Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/21

 the smoke of the fire, which a cold and weary traveller causes to be kindled, seeks an exit through the door in preference to going up the chimney. As a natural consequence, the room is perfectly uninhabitable for the best part of an hour after one's arrival unless the traveller lies or crouches low on the floor, where the air is less impregnated with blinding smoke. Above the doorway, on the roof of the house, is the 'bala khaneh,' or upper room, which is only reached after a gymnastic performance specially painful to travellers whose limbs are stiffened by a fifty miles' journey on horseback during the course of the day. The steps of the small, winding staircase are about three feet in height, and many of them having crumbled away altogether, the ascent partakes much more of the nature of a mountaineering expedition than of the prosaic process of going upstairs.

The 'bala khaneh,' the origin of the English word 'balcony,' is a small, perfectly empty room, from ten to twelve feet square, generally with four unglazed windows and two doors, the wood of which having hopelessly warped can never,