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We conclude, that considering packing, calling on Cook, and a complete absence of any Royal function or Tomasha of any sort, that we have put in a most excellent day, in fact the best day we have had since we landed and it was spent at sea! at least the best of it was.
News of the great tomasha has evidently been widely spread, crowds of outsiders fill the streets leading to the palace, and inside the large garden are scores of the elite of the city, mollahs, seyuds, official and private gentlemen; the numerous niches of the walls are occupied by groups of closely veiled females.
Sultan Ahmed Mirza, a sou of Prince Anushirvan, is deputy governor of Shahrood, responsible to his father; and ere I have arrived an hour the usual request is sent round for a "tomasha," the word now used by people wanting to see me ride, and which really means an exhibition.
The purpose of the officer's return, with his friends, is readily understood by the crowd, and his arrival is announced by a universal roar of "Sowar shuk! tomasha!" as though not one of this insatiable mob had yet seen me ride. Appearing before the elevated porch of the menzil, he beckons me to "come ahead" in quite an authoritative manner.
You see, it's our second century the first one we could not observe, because it came at the end of January just in the general mourning so there's an awful to-do and tomasha to-night, souvenir programmes and I don't know what all, also a rather extra special audience. It would be little too bad if I played them false.
Inshalla saba, gitti koob rah Beerjandi, khylie koob lomasha-kh-y-l-ie koob tomasha saba," is the burden of this harangue; but eloquent though it be in its simplicity, it fails to accomplish the desired end. Their reply to it all takes the form of howls of disapproval, and the importunities to ride become more clamorous than ever.
They seem overwhelmed with embarrassment at the appearance of a Sahib, but they say nothing. I explain that my object is merely a "tomasha" of the exquisitely carved shrine, and a young Brahman, with his smooth, handsome face fantastically streaked with yellow, follows silently behind as I walk around the building.
We can imagine these ladies in the seclusion of the zenana hearing of the Ferenghi and his wonderful iron horse, and overwhelmed with feminine curiosity, with much coaxing and promising, obtaining reluctant consent for a strictly secret and decorous tomasha, with covered faces and no one present but the attendant eunuchs and the Ferenghi, who, fortunately, will soon leave the country, never to return.
The first of these functions was the laying of the foundation of a museum of science and art; it sounds prosaic, but it was a pageant of pageantry and pucca tomasha too; the greater part, I daresay, just the ordinary gorgeousness of this country, fevered with stirring loyalty.
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