During this time Hama had returned once with a large number of mule-loads of “run” from Halabja, and was great with projects of a journey to Bagdad to buy sugar. The road to that place was still closed, and the only means of access to the south was by Halabja and Khaniqin, a large frontier town on the Bagdad Kermanshah road. All the merchants of the place were itching to be off and away to Bagdad, for the sugar that in April had cost two krans a loaf was now selling for five, and there were days at the coffee-house when one could not get tea, the sugar having run out, and people, from force of habit, sat there smoking cigarettes and discussing politics, tealess.

But in his commercial schemes, Hama, with all the characteristic of the Kurd to the fore, quite forgot that he had left outstanding at Halabja a number of debts which he must collect before more money was risked, and was hoping to rake in a good profit on a new undertaking, while disregarding the loss on the old one. So I had to send him back to Halabja, for he had disposed of the fifty pairs of shoes mostly on credit, and had but a hazy idea of who the buyers were. He sat at the edge of the tank twiddling his fingers and puzzling his brains to remember to whom he had given the shoes, while I tried to make a list, which was finely descriptive where he could not remember the names. One had taken a pair for twelve krans, “who was the second rider of Majid Beg’s men from Narinjalan”; another, “a big man who sits at the corner of Shaul the Jew’s shop, in the bazaar”; another, “a man I met in the coffee-house, who was talking to Hama Rasha of Ababail”; and so on. Lady Adela herself had taken some, and there were quite a number of her servants whose shoes, according to Hama, were also chargeable to her, though apparently she never consented to pay for them. So I sent him away again to Halabja, and in his place engaged a small boy, son of the Hama who was the caravanserai keeper of Matti. This boy was content to serve for a penny every three days, and his food. He was a child of extraordinarily acute intelligence. He had picked up some Persian in the bazaars, and displayed great aptitude in learning it when spoken to him. But if his intelligence helped him thus, it also assisted in making him a great trial to both his father and the Christians in the caravanserai. For he was the leader of several gangs of small hooligans, was continually fighting, and obeyed only in a small degree his father. His mother, a most estimable soul, who came to make bread for me, was in despair of him, for he was quite out of her hands, and did just as he pleased with her. By making himself a great nuisance to the Christians, he had instituted a kind of toll, which he received on demand, a piastre or two at a time. He would, for instance, come to Habib, demanding his fee, and if it be refused, as it was sometimes, would jump upon the unfortunate man’s back and half throttle him, or sweep round and round his office, overturning the wares and dealing destruction as he went. If he were chastised, he returned, fortified with genuine fury, to the fray, and the easiest way to deal with him was to give him his twopence. When he came to me, I naturally earned the gratitude of all his victims, but he still found time to run round to the caravanserai and hurl a taunt or two at its occupants. He was a child of the Aorami, that tribe of Kurdistan which is not Kurd, which claims descent from Rustam himself, and counts its place of origin to be Demavend. The neighbours were not particularly pleased at his advent, for he carried war into their territory, and from the roofs, the playground of children in the summer, he raided the courtyards, and taught all the quiet children of the quarter the wild games he delighted in. The women stood in dread of him, for he would, when sent upon an errand to borrow a pot or pan, a common enough errand in these parts, remain for an hour teasing.

According to the custom of Sulaimania, there were during the day none but women in the houses; and in our quarter, where small merchants and shopkeepers lived, the men were out from early morning to late evening. My interests took me but little outside on some days of the week, and as I became known, and the presence of the old dame rendered such a proceeding not indecorous, the female portion of the surrounding inhabitants would spend some part of their not too fully occupied time chatting. For the most part they were merry people, like all Kurdish women, free from any affectations of speech or manner, saying what they meant without an attempt at softening rough corners from the subject—saying it while they looked one straight in the eyes, so to speak—and laughing heartily at the pleasantries that abound in Kurdish conversation, with no sign of what we call “flirtation,” nor self-conscious tricks of any kind.

Breadmaking days were the time for a regular meeting of such, and when, if at home, I would retire to my room. The professional woman baker would arrive early in the morning with a bag of flour, and Ghafur, the child of wrath, would be sent round to borrow a big copper pan from one of the neighbours, the capture of which he usually signalled by beating a tattoo upon its resonant sides all the way up the street. The woman baker was by this time drinking her tea with the old house-dame, listening to the oft-told tale of her son’s death on the Bagdad road, and weeping a tear or two in sympathy. With the advent of Ghafur, she would speedily desert the tea—for she was, and I hope still is, a busy woman—and get to mixing her flour. This operation was always performed under the little space of roofing just inside the open courtyard door, so when the neighbours, bound upon their multifarious house-to-house errands, passed by, it was natural that they should stroll in to assist. If they did not, then Ghafur would be sent to beat them up, an operation which he fully appreciated, for to bake the bread well required two or three, and as we had no earth-oven, someone else’s must be heated, and then of course others who had a little bread to bake would ask the favour of cooking theirs after ours, in the still hot oven; for the heating costs money, and the opportunity of baking at another’s fire is never lost by a good Kurdish housewife.

