A.Fortnight in N.W. Luristan
taken up with the means of living that no thought and time
is left over for the enjoyment of life itself.
Our last ride took us about three and a half hours over the
south-west shoulder of Chia Dozdan to Harsin. It was easy
going, by rounded slopes and gentle passes, with groups of
trees here and there beside the tents in the hollows: the land in
broad open lines rolled away into blue distances on the south.
It fell suddenly in a steep slope with sheer hill faces over-
hanging the great hollow of Harsin. As we looked down
and saw the town and its gardens below us in the distance,
Keram asked to be excused from going any farther: he would
be shot if the Harsinis got him, said he. Already once he had
nearly been caught by a party of them out hunting, when he
was in a cave and they had seen the smoke of his fire: they"
were coming in to see who it might be when one of the party
sneezed, and as no one will enter a strange place after so bad
an omen, Keram was saved.
I asked him to explain the origin of his feud with a whole
township.
" It was a fight," said he, " two years ago. I used to live in
Harsin then, as I had married a Harsini woman and had a
house there. One evening in the Chtikhana there was an
argument, and I shot someone dead. I was right, but perhaps
I did not think before shooting. Anyway, when I had gone
home to bed, those accursed Harsinis came round to my
house and shouted out that they did not want tribesmen in
their town and I was to leave. I got up on to the roof and
said I would not leave. Then they began to shoot, and I
shot back and hit some of them. Then they all surrounded
the house, and I went into the upper room which had a small
window good for firing from, and we kept at it till the morn-
ing and all through that day. The house had high walls so
that the people could not get in anywhere; and I had a friend
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