Behind the town of Sultana Zubaida, which has just suddenly displayed its thousand domes to us, appearing like some grand apparition of red copper, there are real clouds, forming a dark background. From these clouds every few minutes lightning sketches out pale fiery zigzags. The sandstorm, which we have scarcely left behind, continues to make its way towards the desert and we can see its heavy veil and its Dantesque darkness in flight on the horizon behind us. Everything becomes clearer and real once again. We are now travelling through the fields of the oasis, somewhat ravaged by the wind, fields of corn, poppies, cotton and rice. The town has a wonderful appearance at first (and we were not taken in by it), but is as always nothing but a heap of ruins. Now we have to get inside and that is not easy. For a horseman, it would already be difficult, but for a carriage with four horses abreast, it becomes a real problem. We spend a long time searching, trying one way, back-tracking and trying another. Nowhere has the work of these human Iranian ants been so thorough, so keen, so lacking in foresight than here. It is true to say that there is no way through the debris of all these clay walls. They are not long-lasting and are never rebuilt. Among deep hollow flood beds, and especially among numerous excavations, where clay for construction has been extracted, gaping holes forever remain. One of my horses on the flank falls into a large hollow and risks dragging the team and us into it. It remains dangling by its harness, but at last climbs back up. We finally arrive at the gates.

The storm can already be heard rumbling, as we enter the huge gloomy town. There are mosques, towers and ancient ponderous quadrangular pyramids with steps, like those of certain temples in India. It is a daring accumulation of clay which still makes pretensions to grandeur amidst its final decay. We come to a crossroads where an old dervish in a white robe, with a long beard dyed vermillion red, is explaining the Quran to twenty or so wellbehaved young children, sitting on stones in a circle.

Here is a huge isolated minaret at least sixty metres high, which leans frighteningly more than the tower of Pisa. (This is the place of punishment of adulteresses. They are cast down from the top, and from the leaning side, so

that, at the moment just before their fall, they have the most terrible anguish at the sight of the void into which they are about to plunge.)