The Throne of Solomon
to stand up on a roof to show myself full length to new
audiences. Only the Elders, ardent Shi'as with a Dervish
among them, withdrew and cast self-conscious glances from a
distance, ashamed to show interest in so negligible an object.
It is a remarkable thing, when one comes to consider it, that
indifference should be so generally considered a sign of superi-
ority the world over; dignity or age, it is implied, so fill the
mind with matter that other people's indiscriminate affairs
glide unperceived off that profound abstraction: that at any
rate is the impression given not only by village mullas, but
by ministers, bishops, dowagers and well-bred people all
over the world, and the village of Shahristan was no excep-
tion, except that the assembled dignitaries found it more
difficult to conceal the strain which a total absence of
curiosity entails.
'Aziz was never deterred by this sort of convention, and
used to come up bravely to attend to me and my wants with a
respectfulness which the villagers thought more peculiar than
anything else about me. He arrived presently thoroughly
disgruntled, and informed me that, though chicken and eggs
were to be had, they were only to be given with the one
hand when money was seized with the other, a want of
hospitable feeling which, as he said emphatically several
rimes over, we had never encountered in his own valley of
Alamut.
I myself thought—rightly as it proved—that civilization
in the shape of the Greek wife of the Hungarian engineer must
be to blame and merely said to 'Aziz with pain in my voice that
this village must be very different from any other we had ever
stayed in. This aspersion was received by the men in the
audience with obvious shame; they would evidently have
handed over hens and chickens and all if it were not for the
firmness of their womenfolk, who were not going to let
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