull: and of the government,
which demands so many children from each tribe to be sent
to school in Khurramabad; and how the nephews of 'Abdul
Khan, two cheerful chubby little boys sitting beside me, had
wept so bitterly when they were included among these
victims of education, that the tribe took pity on them and
sent two other less important little boys in their stead.
We had another guest with us in the circle, a Moslem trader
from Dizful, who was able to travel here by virtue of a Lurish
wife of the Ittivend tribe south-west of us; he was on his way
to see her and, I gathered, to collect bronzes, though he did
not say so: but he questioned me suspiciously and was evi-
dently very little pleased to see a European in his preserves.
His oily manners made an unpleasing contrast with the
friendly outspokenness of the tribesmen, and he would have
done his best to prevent me from entering farther into the
country if he could.
That night I slept in the ladies' tent, which was friendly,
but handicapped by the want of a language, since they spoke
no Persian and I no Lurish, or Laki, as the language is called
in the north-west of Luristan. They wore sarbands or turbans
even bigger than those of Alishtar and Khava, and as they
moved about stiffly in their loose gowns and enormous head-
dresses, it looked as if the figures of a pack of cards had come
to life in the half-light of the tent
These were far better tents than we had seen before, and
the people lived in them all the year round. They were
enclosed in a mud wall about five feet high which kept the
wind out: inside it ran a screen of reeds woven in patterns
with wool, and overlapping for five or six feet in the front
of the tent so as to make a narrow corridor by way of a door.
[40]