A large wooden bowl sufficed to serve the cooked dish, and tableware consisted mostly of knives and a double-bowled wooden spoon that looked much like the number eight. To make their meals Turkic nomads required only a large hemispherical vessel called a qazan, a shield-shaped grill, and a type of skewer called a shish. The latter exemplified elegant efficiency, a virtue esteemed by all nomadic tribes. The few domestic goods usually consisted of bedding and kitchen utensils. They spend four-fifths of their lives in this way without seeming to see or feel the sunshine of life, and, then, if they are successful in a material sense, they use the fruits of this self-imposed and unnecessary serfdom in the attempt to make the rest of their lives happy by indulging in extravagant luxury, and fail, because their natures have become so sour, or their tastes so perverted or dead, through lack of proper nourishment or cultivation, that there is nothing left for the comfort and ease, which they fondly imagined their money could buy at this time to work upon.” –Charles Summers, The Nomads: A Socioeconomic Novel (1903) “Some people treat themselves worse than they would their dogs, just for the sake of money.