So as a rule we had as assistants at the game of kneading and rolling into balls, ready for slapping into thin flap-jacks, the carpenter’s wife from opposite, a sturdy creature, hard-worked and hard-working. She had five children, whom she kept clean and tidy, two of whom usually accompanied her, fair, curly headed youngsters with pale blue eyes, and as rosy cheeked as only a Kurd or a Persian is among the Middle Eastern people. Then there were the two sisters from next door, wives of two brothers who kept a coffee-house, lazy creatures who sat about and smoked cigarettes. Occasionally one, Adela, wife of the ward of the children in whose house I lived, would look in, but she was a haughty creature, of velvets and golden ornaments and diamond rings, the beauty of the quarter, who knew her own importance. She certainly was very beautiful, and had the added advantage possessed by many Kurdish women over those of the neighbouring races—height, and a fine straight height too.

But the best of these good-looking Sulaimanian women—for they are a well-favoured people—was Gulchin, flighty, good-hearted Gulchin. She was a tall girl of about eighteen, a little pale for prettiness, but of finely formed features. The gossips of the quarter objected to her because she was light-hearted and ran from house to house much as my serving-child Ghafur did, chaffing and teasing. She had quite a sad little history, too, and concealed under her frivolous manner lay a sorrow that broke out in tears sometimes when the other women returned her harmless badinage with a taunt, when she would fly to her house and sit in a corner sobbing till the natural buoyancy of her spirit asserted itself, and she came forth a little sobered, but still ready to meet the others.

She had been the young wife of a certain Taufiq, a handsome lad who had a good position under the local government, and a large house. With him she had been very happy, and had borne him a child. Unfortunately there were a mother-in-law and grandmother, who, each detesting Gulchin, laid their wits together to eject her. So they spread rumours concerning her, to give a cause of irritation to her husband, and at the same time, with the assistance of a hedge-priest, discovered certain invalidities in her marriage bond. With this in hand, they continued the dissemination of scandal, till the husband, hearing it from certain respectable people, came in wrath to Gulchin. She being a spirited girl, and moreover, innocent, naturally gave the retort very direct, and a quarrel occurred which for the time embittered one against the other. The old women now came to Taufiq with the defective bond, and taking the opportune moment of his resentment and wrath, induced him to divorce his wife.

So, disgraced and stripped of her good clothes and her ornaments, which, though she might have taken, she refused, Gulchin came to the house of her aunt Asima Khan, my neighbour, a descendant of the ancient priestly families of Hakkari, and as such bearing the masculine title “Khan.”

Here Gulchin was reduced to the level of a superior maid, and had to do the housework, but her uncle gave her clothes and protected her, for he, Abdullah, was a grave, respected man, the senior of the quarter.

Had Gulchin’s resentment against her husband continued, it would have been well for her, but unfortunately, she was too good-hearted a girl to hate anybody, and really loved him, so she wept tears of regret and remembrance. And worst of all for her she had, in a soft moment, confided her trouble to one of the other women, and had become a subject for chaff, good-humoured enough certainly, but hurtful all the same, and had she not been naturally light-hearted would have led a very sorry life.

What lost her the respect of her neighbours was the habit she had on hot days of coming outside the house without her turban, bareheaded except for a tiny skull-cap, her thick, long hair exposing its ten or twelve ropes of thick plaits uncovered by the veil that accompanies the turban. But she was perfectly honest; an immoral woman is the exception in Sulaimania, and she scoffed at those who sacrificed comfort to false modesty. Ghafur had succeeded, in a hunt for someone to mend my clothes, in capturing her for the job, and she would spend some of her mornings with the old house-dame, often dropping her work to romp with the child. Her methods were original sometimes, for she had little patience. One morning she swept into the courtyard at a moment when I had just discovered a piece torn out of the sleeve of a shirt, and called to her to mend it. She said she had no linen and no money to buy any, and Ghafur not being there to get some from the bazaar, she tore a piece from her own, and then, seeing the expanse of white skin thus discovered, fled, blushing, to pin it up in a corner.

It was not long after my first visit from the police that Sayyid Nuri again called. This time he came without the knowledge of old Mustafa Beg, and was accompanied only by a kind of confidential companion-servant and a hideous old man whom he made the excuse for his visit, for he said he wanted to introduce him to me because he was a doctor, and I had considerable knowledge in the science. He was a horrible-looking old creature, with a beaked nose and but three yellow teeth, and had an intensely evil look in his small eyes. Like all of his class, and Sulaimanians in particular, he commenced asking a number of questions concerning myself; but his native suspicion did not allow him to believe most of the replies, and at last he asked if I had a passport, to which I answered in the affirmative. Sayyid Nuri here interrupted and objected to this inquisition, for though he himself had no scruples in asking the most intimate and offensive questions, he demurred when another would arrogate the privilege to himself. The old creature bent towards him and said, “If we could only see his passport, then we should know what he is”—but I interrupted him by telling him that had I a dozen passports in my pocket I should not display them to him, a remark which amused Sayyid Nuri and annoyed the old man. Then he put forward the proposition he said he had come to make. It appeared he possessed an old Arabic book setting forth the medical science as understood by the Arabs; the old Greek theory of heat and cold, the calorific and frigid temperament, with its diseases all classed under the two headings and cured by medicines antagonistic to such conditions of the body. He now proposed that he should produce this book, and with a stock of herbs purchased from the Jews, go into partnership with me, a proceeding which he asserted “would fill our pockets speedily enough, for a combination of European and Oriental skill will cover all the ailments of the people and provide an alternative to those cases which you cannot now touch, namely, the conservative part of the populace that objects to the “new Medicine”—the “Tibb-i-Jadid.”

The more I protested the impossibility of such a combination, the component parts of which were too antagonistic to be possibly considered together, the more he pressed his point, affirming that I was a fool to let professional jealousy thus spoil my chances; to which I replied, that I was not even a doctor—an assertion they both laughed to scorn, and pointed to the bottles above their heads as incontrovertible proof. The “doctor” absolutely failed to understand why I should not join him, and exhibited very considerable chagrin at my consistent refusal, waving aside all my excuses—that I did not perform, even if I knew anything about medicine; that I had too small a stock; that I was very shortly leaving Sulaimania; and so on.

“No drugs!” he said, “buy some Epsom salts and phenacetin, that is as good a stock-in-trade as you can desire; and anything else you may require, why, we will make up some kind of concoction. Names are plentiful, and one looks no worse than another upon a bottle of the same stuff.”

The creature pressed so hard that I did not know how to be rid of him, when a diversion came from Sayyid Nuri. He had been wandering about the room, and had discovered a small cube of yellowish-grey earth, the use of which he demanded. I explained to him that this was a piece of earth from the sacred tomb of the saint Ali, an apparatus of prayer not to be dispensed with by any good Shi’a Musulman.

“What! do you pray to this?” he cried.

“No,” I replied, “but we place it before us on the ground. As you know, among the Sunni you place your foreheads upon the ground in praying, you prostrate yourselves upon any earth or any dust upon which you find yourselves. We do the same, but we see no harm in having a piece of consecrated earth between our foreheads and the ground, so that when we touch earth in our prostrations we may rest the head upon a spot more sacred than the place we are in, and at the same time have before us a reminder of the great man and saint and martyr whom even Sunni revere.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “and that is how a Shi’a says his prayers! Why, I tell you, man, that such is idolatry and heathenism. Your prayers are worthless said over such a thing, and you stand in danger of terrible and eternal retribution for such a sin.”

“And you Shi’a,” he recommenced with some heat, “are the folk that curse the name of Uthman, Umar, and Abu Bekr, and revile us, rising in the morning with abuse of us on your lips, and not slumbering till you have cursed us!”

The boy was losing his temper, and began to fumble with his dagger, but the “doctor” did his best to get him away out of the room, telling him that though some Shi’a might do as he said, I was not of the rampant kind, and at any rate should not be responsible for others’ actions.

“Then let him renounce the schism,” he grumbled; but the old man had his answer ready to this:

“Shall not he follow his fathers? and be damned or saved with them? Were he to desert now, he would fling off his new tenets directly he got away. Let him be, I say, he has not attempted to spread his doctrine; let him pray in his fashion, the sin is upon him for continuing, and the merit yours, for you have pointed it out.”

With that he rose and took his leave, and the boy seeing no further amusement in staying, followed him, bidding me adieu sullenly and with a bad grace. That was the last time he entered my house, for, a day or two after, Shaikh Ahmad was appointed Qaim Maqam of Chemchemal, and took his son with him.

But I was not to have peace for long. Only a few mornings after this, two policemen turned up, with a message from the commissaire of police, that he wished to see me at once. As I had imagined that he had ceased worrying about my passport, I followed them, wondering what he wanted. He was seated in a tailor’s shop in the bazaar, a fat man, with a cunning look in his little blue eyes, and his mouth concealed under a heavy yellow moustache.

He spoke nothing but Turkish and Arabic, and as I reached him, addressed me in the former.

“Have you a passport?” he asked; “if so, why have you not submitted it to me?”

“Because so far you have not asked for it, nor done anything except hint at the illegal objects of my visit here; had you asked reasonably for it I would have shown it.”

“Well, I wish to know what you are doing here—why you came, why you do not go, where you came from, your name, your——”

“These,” I broke in, “are known to everyone in Sulaimania but yourself. I came here to do business, and have done some, and would have done more had the place here been in a normal state of quietness. I came from Kirkuk, and as you were with the same caravan you should have known that; and as at Kirkuk my passport was seen and stamped, I am not going to volunteer details as to whence I came there, for it is not your business. As to why I do not go, I am hoping to leave very soon for Bagdad—as soon as your bold Turkish army can induce the Hamavands to leave a road open.”

This kind of conversation in the open bazaar, and among a crowd of Kurds, half of whom understood, he had not expected, and appeared a little hurt at a tone he was not apparently used to.

“Well,” he said, “at any rate I must see your passport, so you had better fetch it.”

So, accompanied by a policeman I went back to the house and got my English passport, and the Turkish travelling passport issued to all who journey in that country. By now it had received ill-use, and the name was illegible, as well as particulars of religion and birthplace. These I brought to him there, and he inspected the travelling passport, and after humming and hawing, said:

“Yes, this is very well, but the essential thing is an identification passport. Where is it?”

I showed him the Foreign Office passport, which also interested the Kurds round about.

“This,” he said, “is not a passport, it is merely a permit from your Government to travel.”

“Well,” I said, “can you read it?” a remark that elicited guffaws from the listeners.

“No,” he answered, “of course I cannot.”

“Then,” I said, “you must either take my word or suspend the enquiry, you cannot blame me because you do not know English. I have stated that I am a British subject, and there is my British passport, with the visé of the Turkish Consul in London on the back, and there is my name, ‘Ghulam Husain,’ upon it,” and I pointed to where my own name was written in English.

“Well, that may be,” he said; “but yet it is not the personal passport such as we all carry, and which is essential for identification.”

“Such a document,” I said, “is before you.”

Somewhat annoyed, he broke out:

“No! no! it is not, this is a travelling passport; where is the passport you were given when you had completed your time in the army?”

“Well,” I said, “that I do not possess——”

“Oh! oh! why not?”

“Simply because we have the honour not to be Turkish subjects, do not have to serve in the army unless we please, and are not called upon to carry passports of identification everywhere with us; for we are not subject to the inquisition and annoyance enjoyed under Turkish rule, and there are too many of us, and we have too much to do, to waste our time and money on paying ornaments like yourself to harass us.”

The poor police effendi had never been thus insulted before, and rose furious. The Kurds were enjoying the scene, and one or two advised the policeman to leave me alone, as it was evident that I was not to be scared sufficiently to bribe him.

He had my passports in his hand, and stood for a moment irresolute, so, thinking to bring matters to an end, I said:

“What do you want?—tell me, and perhaps we can conclude.”

“What do I want?” he exclaimed; “why, satisfaction for the indignities you have put me to, your passport of identification, and a surety that you are not a seditious person: I must hold an examination!”

“Good,” I said, “let us hold an examination, but not before I have seen the Governor. As a foreign subject I demand my right of appeal to him, and as you know, a British Consul is coming here in a few days (such was the bazaar rumour), and complaint of you and your ways will then be easy.”

“Very well,” and he shrugged in anger, “if you desire to increase your troubles, come along.”

So together we left the bazaars and came through the long, busy street to the outside edge of the town. He became friendly. He took me by the hand, and we walked thus hand in hand while he began asking me again, and this time in a friendly, solicitous way, why I had wanted to come here.

“Why,” I said, “in olden times, when there were Hamadan merchants here, you did not question them, and annoy them by such queries and doubts. They were buyers and sellers, and so would I be, were the country more secure. Meanwhile, what can I possibly do but wait the moment when peace will allow of commercial venture?”

“With what places would you trade?” he asked.

“With Saqiz and Bana, Keui and Kirkuk, Panjwin and Sina, as do others,” I said.

“How do you know all these places, if you are a stranger, and where did you learn Kurdish? I am afraid you do not tell the truth about your past, my brother; were it not better to tell me at once why you are here. Your passports are defective. I have no personal animosity against you, and should like to see you often, but there are strong suspicions, and if we cannot be satisfied of your harmlessness, we shall have to deport you to Mosul.”

