Free Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy Page B

landing; the cold water is contained in a zinc barrel with tap attached and, as you wash,it drains away through a hole in the wall down into the yard. For all these luxuries one pays 6 s . 2 d . per night.
    Afghan ‘fashions’ for men look marvellously dignified, even when in tatters. The most common garment is one piece of cloth (usually cotton) which is worn so that it provides both a shirt and loose trousers to halfway down the calves. (Is this the ‘seamless’ garment of the Gospels?) Waist-length turbans, to protect the spinal cord against the sun, often have beautiful fringes and come in pastel shades of blue or pink or yellow. But there is no uniformity about dress – some wear sleeveless leather jackets inlaid with gold and silver, some fabulous brocade knee-length shirts, some heavy brocade coats, thrown over the shoulders in this weather, some brown homespun cloaks and others the flowing white robes which I have always associated with Arab countries. About fifty per cent go barefooted, even on horses and cycles – the latter being almost the only evidence of the twentieth century in Herat. The men, if Aryan, are considerably taller than Turks or Persians and are very handsome indeed. The women I simply haven’t seen; very few appear on the streets and those few are completely veiled – not in the chador of east Turkey and Persia, which leaves eyes and nose just visible, but in the burkah , a garment like a tent with a piece of lace at eye-level. This lace is of such fine mesh that you have to be right beside them to distinguish it from the rest of the material and seeing the wearer standing still you don’t know which is back or front: they look like people dressed up as ghosts. This afternoon I saw two women riding splendid ponies and asked their husband if I might photograph them, but he very vigorously refused permission. The only female face I’ve seen in the city was that of a Mongolian tribeswoman down from the mountains, bringing cloth to sell in the bazaar; she was galloping along the main street, astride and bareheaded with a baby tied to her back and its father galloping along behind on his silver-grey pony stallion.
    I notice that most of the phaeton ponies are stallions who dash spiritedly around, their vehicles taking the corners on one wheel. This is all right if the mares are kept in purdah too – and evidently they are! It’s a joy to see these ponies after the miserable specimens in Persiancities; they are well groomed and well fed here and their coats ripple with reflected sunlight. Oddly enough, they’re the only clean looking objects, animate or inanimate, to be seen in the streets. Another point of contrast with Persia is that I haven’t seen any beggars here, except for a few cripples in the immediate vicinity of the mosque.
    The Afghan has not yet learned that tourists were invented to be fleeced and twice today my money was refused when I attempted to pay for tea. I am a guest of the country, so it pleases Allah when someone provides me with free refreshment …
    During one of these pauses in a tea-house a man, whom I had never seen before and will never see again, silently approached, laid a packet of cigarettes beside me and vanished before I even had time to thank him; I couldn’t help thinking then of my kind European friends who had warned me so often of the dangers of being a woman and a Christian in Muslim countries.
    Strolling through the bazaar I was delightedly conscious of the fact that when Alexander’s soldiers passed this way they must have witnessed scenes almost identical to those now surrounding me – bakers cooking flat bread in underground ovens, having spread the dough on leather cushions stuffed with straw and damped with filthy water; blindfolded camels walking round and round churning mast in stinking little dens behind their owners’ stalls; butchers skinning and disembowelling a sheep and throwing scraps to the yellow, crop-eared dogs who have been