Kurdish village of Rudbarek
full of vegetables, scarlet runners, pumpkins, and sunflowers
in front of it.
Some of the Darijan houses, with wooden balconies, had
already been an improvement on those of Alamut and the
southern side of the watershed in general. But here in Kalar
Dasht one really comes into the tradition of an old prosperity
and finds buildings designed for ornament as well as comfort,
as good as many a country cottage in the Alps. There are
balconies and outjutting eaves; ceilings fashioned in little
wooden squares reminiscent of Italy and the Renaissance;
open fireplaces, niches worked in stucco, and rough ornaments
in relief, cocks, flower-baskets and geometric figures, which
evidently belonged to a day when Kalar was a flourishing city,
as I hope to show.
The Agha's house was not the best in Rudbarek, being
eclipsed by that of his brother, a long-faced Kurd with gay,
easy, and irresponsible manners often found among the tribes-
men. Passport or no passport, it did not trouble him: he
looked at me with frank admiration for having come so far,
and began to tell me, as we sat waiting for dinner in an upper
room, about an English captain who had stayed with him
twice, and whose Persian had impressed them all with its force-
fulness if not with its variety, consisting, as he told me, chiefly
of the two sentences: " The ibex has escaped," and " Son of a
burnt father," the most energetic of Persian epithets, which the
captain apparently had frequent reason to employ.
Sport in this country must be excellent. The river has
trout, the hills have deer and ibex and pig; the climate is
perfect and the people are pleasant and peaceful. Nothing
but its remoteness from any high road can have kept it so
long almost unvisited.
As we sat waiting for dinner and discussing religion, our
first hostile impressions were gradually smoothed away. I
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