“Good,” I said, “I am not enchanted with Sulaimania, and such a step would put me in your debt, for as I am a foreign subject, you would have to provide me with guards there, and on my arrival your Government would have to reimburse my commercial losses due to the abandonment of my business here, besides which, with the assistance of the Consul, I should be able to complain direct to the Vali of you and your methods.”

With this we arrived at the Serai, or Government house, and he took me into a little office where three or four Turks were seated upon a bench, idle. These saluted me, and having asked the reason of my visit, and having been informed by the policeman, looked upon me with suspicion, and while he retired to make an appointment, asked if I had not a passport. I explained that I had all necessary passports, but that the ignorance of their officials apparently involved them in difficulties. At this they looked serious and offended, and held their peace.

Anon the effendi returned, and took me down a dark passage to another little office where was a fat Turk called the “Tabur Aghassi,” and before him I was arraigned. Two or three Kurds were present, and as I knew one of them he took the opportunity to ask what the trouble was, while the policeman explained it in Turkish to the fat man. I suppose I expressed my disgust very freely, for the Kurds laughed heartily, and the policeman, who did not understand a word of Kurdish, turned sharply and asked what I was saying. Meanwhile the Tabur Aghassi was examining my English passport upside down, and looking grave. The various seals and endorsements upon the back interested him immensely, and at last he found a partially erased visé of the Turkish Consul in Kermanshah, which had been attached some time before I left that place for Bagdad.

The sight of a Turkish seal seemed to reassure him, so I pointed out the visé of the Turkish Consul in London, which he examined closely. These seemed to allay his suspicions, and in conjunction with the Turkish travelling passport appeared to put them at rest, and he told the policeman so. That individual—who had not been able to read the various endorsements—was somewhat chagrined, but thought to raise a difficulty by asking how I had got through Kirkuk without police inspection and seal upon my passport. I took the document from him and showed him the Kirkuk police seal, but he could not read it, and professed to believe it false; so I handed it to a Kurd, who with some gusto read out the inscription on the seal, at which even the Tabur Aghassi smiled, and the Kurds laughed, for I could not refrain from a complimentary expression upon the capabilities of a police commissaire who could not read the seals of his confrère and must rely on Kurds to do it for him. By now he had lost his temper, and I had too, for he continued to make fatuous remarks, and I commenced talking to him in a strain he was not used to hear, certainly not before Kurds, so he snatched up the passport and departed. The Tabur Aghassi was looking rather cross too, for he naturally did not approve of such procedure, but he sent a man after the policeman to tell him to seal and record my passports and let me get away, for I had done enough damage in the place already.

In five minutes he returned the document passed and sealed, and demanded half a mejidie, a last attempt. I took the paper from him, bade farewell to the Tabur Aghassi, and as I left the room told him in Kurdish that I would pay him in Mosul when I was deported. By the time this was translated I was away.

The whole place had heard of the affair, and I passed a row of sympathetic Kurds as I left, who made uncomplimentary remarks anent all policemen and Government officials as I bade them good-morning.

From here I went to the caravanserai, and found Habib and Matti in a terrible stew, for they had already heard that I had been locked in a dungeon and fined heavily, and I was greeted by them and by the Kurdish merchants with a pleasant warmth as I entered the place, appearing to them as one who had escaped from certain disaster by a rare and wonderful luck.

Habib’s fear had been doubled, for the policeman, before he sent for me, had been to his shop and held an examination of him, hinting that by his actions and friendliness with me, a suspect, he laid himself out to punishment and fines. Altogether, Habib was in a sore mood, for he, being a progressive fellow, talking Turkish, had cultivated an acquaintance with the Turkish officials, and the policeman had naturally annoyed him sooner than Matti, who spoke only Arabic and Kurdish, but who had a great deal more to do with me than had Habib. Besides, the Kurds and Christians held it a splendid opportunity to chaff Habib over the desire for Turkish favour and acquaintance that had thus led him near danger.

Despite the satisfactory ending of the affair, I knew that now I had definitely made enemies of the officials in the place, and should be worried whenever possible. Sulaimania possessed no particular charms, and as the country was getting more and more disturbed each day—for the Hamavands now burned the posts—the prospect of business was absolutely nothing; so I began to consider the possibility of going away. Matti, to whom I carried most of my troubles, was gloomy, and predicted no good to anyone staying in Sulaimania. If they did not go now, he said, they would be forced to leave later, for with the shaikhs and Turks together, prices going up, taxes increasing, and security always doubtful, trade was ceasing to exist, and there would soon be no bread to buy, and no money to buy it with.

