Kerlelai 'Aziz
his illuminated manuscripts, does not deal in perspective:
two thousand years, if he happens to know anything about
them, are as exciting as the day before yesterday; and the
country is full of obscure worshippers of leaders and prophets
whom the rest of the world has long ago forgotten.
In the East, too, one may yet travel disinterestedly to
acquire wisdom only, and I have entered a mosque where
Christians are not encouraged by pleading that I caine
as a " seeker after truth." But it is a reason which is never
worth otFering to the police. The Commandant of Qazvin,
when he came for his evening aperitif and heard about it all,
looked dubiously upon me. If I had not been surrounded
and supported by most of the Town Council, there would
have been trouble.
Next morning, one of the enthusiasts sent me a servant.
I did not know what to do about it, for I did not want him.
He was small and cringing and cadaverous. Everything,
even his skin, hung loose about him. He was so apologetic
for existing at all that he seemed to be trying to shrink out
of his own body into some even more insignificant nothing-
ness. If one had wished to hang him up on a peg and
forget him, which one would do very soon, there was nothing
stiff enough to do it by except his high starched collar.
The Doctor saved me. He alone had actually been in
the Alamut valley, and assured me—as I knew before—that
a servant from the town could only cause vexation and
trouble among the hillmen. He brought a man of his own,
Kerbelai 'Aziz of Garmrud, a cliarvardar or muleteer who
spends his life between the Caspian passes and was to answer
for my comfort and safety: a bit of a man, with a straight
nose and shrewd little eyes as good-humoured in expression
as I afterwards found him to be. He would " be like my
mother," he said, and twirled his ugly peaked cap in his
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