Finally you stand up, and two or three bucketfuls of hot water are thrown over your head. Your servant then comes up, wraps you in a bath-towel, and you go off to the dressing-room. There are no velvet couches to lie on, so you proceed to rub down and dress: then tea is brought, you have a cigarette, and ride languidly home. The Afghan bath is an excellent institution for cleanliness in a hot climate, but it certainly is neither exhilarating nor stimulating. There is little or no arrangement made for ventilating the bath-room, and it is customary, in the bitter cold of a Kabul winter, for poor people to obtain permission to sleep there at night. It is a not uncommon occurrence for one or two to be found suffocated in the morning. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. THE KABUL BAZAARS. The unpopular Governor and his toothache. The meeting in the Erg Bazaar. Appearance of the Kabul Bazaars. The shops and their contents. Boots, shoes, and cobblers. Copper workers. The tinning of cooking pots. Impromptu tobacco pipes. Tobacco smoking by the Royal Family. Silk and cotton. “Bargaining.” “Restaurants.” Tea drinking. Confectioners. The baker’s oven. Flour mills. The butcher’s shop. Postîns and their cost. Furs. Ironmongers. Arms. “The German sword.” The Afghan tulwar. Rifles and pistols. Bows. Silver and gold-smiths. Caps and turbans. Embroidery. Grocers: tea, sugar, soap, and candles, and where they come from. Fruiterers. Tailors. “The Railway Guard.” Costume of the Kabuli townsmen. Personal effect of the Amîr on costume. Drug shops. One day soon after I arrived in Kabul the Governor of the city--the notorious Naib Mir Sultan--of whom I shall have more to say later, sent to say he was very ill. He had been suffering for days from an agonizing toothache. I was advised not to visit the Naib because he was not in favour with the Prince. I therefore sent him some medicine and directed the Armenian interpreter to go, and if he found a decayed tooth to introduce a small pellet of cotton wool soaked in creosote. A day or two after, as I was returning from the hospital, I met the Naib in one of the bazaars. He was surrounded by a guard of the military police, whose Chief he was, and by a great crowd of servants. At that time he was execrated in Kabul. He did not, however, look very evil. He had a dark skin but not a disagreeable face. I enquired how he was, and he said the pain had entirely left him. He dismounted, and I examined the tooth in the street. It was decayed and the socket inflamed. I wanted to pull it out there and then with my fingers, but he would not let me touch it. [Sidenote: The Appearance of the Kabul Bazaars.] The bazaar in which I met the Naib is a modern one built by the present Amîr, the street is wider and the shops are better built than those of the other bazaars.