First &ay to Dastgnl
me as having acquired its freedom, and took charge of my
money and ail that belonged to me fax more carefully than
I could have done for myself, and if we slept in a strange
village of the plain* would group themselves round my
caxnp bed on the ground, with their heads on the saddle-
bags, to guard my sleep—rather to my discomfort, I must
say.
"Aziz was superior to the other two, with a certain amount
of knowledge picked up during his sojourns in Qazvin and
Khurramabad on the coast—or Tanakabun as it is known
locally. Between these two centres his life was spent like
a weaver's shuttle to and fro. He kept a shop, and could
read and write, and has made the pilgrimage to the four
Holy Cities of Iraq, walking stage by stage for a monih
across the Persian plateaux and ranges and the dreary
Mesopotamian plain. He it was who ventured on a sardine
out of my box, under the anxious gaze of all the party and
several villagers, and with some nervousness of his own:
that one should be able to carry these fish into the
mountains seemed to all something so miraculously verging
on magic that I had covert apprehensive glances from
some who were not as sure of my harmlessness as my own
charvardars.
In the late afternoon we reached Dastgird, at the foot of
our first range. The Qazvin plain reappeared on the south,
below the rounded foothills. Our mules had only walked
for five hours, an easy first day's stage, but the solitude and
the slow dreamlike travelling in the sun already made it
seem as if we were remote from the world's business in
some little backwater of rime.
The vilkge was small and poor, with a scanty supply of
water which made its vines and apricots look stunted: and
the people were fanatical and begged 'Aziz in whispers not
[207!