Roses come in about the 24th of April, and are out of season in Tehran by the middle of May. The power of the sun in summer is so intense, that flowers blow and wither in a day. The ground is covered with snow during January and February, so that March and April in spring, and October, November, and December in the autumn and beginning of winter, are the only months fit for the cultivation of a garden. When the spring comes on and the sun gets strong and fierce, the beds dry up soon, and look like baked earth, cracked and dry, until the next water day, when they are changed into mud. First there is the difficulty of making the gardeners do as they are told, and then twice every week the garden is flooded and the beds drowned. Gardening in Persia is not an easy matter to bring to perfection. Burton, and with his help I astonished every one with the fineness of my celery, cauliflowers, &c., for these useful edibles occupied my mind more than flowers. The Shah had then in his service a first-rate English gardener, Mr. This is precluded by the inconvenience of the little shoes hardly covering half the foot, with a small heel three inches high in the middle of the sole, to say nothing of the roobend or small white linen veil, fitting tightly round the head (over the large blue veil which envelopes the whole person), and hanging over the face, with an open worked aperture for the eyes and for breathing then the chakh-choor, half-boot half-trousers, into which gown and petticoat are crammed.Īs to visiting, intimacy with Persian female society has seldom any attraction for a European, indeed I regret to say there were only a few of the Tehran ladies whose mere acquaintance was considered to be desirable so that the fine garden of the Mission, which hitherto had been much neglected, was the only resource left to me. She cannot move abroad without being thickly veiled she cannot amuse herself by shopping in the bazars, owing to the attention she would attract unless attired in Persian garments. The former has the resource of his occupation, – the sports of the field, the gossip and scandal of the town, in which he must join whether he likes it or not and, finally, Persian visiting cannot be altogether neglected, and, if freely entered into, is alone a lavish consumer of time. To a man the existence is tiresome enough, but to a woman it is still more dreary. – Here, then we were fairly launched on the monotonous current of life in Persia. – Dramatic representation – Fighting among the women – Extraordinary overflow of grief at the representation – Visit to the Shah's mother and wives – Interior of the Haram – Thin costume.ĭecember 2 nd, 1849. Dulness of the life in Tehran – Gardening – The Persian language – The Moharrem.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |