But if there was one aspect of Kashgar that first told me Kithai was different from other places I had been, it was the endless variety of smells. True, every other Eastern community had been odorous, but chiefly and awfully of old urine. Kashgar was not free of that stale smell, but it had many and better others. Most noticeable was the odor of kara smoke, which is not unpleasant, and into that were blended countless and fragrant incenses, which the people burned in their houses and shops as well as in places of worship. Also, at all hours of the day and night, one could smell foodstuffs cooking. That was sometimes familiar: the simple, good, mouth-watering aroma of pork chops frying in some non-Muslim kitchen. But the scent was often otherwise: the smell of a pot of frogs being boiled or a dog being stewed defies description. And sometimes it was an exotically nice smelclass="underline" that of burned sugar, for example, when I watched a Han vendor of sweets melt bright-colored sugars over a brazier and then, as magically as a sorcerer, somehow blow and spin that fondant into delicate shapes of floss—a flower with pink petals and green leaves, a brown man on a white horse, a dragon with many wings of different colors.
In baskets in the market were more kinds of cha leaves than I had known existed, all aromatic and no two smelling alike; and jars of spices of pungencies new to me; and baskets of flowers of shapes and colors and perfumes I had never encountered before. Even our Inn of the Five Felicities smelled different from all the others we had inhabited, and the landlord told me why. In the plaster of the walls was mixed red meleghèta pepper. It discouraged insects, he said, and I believed him, for the place was singularly clean of vermin. However, this being early summer, I could not verify his other claim: that the hot red pepper made the rooms warmer in winter.
I saw no other Venetian traders in the city, or Genoese or Pisan or any other of our commercial rivals, but we Polos were not the only white men. Or white men, so-called; I remember being asked by a Han scholar, many years later:
“Why are you people of Europe called white? You have more of a brick-red complexion.”
Anyway, there were a few other whites in Kashgar, and their brick-redness was easily visible among the Eastern skin colors. During my first day’s stroll through the streets, I saw two bearded white men deep in conversation, and one of them was Uncle Mafio. The other wore the vestments of a Nestorian priest, and had a flat-backed head that identified him as an Armeniyan. I wondered what my uncle could have found to discuss with a heretic cleric, but I did not intrude, only waved a greeting as I went by.
2
ON one of the days of our enforced idleness, I went outside the city walls to view the camp of the Mongols—what they called their bok—and to exercise what Mongol words I knew, and to learn some new ones.
The first new words I learned were these: “Hui! Nohaigan hori!” and I learned them in a hurry, for they mean “Olà! Call off your dogs!” Packs of large and truculent mastiffs prowled freely through the whole bok, and every yurtu had two or three chained at its entrance. I learned also that I was wise to be carrying my riding quirt, as the Mongols always do, for beating off the curs. And I early learned to leave the quirt outside whenever I entered a yurtu, for to carry it inside would be unmannerly, would offend the human occupants, being an implication that they were no better than dogs.
There were other niceties of behavior to be observed. A stranger must approach a yurtu by walking first between two of the camp fires outside, thus properly purifying himself. Also, one never steps upon the threshold of a yurtu when entering or leaving it, and never whistles while inside it. I learned those things because the Mongols were eager to receive me and to instruct me in their ways and to query me about mine. Indeed, they were almost overwhelmingly eager. If the Mongols have one trait exceeding the ferocity they show to inimical outsiders, it is the inquisitiveness they show about peaceable ones. The single most frequent sound in their speech is “uu,” which is not a word but a vocal question mark.
“Sain bina, sain urkek! Good meeting, good brother!” a group of warriors greeted me, and then immediately inquired, “From under what skies do you come, uu?”
“From under the skies of the West,” I said, and they widened their eyes as much as those slits would widen, and they exclaimed:
“Hui! Those skies are immense, and they shelter many lands. In your Western country, did you dwell beneath a roof, uu, or a tent, uu?”
“In my native city, a roof. But I have been long upon the road, and living under a tent, when not the open sky.”
“Sain!” they cried, smiling broadly. “All men are brothers, is that not true, uu? But those men who dwell beneath tents are even closer brothers, as close as twins. Welcome, twin brother!”
And they bowed and gestured me into the yurtu belonging to one of them. Except for its being portable, it bore little relation to my flimsy sleeping tent. Its interior was only a single round room, but it was a commodious six paces in diameter and its top was well above a standing man’s head. The walls were of interlaced wooden laths, vertical walls from ground level to shoulder height, then curving inward to form a dome. At its top center was an open roundel, whence the smoke from the room’s heating brazier escaped. The lath framework supported the yurtu’s outer covering: overlapping sheets of heavy felt, colored yellow with clay, lashed to the frame by crisscrossed ropes. The furnishings were few and simple, but of good quality: floor carpets and couches of cushions, also all made of brightly colored felt. The yurtu was as sturdy and warm and weather-repellent as any house, but it could be dismantled in an hour and compacted into bundles small and light enough to be carried on a single pack saddle.
My Mongol greeters and I entered the yurtu through the felt-flapped opening which, as in all Mongol edifices, was on its southern side. I was motioned to take a seat on the “man’s bed” of the establishment, the one on the north side of the yurtu, where I could sit facing the good-omened south. (Beds for women and children were ranged around the less-auspicious other sides.) I sank down on the felt-covered cushions, and my host pressed into my hand a drinking vessel that was simply a ram’s horn. Into it, he poured from a leather bag a rank-smelling and bluish-white thin liquid.
“Kumis,” he said it was.
I waited politely until all the men held full horns. Then I did as they did, which was to dip fingers into the kumis and flick a few drops in each direction of the compass. They explained, well enough for me to comprehend, that we were saluting “the fire” to the south, “the air” to the east, “the water” to the west and “the dead” to the north. Then we all raised our horns and drank deeply, and I committed a bad breach of manners. Kumis, I would learn, is to the Mongols a drink as beloved and sacrosanct as qahwah is to the Arabs. I thought it was awful and, unpardonably, I let my face express my opinion. The men all looked distressed. One of them said hopefully that I would grow to like the taste in time, and another said I would like the exhilarating effect of it even more. But my host took my horn and drank it empty, then refilled it from a different leather bag and handed the vessel back to me, saying, “This is arkhi.”