Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/62

beggars' arrogance of their race; melancholy Turkomans in immense fur-caps and plaited duffle coats; Greeks, cunning-faced and sleek and odiously handsome; green-turbaned, wide-stepping shareefs, the aristocracy of Islam; anxious-eyed, tawdry Armenians; Sarts bristling with weapons and impudence; here and there a bearded official of the Ameer's household, with his air of steely assurance, superb self-satisfaction hooded under his sharply curved eyelids—and once in a while a woman, in white from head to foot, a restful relief to the blaze of colors all around.

Yar Khan looked, but he felt no desire to linger. For him there was no fragrance in the blossom-burdened gardens, no music in the song of the koil bird, no beckoning in the life of the streets—motley and shrill and busy—with shaggy Northern dromedaries dragging along their loads and looming against the skyline like a gigantic scrawl of Asian handwriting, with the hundreds of tiny donkeys tripping daintily under their burdens of charcoal and fiery-colored vegetables, with numbers of two-wheeled arbas creaking in their heavy joints—with all the utter, riotous meaning of trade and barter and gold. He bought a horse, a dun stallion with high, peaked withers, and rode out of the Southern Gate without turning around. Down the long south trail he rode—toward the little steel-gray village perched on a flat, circular mountain top which is called The Hoof of the Wild Goat in the Afghan tongue.

He pulled into Balkh, white as a leper with the dust of the road, traded his stallion for a lean racing camel, which had a profusion of blue ribbons plaited into the bridle as protection against the djinns and ghouls of the desert—a superstition of his native land