Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_.
TO MESOPOTAMIA AND KURDISTAN
IN DISGUISE
[Illustration: A JAF CHIEF, S. KURDISTAN.
[_Frontispiece._
]
TO MESOPOTAMIA AND
KURDISTAN IN DISGUISE
WITH HISTORICAL NOTICES OF THE
KURDISH TRIBES AND THE CHALDEANS
OF KURDISTAN
BY E. B. SOANE
[Illustration]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
PREFATORY NOTE
The following chapters are a plain narrative of a journey across
Mesopotamia and in Southern Kurdistan, made up from a journal kept
throughout the voyage from Constantinople to Bagdad through those
countries.
I think I may fairly claim that I have given here a description of a
great deal so far undescribed, also a view of places, already known,
from another standpoint.
Several of the situations have made it necessary to mention the fact of
a knowledge of Persian, extensive enough to enable the writer to pass
among Persians as one of themselves. Lest this appear a needless and
offensive boast, I would say that the incidents demand its mention, and
it is explained in the course of the narrative.
In the historical portions of the book, in so far as more modern
history is concerned, I have been enabled to give some entirely new
matter, for that on Kurdish history was supplied me in letters received
from Shah Ali of Aoraman, Shaikh Reza of Kirkuk, Tahir Beg Jaf, Majid
Beg Jaf, Muhammad Ali Beg Jaf, while a great part was communicated
during conversations at Halabja and Sulaimania. This information, then,
I think is unique. As to the chapter on Chaldean history, I am deeply
indebted to M. Badria, Rais-i-Millat of Mousil, also to his brother
Habib Badria, who, having access to old histories in Mousil, were
generous enough to allow me the benefit of their information.
There is, I am afraid, an overwhelming use of the first personal
pronoun, which I trust may be forgiven, for without it the story would
not be a personal one.
The tone of the narrative may betoken, perhaps, a partiality to the
Kurds; and I must admit, that having met from them more genuine
kindness--unclaimed--than from any other collection of strangers met
elsewhere, I owe them a large debt of gratitude, the least return
for which is to throw some light upon a national character hitherto
represented as being but an epitome of all that is savage, treacherous,
and inhuman.
E. B. S.
MOHAMMERAH.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I.--IN STAMBOUL 1
II.--FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO HIERAPOLIS 16
III.--FROM THE EUPHRATES TO THE TIGRIS, EDESSA (URFA), AND AMID
(DIARBEKR) 34
IV.--DOWN THE TIGRIS TO MOSUL 60
V.--MOSUL, THE CITIES OF THE ASSYRIANS, THE YAZIDIS 89
VI.--THE ZAB RIVERS, ANCIENT ASSYRIA AND ADIABENE, ARBELA,
KIRKUK 106
VII.--CHALDEANS 140
VIII.--BY THE HAMAVANDS TO SULAIMANIA 163
IX.--SULAIMANIA 184
X.--SHAHR-I-ZUR 210
XI.--SHAHR-I-ZUR AND HALABJA 248
XII.--LIFE IN SULAIMANIA 273
XIII.--LIFE IN SULAIMANIA (_continued_) 294
XIV.--TO KIRKUK 325
XV.--TO BAGDAD 351
XVI.--OF KURDS AND THEIR COUNTRY 367
APPENDIX--KURDISH TRIBES 405
BIBLIOGRAPHY 409
INDEX 411
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A JAF CHIEF, S. KURDISTAN _Frontispiece_
_To face p._
BAB-UL-TOP AND AUCHON MARKET, MOSUL 92
ON THE PERSIAN FRONTIER, S. KURDISTAN 160
AORAHAN 184
THE KURDISH FRONTIER MOUNTAINS 336
ENCAMPMENT OF JAF KURDS IN SHAHR-I-ZUR 380
TO MESOPOTAMIA AND
KURDISTAN IN DISGUISE
CHAPTER I
IN STAMBOUL
When I descended from the train one dismal morning in Constantinople,
in a bleak terminus just like a hundred others of its kind all over
the Continent, it was with the intention of staying in the Ottoman
capital for some time. A long residence in the Middle East had rendered
me susceptible to the magnetism it certainly exerts, and at the same
time had given me a very thorough appreciation of the comforts and
conveniences of the Occident. As I was quite ignorant of the western
parts of the Turkish Empire, and entertained the same ideas regarding
them as I suppose do most people at home, it seemed that Constantinople
must furnish a delectable resting-place, a point from which to look out
upon East and West with equal facility, choosing from each the features
necessary to a pleasant life that should be within reach of books and
libraries, and afford equally a way of escape among Oriental people and
surroundings, without necessitating a long journey and longer bill.
Unfortunately I knew neither Constantinople nor its winter climate, nor
its inhabitants. I had never had dealings with Turks, and had left out
of my calculations the Greeks, who make up thirty-five per cent. of the
population of this capital, once theirs by right of sovereignty, and
still almost theirs in all that concerns the world of commerce.
As a matter of fact, the sum total of my knowledge at the moment
I arrived was that Constantinople consisted of three quarters or
districts, Pera, Galata, and Stamboul, and possessed an hotel called
the Pera Palace, the expenses at which were far too grand for my
cottage style of purse.
By some person of doubtful nationality, I had been advised to go to a
French pension in Galata, which I was assured was cheap, clean, and
comfortable. As French pensions in other parts of the world may be,
and often are, all these three, the scheme seemed an excellent one; so
having escaped from a weary and bored Customs official at the station,
I piled my belongings upon a victoria, and we started to clatter over
the knobs of stone, and through the mud-pits that are the roads of
Constantinople. Through mean streets we rolled and banged our way
where horse trams clanked and crawled, between rows of shops whose
wares were just those of the cheap streets of any continental city,
to the floating bridge over the water called the Golden Horn, a most
perfect misnomer in December, suggesting the crowning sarcasm of some
disappointed tourist.
At the approach to this curious bridge, we were halted amid a dense
crowd of foot-passengers in the everlasting fez--sprinkled with bowler
hats and the headgear of every European nation--and made to pay
five piastres (10d.) for the right to pass. In order to prevent any
passenger evading the toll, a row of Turkish officials stood across the
road, clad in a conspicuous enough uniform--a white smock.
The Golden Horn was of a very ordinary mud colour, and below the
bridge, prosaic enough with its crowd of steamers and the busy
ferry-boats that ply up and down the Bosphorus and to the Asiatic
shore. The wharfs were lined with unbeautiful Customs, port, and
shipping offices, backed on the rising ground by the indescribably
hideous imitation French and Viennese architecture of Galata and Pera.
Tall barracks with rows and rows of filthy windows looked out upon the
prospect, and at their _vis à vis_ in Stamboul across the water, and,
crowning the mountain of wall and window formed by the successive
tiers of houses up the hill-side, rose the Tower of Galata, a circular
erection topped by a Turkish flag.
[Sidenote: A Mixed Crowd]
The roadway of the bridge being laid with large baulks of timber placed
transversely, no two of which ever arrive at a common level, prevents
rapid travelling even were the road clear of foot-passengers, who use
it in preference to the footpaths. The Galata end plunges into a street
absolutely packed with human beings, carts and carriages, where all
the money-changers of Galata--Constantinople’s business town--seem
to have congregated. A turn to the right leads to more trams, and a
long and weary cobbled street of shops large and small, along whose
pavements saunter the deck-hands of steamers hailing from every
European and Levantine port. Greeks of course are in the majority, many
in their national costume of blue tights, with a huge and pendulous
posterior, coloured shirt and little zouave jacket, and a hat of
the “pork-pie” order. Armenians, too, abound, and Levantines of all
kinds. Italians, in this Italian quarter of Galata, are everywhere,
and the language of the streets is anything except Turkish. Here and
there an incongruous group of fierce and savage fellows, with packs
of stuffed leather upon their backs--the Constantinopolitan edition
of “the Porter’s knot”--shout and joke in a tongue understood of none
even in this cosmopolitan city. They are Kurds, the strongest, most
manly of the population, and the most despised, probably for those very
qualities--in this town of sharping and guile.
