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Halfway up the street he met three unveiled women clad in voluminous white dresses, with scarlet, yellow, and purple handkerchiefs bound over their black hair. He stopped and the women took the cups with their henna-tinted fingers. Two young Arabs joined them. There was a scuffle. White lumps of sugar flew up into the air.
"But, Monsieur, it is still too hot to travel. Look! No one is stirring. All the village is asleep." He waved his enormous hand, with henna-tinted nails, towards the distant town, carved surely out of one huge piece of bronze. "Untie the horses. There are gazelle in the plain near Mogar. Didn't you tell me?" "Yes, Monsieur, but " "We'll get there early and go out after them at sunset.
Hadji Agha is a village of seyuds, or descendants of the Prophet, these and the mollahs being the most bigoted class in Persia; when I drop into the tchai-khan for a glass or two of tea, the sanctimonious old joker with henna-tinted beard and finger-nails, presiding over the samovar, rolls up his eyes in holy horror at the thoughts of waiting upon an unhallowed Ferenghi, and it requires considerable pressure from the younger and less fanatical men to overcome his disinclination; he probably breaks the glass I drank from after my departure.
And this throng of Eastern men, with dark, keen, shining eyes, with heavy, slumbrous eyes, with eyes glittering with the yellow fires of greed; this throng, yellow-skinned, brown-skinned, black-skinned, with thin, expressive hands, with henna-tinted nails, with narrow, cunning wrists; this throng that talked volubly, that gesticulated, that gazed, observing without self-consciousness, summing up without pity, whose eyes took all and gave nothing if he stepped out of the carriage, if he forsook the borrowed comforts and the borrowed delights of Europe, if he hid himself in this throng, would he not find himself for the first time?
Several horsemen have already crossed and are awaiting us on the opposite shore. Kiftan Sahib and another officer with a henna-tinted beard are in charge of the party taking me back. Besides myself and these two, the party consists of eleven horsemen; with sundry modifications, their general appearance, arms, and dress resemble the make-up of a Persian sowar rather than the regular Afghan soldier.
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