The Philosopher without a passport
native tobacco, lost in what one might take to be the ultimate
perfection of resignation, but which was really a happy day-
dream, far from the toilsome world in which I was looking
for keys or dinner, or any of the other things he was supposed
to see to.
His first ineptitude was to appear on the morning of de-
parture without a passport. The expedition was postponed
while I went to see if such a thing could be produced by
the Persian legation. It would take a week, and then would
still be very doubtful; there was a hesitating look about the
Persian secretary, as he handled the Philosopher's portrait;
passport or no passport, I thought the thing to do was to get
away as soon as possible.
We packed a car and crossed the desert from Kut to Bedrah
on the Persian border.
Crossing the Frontier
The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is
that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is
and no one is surprised. When the police stopped our car
at Bedrah and enquired where we were staying, die chauffeur,
who did not know, told him to ask the lady.
" That is no good," said the policeman. " She's a woman."
"Yes," said the chauffeur, "but she knows everything.
She knows Arabic."
The policeman asked me.
I had not the vaguest idea of where we were staying, and
looked at him with a blank idiocy which he thought perfectly
natural. The Philosopher thereupon roused himself, and
explained that I was lodging in the empty house of the son of
the Vali of Pusht-i-Kuh.
The police and I being both satisfied with this explanation,
we drove up the gravelly river bed of Bedrah to palm gardens
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