Leaving this street and crawling up some very steep inclines lined by
tenement houses, the carriage reached a long road running along the
side of the hill. I suppose it should be called a street, for want of
a better, or worse, name; but as we associate the word with another
order of thing, it is well to explain that this, an important enough
artery of Galata traffic, was--and doubtless still is--a wide alley of
cobble paving, with huge holes at frequent and irregular intervals. In
the absence of underground drainage, the paving sloped to the middle,
and after filling the holes, the excess liquid filth flowed downhill.
The solid variety, however, to which every resident contributed with
assiduity, lay in heaps and figures about the street, proclaiming
in the language of putrescence the quality of the inhabitants. In
describing this main street of the Italian quarter,[1] I have described
most of Constantinople, excepting only a few excellent streets on the
Bosphorus side of Pera, where the wealthy foreigners live.
At the door of a kind of restaurant I was deposited, and no sooner
had the carriage stopped than an ancient woman opened the door and
welcomed me in fluent Italian. As my knowledge of that language is
limited, she called loudly for “Marie,” a shrewd and kindly woman
of about thirty, who appeared from a sort of cellar from behind the
eating-room, and in French informed me that she had a room, told me the
very reasonable terms, and asked for a deposit; and very soon I found
myself installed in an uncarpeted apartment furnished with an iron
stove, a bed, a washhand-stand, and a small table. This was the best
room. A powerful and eloquent odour pervaded the house, telling of the
thoroughly Italian nature of the cooking, and hinting at the existence
of innumerable cesspools on the premises. I found afterwards that there
were five latrines in the house.
It needed but a dinner in the eating-room to complete the tale of
excellence of this exceptional pension, where one met Armenians
and Levantines performing the usual skilful feats with knives and
awkward morsels, regarding the fork as an instrument fit only for the
inexperienced and timorous.
Next morning I climbed by devious alleys, and through lakes and
torrents of filth to Pera, and spent hours trying to find better
accommodation at a moderate price; but after being shown the loathsome
dens of various Armenians and Greeks, and retiring with the best grace
possible before the astonishing charges of every clean and relatively
wholesome place, I was fortunate enough to meet a Russian, a tenant of
an “appartement”--the Constantinopolitan flat--who wished to find an
occupier during a three months’ visit to Moscow.
[Sidenote: MY LIFE IN PERA]
To my great delight the “appartement”--in a new building close to the
Pera Palace Hotel, in one of the best parts of Constantinople--was
clean and well-furnished, and we closed, with as much satisfaction on
his side, I hope, as on mine. At any rate, he insisted upon sealing
the arrangement with innumerable “aperitifs,” followed by vodkas and
liqueurs at various _brasseries_ about Pera, and having become friendly
with a resplendent lady of Roumania, he bade me farewell and departed
with his new acquaintance.
While in Constantinople I never regretted the arrangement, for the
place was comfortable and convenient, and being in the midst of Pera,
which is nothing but a semi-French town with no more evidence of Turks
about it than a few porters and cabmen in fez, and drunken police,
I began to forget what I had come for, namely, to get in touch with
the Oriental side of the city. As a matter of fact, one made so many
curious and interesting acquaintances among the French, Armenian,
Roumanian, Russian, Balkan, and other elements, that one’s time seemed
fully absorbed with them. I quite forgot to commence studying the
Turkish language, and acquired a fine proficiency in French, and picked
up a little Greek, a language as useful in Constantinople as Turkish.
After some time, however, when the execrable weather permitted, I began
to make excursions to Stamboul, and avoiding all guide-books, found out
the show-places myself, and many other interesting corners, among which
I counted the shops of the Persian Turks in the Great Bazaar, where I
always was sure of a warm welcome, simply because I affected a liking
for their Persia, and hoped with them--perhaps against hope--for her
regeneration and independence.
In the Great Bazaar, too, was just a touch of that East in which I had
lived, and was to see once more, though the effect was so often spoiled
by the interpreter of Mr T. Cook and his train of amiable creatures,
seeking the “secret of the mysterious East” in the shops of Greeks.
