The light and profane use of the Divine name is universal. The dervishes curse, but every one uses the name _Allah_ wherever they can bring it in. The _Ya Allah_, as an expression of fatigue, or discontent, or interest, or nothing, is heard all day, and the boy who drives a cow, or a team, or a mule in a caravan, cries _Ya Allah_ incessantly as an equivalent of "go along," and the gardener pushing his spade into the ground, the chopper with every blow of the axe, the labourer throwing up bricks, ejaculates the same. _Mashallah_, _Inshallah_, interlard all conversation. When men are building, the perpetual sing-song of phrases such as these is heard, "Brother, in God's name toss me a brick," the other replying, "Brother, in God's name here is a brick."
The vocabulary of abuse is also very large, and often involves serious reflections on the female relatives of the person abused. I hear such harmless phrases as "son of a burnt father," "son of a dog," "offspring of a pig," etc., on all occasions.
Murcheh Khurt is a large village with a good deal of cultivation about it, a mosque or more, a _hammam_, a _chapar khana_, and a caravanserai. Here again I found that the smart foreign soldier attracted all the notice, and that before the people ceased to wonder at him I had passed them. The _chapar khana_ was full of men, so I have had to sink to the level of a recessed den with a manger in front in a ruinous caravanserai crowded with Persian travellers, muleteers, mules, horses, and asses, and the courtyard half-choked with ruins. I had not seen the inside of one of these dens before. Travellers have exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon them; possibly they deserve it in the "vermin season"; but there is nothing worse than a square and perfectly dark room, with unplastered walls blackened by the smoke and cobwebs of ages, and a door which will not fasten.
The air is cool and the sky blue, and sitting at the open door is very pleasant. Mahboud and two of the servants caught cold at Kuhr[=u]d and are ill, and my Arab has a chill too. He is a very stupid horse. His gentle eyes never change their expression, and his small ears rarely move. He has little sense or affection, but when he is patted his proud neck takes on a loftier arch. Gentle as he is to people he is a brute to other horses. He would like to fight every one of them, to stand on his hind-legs and grapple them round the shoulders with his fore-feet and bite their necks, roaring and squealing all the time. He and Mahboud's horse are inveterate enemies, and one of the few difficulties of the journey is the keeping them from a regular stand-up fight.