An anxious night
they kindly remove him. The Ittivends took no sides in the
matter and waited till the man departed of his own accord
and left us to eat our supper in peace.
All the same we spent an anxious night.
Kerarn did not think it advisable for me to sleep with the
ladies and out of his reach. He arranged my sack at the back
of the guest tent, with himself in a strategic position between
me and the open side. My luggage he piled carefully under
his own head and mine. The horses were tethered close by
and Hajji settled down beside them.
Distant fires of Ittivend camps twinkled in the shadows of
the valley and the lower slopes: the cliffs of Peri Kuh rose
flooded in moonlight from the darkness: there was an immense
and beautiful silence. Just as I was dozing off, Hajji crept up,
and whispered to me to sleep lighdy, for there would be
trouble in the night: I opened one eye to watch him creep
back and sit, a wakeful and forlorn litde figure, guarding
his horses in the moonlight: and I heard no more till, some-
where about the middle of the night, the two men woke me
with shouts which frightened away a woman who was creep-
ing from under the back of the tent towards the luggage I
was sleeping on.
I called on Amanulla Khan's two wives next morning.
They lived in separate tents and had very litde to do with
each other, and were both equally beautiful in an imperial
way; in the dim light they sat like idols, hung with many
necklaces and bracelets, under the weight of their great
turbans. The tents themselves were extremely bare. Aman-
ulla's first wife apologized; their furnishings, said she, were
locked away in Khurramabad, since they could not have kept
them here " in the land of thieves." Robbery in Luristan
is as much the topic of conversation as horses and hounds in
a hunting county.
[55]