There, donning a fez, I would stroll, my headgear saving me from the
disagreeable attentions of the Greek shopkeepers, the most pertinacious
of their calling in the city. For a long time among the natives of
Persia in the bazaar I could find none but Tabrizi. Persian Turks often
enough know little Persian; but at last I found a native of Shiraz,
much to my delight, for a residence of two years among the Shirazi has
always been a pleasant memory, and this particular Shirazi, too, seemed
as glad as I was to meet a sincere admirer of the Jewel of Southern
Persia, “The Pearl among the Emeralds.”
At any rate, if kindness and hospitality be any criterion, my Shirazi
was certainly pleased to find a kindred spirit.
Great amusement was caused among my friends of Persia by a
passage-at-arms I had with the Persian Consul. I had heard that an
old acquaintance was second secretary at the Consulate, and one day
found my way by the steep and crooked alleys of Stamboul to the
dirty red-painted building that flies the Persian flag. Entering the
courtyard, I was accosted by the doorkeeper in Turkish, and as at that
time I had considerable difficulty in understanding that language, I
addressed him in Persian. This was more than he had expected from a
stray European, and as his knowledge of Persian was as feeble as mine
of Turkish, he passed me on to a suave little “mirza” or clerk, a
Teherani.
I asked after my friend Mirza Hasan Khan, and was told that he had
left for Persia some time ago, so I turned to leave the place. I had
hardly reached the gate, however, than the little man came running
after, and in polite Persian asked me to “bring my excellence” to the
Consul-General, who desired to see me.
Following him upstairs and through a group of waiting peasants of
Azarbaijan, I was introduced into a large room well carpeted with
Persian rugs, where sat at a writing-table the Consul-General, a
middle-aged Persian gentleman. Beside him upon a couch was his first
secretary, a smiling little man from Tabriz.
I was at a loss to know why he wanted to see me, and could only
suppose that he wished to know who I was and what was my business with
Mirza Hasan Khan. Entering, I saluted him in the Persian fashion, whose
etiquette demands that the entrant shall first salute the occupants
of a room. Receiving the usual reply, I accepted his invitation to be
seated, and waited for him to speak, again following Persian custom,
which forbids the less important of two men to open conversation.
[Sidenote: PERSIAN CONSUL-GENERAL]
He began by asking if I had been long in Constantinople, whether I
intended to stay, how I liked it, and so on, and having exhausted his
preliminary questions a pause occurred, during which the two Persians
regarded me in a steadfast and interested manner, which I was at a loss
to account for, as they are usually far too well-mannered to embarrass
a visitor in any way.
After a rather awkward minute thus, the Consul, in an abrupt and
official manner, exclaimed--
“Why this disguise? wherefore these lies? the truth were better; tell
me your native town.”
For a moment astonishment held me; this kind of conversation is
possible from a Turk, but from a Persian! To say nothing of being quite
at a loss to account for this extraordinary change of manner, I could
not at all fathom the reason for such inquiries politely or impolitely
made. In my innocence I had imagined myself paying a mere complimentary
call, and found myself addressed as a defaulter of some kind, and so
waited for further enlightenment.
“Lies?” I asked.
“Yes, lies; it is evident to me that you are a Shirazi, your tongue
betrays you, and I wish to know what you have done to render expedient
this kind of appearance, and this weak story of being an Englishman.”
It occurred to me suddenly that here was the representative of Muhammad
Ali Shah who had, six months before, by a coup, replaced himself upon
the throne of absolute power, dissolving in the most drastic way the
Chamber of Representatives, many of whose supporters had fled to Europe
and were travelling about in European dress. Evidently I was being
mistaken for one of these.
In this dilemma I bethought myself of my passport, and fortunately
discovered it, together with a number of letters, including one from
the Persian Ambassador addressed to “Mūsīū Soon,” and after some
difficulty succeeded in proving my identity.
The Consul’s cordiality returned in a moment. With the utmost
effusiveness he invited me to a large armchair, produced cigarettes,
and called for tea. The visit from that moment took the form of usual
ceremonial call upon a Persian. As I took my leave, remarking that I
hoped he would not seek to have me arrested as a revolutionist, he
said, thinking the whole affair a good joke:
“Well, you shouldn’t speak Persian so fluently; you see your countrymen
are usually so backward in acquiring our language, that when one
appears talking as we do, can you expect us to believe it?”
