The common use of the one tank, with the only partial changing of the water, and the general carelessness of infection, make the bath one of the greatest means of spreading disease.
The Muhammadan religion provides strict rules as to clothes and baths and washing. In the washings before prayers it even decides which hand and which side of the face shall be washed first. And all this the parents teach the children as carefully as, generally much more carefully than, such matters as truthfulness, honesty and kindness.
Here again we see Muhammad giving his people what we may call “nursery rules,” treating them as children, while our Master expects us to grow up so that we can arrange these matters for ourselves.
As children we must live under detailed rules, but always with the object before us of growing up right. The very fact that the detailed rules of Muhammadanism are binding through life shows that the Muhammadan is not expected to grow up as we understand growing up.
It is curious to go thousands of miles to Persia--to cross vast sandy deserts--and at last to find little skirted boys in the mudwalled streets playing tipcat just like their counterparts in our own cities. Hop-scotch and duck-stone too are favourite games, and kites are very popular. The kites are large and square and fly very well, and the boys often fly them from the roofs, sending “messages” up the string just as our boys do. There is a regular game of “wolf” too, played almost exactly as it is in many parts of the world by English-speaking children. I am sorry to say that pitch and toss and gambling with cards are very common.
There is nothing like cricket and football, but in Yezd there is a kind of “rounders” which is played for a fortnight only at the New Year--the Persian New Year, that is, in March. Any evening during that fortnight if you go out into the desert just outside the town walls you will see a crowd of men and boys, some playing, some watching. And any day during that fortnight if you visit the women, some small boy will proudly show his _chaftar_ or rounders stick. For a week or two afterwards an occasional _chaftar_ may be seen but after that it is a puzzle where they disappear to, not one is to be seen till the next New Year.