Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1885 — Dining in Persia. [ARTICLE]

Dining in Persia.

Persian dinners are always preceded by pipes (hubble-bubbles), while tea and sweets are handed around. Then servants bring in a lbng leathern sheet and place it on the ground; the guests take their seats around it, squatting on the •ground. A fiat loaf of bread is placed before each mah. Music plays. The dinner is brought in on trays and placed on the ground on the leathern sheet; tJhfe covers are removed; the host says “Bismillah” (“in the name of God”), aud in silence all fall to with their fingers.