I saw him several times afterwards, and he always met me with the air
of a man who shares some great and confidential jest with one.
About this time, December 1908, the Turkish Parliament was inaugurated,
and amid the discord of Turkish bands and through avenues of flags and
festoons, the procession of deputies and foreign representatives fought
its way to the House at Stamboul, to sit for a few months and prove its
futility.
The attitude of the Persians, who had been the first to experience
the pains and penalties of popular representation, was interesting.
It was, of course, popularly supposed that the Persian element in
Constantinople and Smyrna--some ten thousand people--displayed
heartwhole enthusiasm for the Turkish “Mejliss,” and if the addresses
and congratulations of the Persian political clubs were to have been
believed, this supposition would have been true. Persians, however, are
always alive to the value of expediency, and obviously clubs which,
existing only by the tolerance of the Turks, propagated doctrines only
to be regarded as heterodox by the Persian Ambassador and consuls,
must display conspicuously their sympathy with any popular Ottoman
movement.
[Sidenote: PERSIAN AND TURK]
In the privacy of their own houses, the sarcasm and deprecation
of foreigners so near the tip of the Persian tongue found ready
articulation.
As Shi’a, these refugees, to put it but mildly, lack sympathy with any
movement of the Sunni Turks, and having seen repeated in the election
and the arrangement of the Turkish “Mejliss” several of the errors
which contributed to the discord and downfall of the first Persian
Parliament, were disposed to look on with supercilious superiority at
the efforts of a nation which they ever regarded as rather barbarian.
Besides which, bad as Persia was under the old regime, the lot of the
peasant and the humbler town-dweller was never so bad as was that of
the equivalent classes in Turkey; and if there are degrees in the
perfection of corruption arrived at by the administrative powers of
both empires, there are few experienced Turks and Persians who will not
give the palm for completeness in this art to Turkey, at any rate in
her Asiatic provinces.
So the Persians, looking on, seeing all the difficulties to be
surmounted, difficulties complicated by the turbulent and treacherous
temperament of Greek and Armenian, waited to see an eventful crisis,
and when it came as they had predicted, the triumphant attitude of “I
told you so,” for which they had prepared themselves, was intensified
by the feeling of having also scored off an old enemy.
The only immediate outcome of the Parliament’s inauguration, so far
as it affected the dweller in the city, was to provide a number of
newspapers with columns filled with reports of speeches--no whit more
or less puerile than those provided by our Parliament for the London
papers--and a large increase in drunkenness, particularly among the
police. The provinces responded with their own interpretation of
“Hurriat” by lawlessness of every description, which increased to
a point almost unknown in Turkish history, at least in the Asiatic
provinces, with which alone this book is concerned.
After all, it was a faithful enough repetition of Persia in early
1907, when the dying Muzaffar ud Din Shah granted the first Persian
Constitution. In that unfortunate country the ignorant mass looked to
the Majlis to produce, within a few days, a panacea for the ills that
had grown up and become an integral part of the nation during centuries
of misrule, and the failure of the people’s representatives even to
adjust minor matters resulted in the outbursts all over the country
which eventually, fanned by Muhammad Ali Shah, enabled him to regain
his absolute power for a time.
In the Turkish Empire practically exactly the same thing happened.
Needless to say, a very large section of the people was vitally
interested in the existence of Sultan Abdul Hamid as a despot,
particularly those powerful priests and place-holders who amassed
wealth by means possible only when the Sultan was there to consent,
and participate. The victims of this large class expected that with
the proclamation of “Hurriat” (“freedom”) these tyrants would retire
swiftly into oblivion, but as time went on and the bloodsuckers (and
bloodspillers too) continued their operations with increased vigour,
the people, emboldened by the new political doctrines, rose in every
direction. Tribes of Arabs and Kurds, who had regarded the new regime
as a partial revival of their importance and a return--in a degree--to
some of their ancient independence, finding levies upon them of taxes
and recruits undiminished, rebelled against the Majlis and Sultan
alike--a situation resulting which, at the time of writing,[2] bids
fair to give the Turks and their army as much as they can do for some
time to come.