He was feeling very sore just then, for he had tried to get some carpets to Mosul by sending them via Keui Sanjaq, where the road was open, but they had been looted on the way. He now strongly advised me to leave Sulaimania if I could, but pointed out, at the same time, the impossibility of such a step, for several reasons. First, Hama was still at Halabja, the Jew not having fetched in the second consignment of “run,” and dallying in the villages; secondly, if I left matters thus, Matti could not be responsible for getting the money back, for, as he truly said, “An absentee owner is the blessing of the dishonest debtor, and the despair of the agent”; and then, worse than all, there was no road to anywhere, except to Persia, and I was not keen just at that moment to go there. Had I been able to get to Kermanshah, I might have done so, but the road by Juanru was absolutely impassable, and the Kalhur country was upside down, so a journey there was out of the question. I could have got to Mosul, but my object was Bagdad, and the roads there either via Kifri or Kirkuk were absolutely closed, the Hamavands making it their business to see that none passed. The posts now only went at intervals, and refused to carry anything larger than letters, which could be concealed under the clothing of the peasant who carried them, and even then the Hamavands sometimes caught him and beat him, burning the letters. So all I could do was, like Matti and the rest of them, sit quiet and wait.

One morning Hama turned up unexpectedly with four loads of “run” that I had not been expecting, an instalment of the last amount. He also produced some tomans he had collected on account of the shoes. He had also had some interesting experience with the Shaikh ul Islam, that disagreeable person I had gone to Biara specially to see when I had been at Halabja. It appeared that one afternoon Hama had turned up as usual at Lady Adela’s “divan,” and had found the Shaikh ul Islam there. Without returning Hama’s salutation, he asked what he had done with his Christian master. This created quite a sensation, and Hama hardly knew what to say. Lady Adela and Uthman Pasha, who were both there, demanded explanations, and the Shaikh ul Islam rose and denounced me, saying that he had met me in Constantinople, where I wore European clothes; that there I professed to be a European, while here in Musulman garments I claimed to be a Persian. In Constantinople, he said, he was convinced that I was not a European. He failed to understand what I was, but thought it probable that I was not a Musulman, and I must have evil designs to have found my way in an unobtrusive manner thus to the heart of southern Kurdistan, with the Persian side of which I was familiar. He rose and denounced me as a spy, a maker of mischief and a danger to the country, and ended by cursing Hama for having anything to do with me. But he had been too hasty, for he received an unexpected rebuff from Lady Adela. She had apparently seen me saying my Musulman prayers on several occasions, and, with almost as much heat as the Shaikh ul Islam himself, defended me, saying that it was perfectly well known that I was a Persian of Shiraz, a fact which was evident also by my speech, and in this she was supported by Mansur, who strenuously denied that I was a Christian, for he also had seen me praying, and that in his own room. Others testified to my good faith, and the Shaikh ul Islam’s position began to appear uncomfortable, when Hama put the cap upon his discomfiture by an extraordinary statement. He recalled to the memory of those present my journey to Biara, and said he would now explain the reason of the Shaikh ul Islam’s enmity to me, and went on to describe how in Constantinople I had lent him a certain sum of money to help him to go back to his own country. This had never been repaid, and I had, on my way to Persia, purposely come by Sulaimania hoping to get back the loan, and for this purpose had visited the Shaikh ul Islam at Biara. He, wishing to evade his just debts, had repudiated it, and taken an attitude of enmity in order to scare me away; and now, finding that I was in the neighbourhood, doubtless hoped, by provoking a feeling hostile to me, to induce me to leave the district. The tables were now fairly turned, and Lady Adela, speaking for herself and the Pasha, signified their disapproval in forcible terms, and told the Shaikh ul Islam that unless he apologised to Hama there and then, they would eject him not only from their house, but from their lands. So with extremely bad grace he did so, and Hama came away covered with the glory that rests upon the vindicated and triumphant.

He was now the bearer of renewed invitations from Uthman Pasha, Lady Adela, and Tahir Beg, to stay with them at Halabja, and was full of schemes for extended trade under their protection. But he also bore bad news, for he had been escorting several loads of “run” and had lost one, worth the—to him—immense sum of forty tomans, or about seven pounds. The caravan he had accompanied had arrived at Sulaimania very early in the morning, and his attention being taken to a mule that had fallen, he had let his other loads go ahead, through a village outside the town.

