The old lady, Baji Raihan, allowed us to look over the little place, and offered to rent three rooms, two below, and the unfinished one above, for the equivalent of seven shillings a month—not an exorbitant sum, as the house was near to all the bazaars and business caravanserais. She herself occupied the room under the finished upper chamber, and would continue to do so. We, therefore, finding it reasonable, decided upon the place and made our way to a coffee-house. This, like all the coffee-houses of Kurdistan, was an edifice of high arches or domes supported upon heavy pillars, ingress being effected anywhere. High benches were ranged around, and in a recess was the apparatus of the place, two large samovars, and tea-glasses, and saucers, which stood upon a wide shelf made of mud and brick. The floor was bricked, and a water-carrier, his skin over his shoulder, came in every two hours and sprinkled the ground to keep the place cool. Here we found a large number of merchants, Christian and Kurd, and I was introduced in the manner of Kurdistan, my name being announced to those who asked it, after they had greeted me with the “Marhabba” of these parts.

The talk was mostly of the punishment of the Hamavands (for which the Turks were supposed to be collecting an army at Chemchemal), of local politics, or of harvest prospects. Here, in the coffee-house, the news of the place is exchanged, prices of merchandise discussed and fixed, bargains made, sales and purchases effected. It was announced by Matti that I had fresh “run” from Juanru, and a little man, whom Matti informed me was a respectable grocer, came forward and made an appointment to come and see the stuff next morning. We sat for some time, and I acquired an idea of the difficulty of the intricate Sulaimanian dialect of Kurdish, one of the most peculiar of all.

We then dispersed to our respective houses, and I found Hama in the widow’s house making tea, which, as I did not require it, was handed round to the women. As the evening was close, I had my carpet put in the yard on the ground, and having eaten, sunset being meal-time in Sulaimania, I sat upon my bed-clothes smoking and chatting with the women, who had disposed their sleeping apparatus upon the floor or on the roof, to which they ascended by a rude ladder. Their conversation was of the shaikhs, but as they appeared nearly all to be related to the Shaikh family, they only deplored the recent murder of Shaikh Sa’id, and I was constrained to enter into a flow of pious expressions of regret. They also touched upon the question of marriage, but I hazarded the opinion that a Shi’a could not ask in marriage a Sunni woman without trouble occurring with the relations, and they were nonplussed, thinking of no other suggestion to make, than that I should turn Sunni, an action which, as a good Shi’a, I repudiated, and rising said my prayers, as well to finish the argument as to convince them of my sincerity.

Rest, however, was rudely interrupted by the sudden rise of the hot north-east wind, here called the “rashaba,” which blows from the hills with the force of a gale. This, coming suddenly, and across newly mown fields, smothered us with chaff and dust, which was followed by a sharp rain-shower which drove us to shelter, and we did not finally sleep till the sky was clear, about midnight.