A DESERT PAGEANT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16574, 5 November 1921, Page 17

A DESERT PAGEANT.

The Emir Feisttl, the new King of Mesopotamia, with great pageantry, recently assumed the throne. The following article gives a vivid impression of a burial custom among the people over whom he has been called to rule: A heavy cloud ot dust is soon upon the horizon. It slowly rolls towards us, and in the hush which occurs in the desert with the sinking of the sun the distant, tinkle of many toned bells i 3 brought faintly to our ears by tho first breath of the evening breeze. As the cavalcade approaches we can hear the cries of the muleteers, and gradually make out its component parts. It is a motley company. They are Shia’s pilgrims on their way to the holy places which lie in the desert of Mesopotamia, west of the Euphrates. Jn the van is a man, from his appearance a merchant from the eastern provinces of Persia. He is dressed in a long smock-lilte garment of black silk, thickly powdered. with the white dust that lies like a pall on the whole caravan. A-huge purple turban surmounts a crafty face, with dark well-pencilled eyebrows; piercing brown eyes, an aquiline nose and cruel thin lips. His bushy black beard and moustache give him an air of forbidding vigour that the curves of fatigue cannot soften. 110 is mounted on a small jxjny whose saddle and rider seem to be too big and heavy for the beast, which nevertheless bears them along at a steady w alking pace. On donkeys laden with bedding, and perched in a most insecure attitude on top of the load, come the womenfolk and children of the leader. The women, veiled, with long black cloaks and quaint baggy trousers, chatter incessantly in high pitched tones. A little farther back is a donkey led by an old man and bearing on its back two long wicker baskets and several hide bags. These objects represent, the spiritual obligation of tho leader to his deceased relatives. The wicker baskets contain the bodies of two recently dead relations, while tho bags contain the bones of his people who have died and who wished to b© buried at the great mosque in Kerbela. It is the ambition of every member of the Shia’s sect of Moslems to be interred in that consecrated ground. When a man dies he is buried temporarily in the burial ground near his own town, but this is only until an opportunity occurs for some of his friends or relations to make the pilgrimage, when the bones or corpses nr© disinterred and taken hundreds of miles to the last resting place. A party of savage looking Kurds follow next. They can he distinguished by the high, black felt d-ome shaped hats, with gay fringed silk kerchiefs wound round them. They wear embroidered waistcoats, open in front and disclosing what wer© one?© whit© smocks. Their waists are swathed with multi-coloured cummerbunds from whose folds the silver inlaid handles of wicked looking curved daggers appear. Their very baggy blue trousers and the easy way in which they sit astride their sturdy ponies give them a rakish devil-may-care look that timid wayfarers do not relish when they encounter it far from home. Other families are seen, some mounted, some on foot, some vigorous, some nearly overcome with fatigue. The khnn for which they are making is a large rectangular court, itnpaved, and haring in the npddle a well from which, by mans of a crazy windlass and bucket, water is drawn for the use of man and beast. The court is hounded by a high wall on sun-dried brick. The accommodation consists of a. series of little alcoves built out from th© wall. They are quite open to* the court, and if privacy be required that is attained by slinging a rug across the front. The roofs of the alcoves form the beat of the sentry on the look-out. The sentry gives warning of the approach of the caravan; th© missive iron studded doors are thrown open. Some naked children appear from the sorry hovels grouped round th© khan and stare solemnly at the caravan as it wends its way slowly to its shelter for the night.—By * c J.P.,” in th© “ Daily Mail.”