Here someone had taken advantage of the absence of a guardian quietly to lead a donkey and his load into a courtyard, and the caravan passed on, the absence of the animal not being discovered till they got into Sulaimania. Hama had spent a morning raising witnesses to the theft, a quite possible thing, although no one could possibly have seen it, and having fixed the crime upon certain villagers in collusion with a rival dealer in “run,” he was going to find the police and have an enquiry held. It did not appear to me of much use to do anything, for I knew the matter must go to the police commissaire, and I knew also that he would take such steps in the affair as would fulfil two aims: one, that I should not receive my goods again; the other, that he should get out of this that emolument which he had hoped to gain by his prosecution of the passport scheme. However, the owner of the donkey would do his best to assist Hama, if the stuff were to be found, of which I was doubtful, for it was a thousand to one by now that it had been disposed of in jars and pots, and the skins destroyed. So I let Hama do what he could. Matti and Habib were much perturbed, swearing that the whole affair was arranged out of revenge by the police commissaire, and urging me to represent the matter to the temporary mutasarrif or governor, a certain colonel who was replacing the senior while he was at Chemchemal waiting to condemn the Hamavands—when caught.

Old Mustafa Beg, too, who had never ceased his morning calls, also came and insisted on being allowed to go and see the police commissaire himself and urge him to move in the matter. The old man always had a great sense of his own importance, and could not see what was so obvious, that he had been shelved, stowed away into this remote corner of the Turkish Empire to be allowed to wear out and give out gradually. He had received a fresh appointment in the last few days, which was equally a sinecure with the former one, for he could not get to the place, and had he done so the Kurds would have ejected him.

He was very keen for me to accept the invitation of the Mudir of the Military School to a great rejoicing to be held by the Turkish part of the population in honour of the anniversary of popular government in Turkey, and he showed me copies of telegrams received by various officials. There were orders for no less than one hundred and twenty guns to be fired; five hundred liras from the revenue were to be expended on a feast and upon decorations. All loyal subjects were called upon to place lamps upon their roofs at night, and flags over their doors by day.

The bazaar was to be closed, and a band was to play from morning till night, when the fireworks were to be let off in the big open space in front of the Serai. The band played, I remember, by fits and starts; but it was somewhat defective, for the bandmaster, whose pay was irregular and small, had pawned several of the brass instruments. Some ten guns were fired, the Tabur Aghassi, who was temporarily responsible for the affair, having abstracted the full amount of gunpowder from the armoury and sold the bulk to the gunmakers of the town. So the affair was a little ineffective, particularly as the Kurds refused to close the bazaars or decorate.

Mustafa Beg, however, did not foresee this, and imagined it was going to be a very fine affair, and his disgust afterwards was as loudly expressed as his praise before.

A night or two after this we were awakened, as we were nearly every night, by shots, but this time they were very close, and an uproar accompanied them. Two or three dark figures could be discerned running along the roof of the bazaar, and they ran the gauntlet of all the fire of the surrounding population, that was sleeping on the roofs with its guns beside it. Like all these affairs, however, it died down without anyone being the wiser, and we slept again. In the dusk of early morning I heard a voice calling from the street, “Agha Ghulam Husain!” and looking over the roof edge saw Matti, who had run from the caravanserai, and who was still doing up his waistbelt.

“Come quickly!” he said.

Snatching up my abba, I ran downstairs and joined him in the street. He was very agitated, and in reply to my questions could only gasp out “Khan-i-Ghafur Agha”—the Ghafur Agha caravanserai—towards which we were proceeding almost at a run.

Round the door a little crowd had gathered, and at the far side, near the room I had once stayed in, next door to Mustafa Beg, a knot, among whom I recognised the municipal and regimental surgeon, a little Greek. As I approached they beckoned, and I ran forward to see what they surrounded.

Lying where he had fallen was old Mustafa Beg, his face, always white, now a dreadful colour in the dusk of dawn, contrasting with the orgy of red his body displayed. A knife had entered the pit of his stomach, ripped it for nine inches, and allowed all that was inside to emerge. He lay in a pool of blood into which the bystanders stepped, and which made a little morass around him. He was conscious, but too feeble to do aught except move his eyes and whisper. He had asked for me, and now I had come, and leaned over, ear to his mouth, he whispered to me to undo his belt.

This I asked the surgeon to do, and as gently as he could he removed it. This was not all, for the old man had a little to say, which he could only do gradually. I caught the words as they came from his lips:

“Geundir Tarabulusda, har- ... bir shai ... var. Allah! Allah! oghlu ... oghlu ... san insanidin ... baqi ... haivanlar. Tav ... akkul ... ullah, Allah, Al ...”

His life passed, his last breath calling God.

“Send to Tripoli all that there is,” he had said. “God, God ... son! ... son! ... thou wert human ... the rest ... savages ... I resign myself to God ... God...!”

Matti, who stood a little distance away, was gulping and weeping, for he had a soft and true heart, and the little Greek snivelled as he began to prepare the body for removal. I sat a space away off and wept, for I had loved the old man. Only the Kurds stood around unmoved: they had seen worse than this, and might do or suffer it any day.