It is fair to add that many of these outbursts are said to have been
aggravated secretly by Sultan Abdul Hamid, who had submitted with a
meekness never seen in the Persian monarch to the drastic changes his
people effected. At any rate, his end was the same as that of Muhammad
Ali Shah, for after a few months both find themselves deposed and in
retirement.
In any case, the politics of Constantinople are too well known to need
ventilation here, so we may as well return to our original subject of
Persians.
[Sidenote: SHAIKH UL ISLAM]
I learned soon after my arrival in Constantinople that Kurds abounded,
but all of the Kermānjī or Zaza tribes of Northern Turkish Kurdistan,
and my hopes of finding a Kurd of Southern Persian Kurdistan seemed as
if they would certainly end in disappointment. My reason for wanting to
meet one of these people was to complete certain studies to which I had
already devoted a year, in Kermanshah of Western Persia.
By chance, however, one of my Persian friends informed me one day that
a priest had recently arrived from Sina of Persian Kurdistan; but
beyond telling me his title, Shaikh ul Islām, and indicating vaguely
where he imagined him to be living, in one of the curious caravanserais
of Stamboul, he could tell me nothing; and as the Shaikh in question
was a fanatical Sunni, I naturally could not expect my Shi’a friend to
interest himself more deeply.
I was resolved to find him, however, and so spent some days tramping
up and down the terrible alleys and streets of Stamboul, inquiring at
every Muhammadan hotel and doing the round of all the caravanserais
I could find, asking for the Shaikh ul Islām of Sina, a question
that evoked considerable merriment among most of the Turks to whom I
succeeded in communicating my meaning in the few Turkish words I knew.
As is always the case in Turkey, inquisitiveness was the greatest
impediment and nuisance. Anyone of whom I asked would put a string
of questions as to why and wherefore, and who and whence, which my
ignorance fortunately prevented my answering.
At last, however, by dint of getting a list of caravanserais, and
taking them one by one, I found the Shaikh’s habitation. This
particular serai was like most in Constantinople, a two-storeyed
building of tiny, windowless rooms round a courtyard, amid which a
small house was erected, equally containing separate cells. The first
floor had a gallery running round it upon which the rooms opened, and
I found my man in a corner cell, or rather found where he was when
at home. All this time the weather was indescribably awful, daily
blizzards, rainstorms and blizzards again, freezing hurricanes from
the plains and uplands to the north and west; and I wondered how this
native of sunny Persia, a stranger to these terrible days of darkness,
could live, and what is more, raise the courage to go forth into the
mire and filth of Constantinople streets.
His servant I saw, a Kurd of Sina, who spoke a little Persian, and who
was so astounded at hearing a European speak Kurdish that he quite lost
his tongue. However, we made an appointment, and two days after saw me
once more facing a blinding snowstorm to shuffle for half an hour from
Pera through Galata across the Golden Horn, now a funnel where all the
winds of all the ice on earth seemed to blow into Stamboul.
Crawling over the heaps of snow in the caravanserai courtyard, where
not a soul was visible, I ascended the rickety staircase and knocked
at the low door at the gallery end. Some one shouted in Persian “Kī a”
(“Who is it?”), and getting a reply in the same language, told me to
walk in--which I did.
A small skylight sufficiently illuminated the place, and at once its
arrangements stamped the occupants as natives of Persia. Opposite me,
a tin road-samovar sang behind a row of little tea-glasses. Upon the
samovar head sat a squat little teapot, and the Kurdish servant was
filling a Persian hubble-bubble beside a brazier. Three or four Persian
wooden boxes ornamented with brass-headed nails were by the walls, and
in a corner were the necessaries of the road, earthen water-pots, tin
“af tābeh”--a kind of jug for ablutions--tin wash-basin, and other
articles with which every traveller in Persia is familiar. Commencing
half-way and covering the floor to the farther end was a gilīm, a kind
of carpet, woven in Persian Kurdistan, and seated facing one another,
their legs concealed under a quilt apparently supported upon a stool,
were two men. Him I sought was a black-browed and bearded priest, an
individual surly looking enough to scare away any uninvited visitor.
His companion was but an older edition of himself. Their heads were
covered by small white turbans, but whether they had changed their
native dress for that of Constantinople I could not see, as they both
wore heavy overcoats.
