Fire-eaters of Cbavari
Chavari touches the northern boundary of the Ittivends in
Duliskan, and the Lurs thought there might be a chance of
finding something there: it was easier also to present the
matter to the Sardari in two stages rather than in one, and it
is usually better not to worry people for permission to go
into a country until one is so near the frontier that volunteers
can be found to guide one across. So we arranged to go into
Duliskan and rejoin our escort that same evening at Tudaru,
the last garrison in the south-west. We would only risk the
adventure of Sar-i Kashti, which was beyond the policed area,
if nothing could be found to the north of it.
Chavari is the last of the settled country. The sites of its
villages are probably very old, and it is largely inhabited by
heretics, the unconscious remnant perhaps of a schism older
than their own. These are Ali-flahis, and are supposed to be
able to eat, or—according to the more scientifically minded—
at least to sit in fire. They are not considered Moslem at all
by the orthodox Lurs, who speak of them as unbelievers.
After leaving them, one still follows the southern slope of
Kuh Garu and appears to be in the upper corner of Khava
where it tilts away into shallow valleys that drain down into
the Giza Rud; but it is not Khava, or Chavari: it is Duliskan;
and these vague regions, enclosed in no visible boundary,
in a country where there is not a house except for a few
shanties built under government pressure by the Kadkhuda of
Tudaru, and only lived in when the police are looking—
these names which seem to merge into each other so that there
is hardly a fixed point in the landscape—are most difficult
to the tidy mind of the geographer.
Duliskan, as I had imagined, had none of the graves I
wanted; and its chief was away taking a holiday with his wife
and family at an imatnzadeh just visible in a group of trees on
the bare red flank of Kuh Garu. As there seemed nothing to
[45]