The surgeon, who was a capable little man, had already ordered a coffin, and this, hastily prepared, now arrived, and we left the caravanserai to the washers of the dead, who had arrived. We should return when the work was done. Because there is nowhere else to wait, we went to the coffee-house, and there heard how it happened.

Ghafur Agha, who owned the caravanserai, had been “Rais-i-Baladiyya,” or Mayor, till a short time ago, and while holding that post had fallen out with the shaikhs. Now he had been deprived of his office, and the Shaikh family lost no time in showing him their open hostility by raiding his caravanserai. There were in the place one or two business offices, of which that of Haji Fattah was a prey they hoped to seize. The robbers had also known that one of the Jewish merchants had brought to his office the day before a thousand tomans in silver, and they hoped to loot this. How they got into the caravanserai no one seemed to know, the doorkeeper waking to find his heavy portals open. The noise of their breaking into the office of Haji Fattah had awakened Mustafa Beg, who slept in an old palanquin on the opposite verandah, and impetuous as he always was, he commenced shouting loudly for Hasan the doorkeeper. The robbers came to see who it was, and found him sitting there, and warned him if he made any more noise they would kill him. So for a moment he was silent. But he emerged from his palanquin, apparently to see that the door of his cell was locked, and could not restrain his inclination to advise the outside world of what was going on. So he shouted loudly for the night-watchmen of the streets; but before a moment had passed, a Turkoman, one of the robbers, had clasped him round the neck, and with his long, curved dagger ripped him and left him where he fell.

This we learned from the people in the coffee-house, one of whom had heard the deposition which the doorkeeper had made to the police; and we learned with considerable satisfaction that the robbers had got away with nothing of value, for the Jew’s money had been too well concealed, and Haji Fattah’s valuables were in a heavy iron box; and as the night-watchmen appeared soon after the murder of Mustafa Beg and roused the town by firing, they had been forced to climb to the roof and escape that way. The men were recognised by the doorkeeper, who had told their names to the police. This had been kept quiet, but it was known that they were shaikhs’ people, so when one arrived and told us that the police commissaire effendi was examining the roofs for footmarks, a smile of derision went round, for the roofs were almost as hard as stone, and no footmark could possibly leave a trace, and if it could, would have been obliterated by those of the people who had already passed and repassed the course of escape, for in Sulaimania the women use the roofs as a thoroughfare.

As no one came to inform us of the readiness of the body, we went to Matti’s office there to wait. Matti was much affected by the sad event, and seemed to have no inclination for business that morning, and as the talk was bound to turn upon the ways and means of getting out of Sulaimania, we once more got to the subject of my leaving, and we arranged that if it were possible I should do so as soon as any opportunity offered, by caravan to Keui, whence I could get to Altun Keupri, or by one of the Shuan donkey-owners, who struck away from Sulaimania and reached Kirkuk by a long detour through their own country.

And in that way, things being thus settled, it came about that Matti brought himself to the point of asking a question I suppose he must have wanted to put many a time.

“Now, as you are soon going to leave us,” he said, “I want to put a question to you, at which, if you do not approve, you must not be offended, and will not answer. It is some time now since you first came here, and we have come to know one another pretty well, and I have done my best to help you. But I have seen one thing, and that is, that you have never done business before in Kurdistan, and that even had you, you are not sufficiently interested in the getting of money to succeed. You do not seem to care whether your speculations render you a profit or not, and your conversation, unlike that of a merchant, is never of money, but of such subjects as those talk of who are at no need to study business. You seem at more pains to cultivate a knowledge of Kurdish and Kurdistan than of its business, and you put yourself at more pains to buy a book than to do anything else. Habib, too, has noticed this, and we have often wondered the reason for a Persian, and a Persian of Shiraz at that, coming here at all; for though there were Persians in the old days here, they were of Hamadan, and a Shirazi has never been seen before. Still, you never volunteered any information, and I have not ventured to put any questions, for fear of offending. I must say that it is this very characteristic, this neglect of business for which you are ostensibly here, that has caused the police to notice you, and had you not won your way out of their clutches, Habib and myself would have suffered severely, for they lose no opportunity of bleeding one, and we might have been put under suspicion and blackmailed unmercifully.”

“The only reply to frankness,” I said, “is frankness itself, and I will tell what may possibly surprise you, and which will not, I hope, lead you to consider me an impostor. You, like all the rest, have been deceived into thinking me what I originally represented myself to be, and I have a satisfaction in feeling that while I shall leave the others still under the delusion, I shall have been able to pay you part of the debt of gratitude I owe you by putting you alone in possession of the truth.