[Sidenote: A CURIOUS INTERVIEW]
The stool under the quilt covered in its turn a brazier of charcoal,
and formed the “kursi,” which is the Kurdish method of keeping oneself
warm. Obviously the heat, which is considerable, is confined to the
space under the quilt and does not escape into the room, which in this
case was bitterly cold.
The Shaikh had been informed of my coming, and welcomed me in Persian,
with just enough Kurdish accent to be perceptible; and I squeezed my
legs under the quilt, which he pulled up to our chins, and spent a
few minutes exchanging compliments with him and the older man. The
situation might have struck an outsider unused to a “kursi” as absurd:
the spectacle of three men apparently sitting up in a kind of a huge
bed, for the quilt was an ordinary bed-quilt, and pillows supported our
backs--nodding gravely over the top of the bed-clothes at one another.
They were much depressed by the weather, but on my telling them that
I had been to their Kurdistan and knew their country and language
they revived somewhat, and with tea and cigarettes became jovial and
communicative, supplying me with a great deal of the information upon
tribes, that I had come to seek, but had not hoped to acquire in the
first interview.
However, the climate of Constantinople had done sufficient to disgust
them with the place, and the Shaikh announced his intention of leaving
by the first steamer for Beyrouth, and returning to a place called
Halabja, on the Persio-Turkish frontier, in the Southern Kurdish
country. Not unnaturally I was curious to know, first, the reason for
his leaving Kurdistan; and second, why he did not propose to return
there, stopping short on the frontier at the nearest spot. Tentatively
I put a question or two, but he evidently had a suspicion of all
strangers, and I had to be content with my own theories, which could
evolve nothing more probable than classing him as a political refugee;
at any rate, he seemed pretty miserable in these strange and squalid
surroundings, and, bearing in his language and manner the strong
reminiscence of Persian Kurdistan, seemed terribly out of place in this
town that aped Europe and all its meanest features.
In all, I had three interviews; he would not be induced to come over to
Pera, which he had heard of as a town full of European women and shops
“à la ferangi,” where he considered his priestly turban and flowing
garments very out of place. So each time I found him under the quilt
with his companion, much depressed, very silent, sighing heavily, and
talking of nothing but places and people he had left behind in his
native mountains.
My acquaintance with him, though little enough, was the cause of
ripening an idea which ever since I had arrived in, and disliked,
Constantinople, had gradually been springing up in my mind. Though no
Kurd, nor separated from kin and custom, yet as a former dweller in the
east of Persia, I yearned for the freedom of plain and mountain, the
slow march of the clanging caravan, the droning song of the shepherds
on the hills, the fresh clean air, and the burning sun. His talk was of
all this, and my thoughts of it too. His dialect and his rough Persian
recalled too vividly scenes of a year before. Irresistibly pictures
arose of the plain and hill of Kurdistan, the glorious sunsets over
plain and on snowy peak, and the more I gave way to these day-dreams,
the more I let the rude accents linger in my ear, the stronger grew the
attraction of the road.
The Shaikh left and I heard no more of him, but I missed him and his
little room, a corner of Kurdistan in Constantinople, with occupants
whose home habits remained unassailed by all the temptations of the
city’s coffee-houses and comforts, and daily I could not help picturing
his progress across Syria, and gradually to the borders of Kurdistan,
the Tigris lowlands. I even hailed the day he should have got to the
first Kurdish town as notable, little dreaming that he had been robbed
and nearly killed before he got there--by Kurds.
[Sidenote: DISGUISED AS A NATIVE]
At last I made a compact with the weather: if it really cleared and
warmed by a certain date, I would stay; otherwise, permitting no other
consideration to hinder, I would resolutely book a passage to Beyrouth,
and find my way to Kurdistan.
Funds certainly were scarce; I could not afford to travel as a European
usually does, with servants, paying double for everything and occupying
the best quarters everywhere. If I went I must don a fez and pass as
a native of the East, must buy my own food, and do my own haggling,
must do all those things which no European could or would ever think
of doing. In Persia I had had experience of life in disguise as a
Persian, and this would be an easier task for I was a stranger among
strangers, and any difference in our ways and habits would be put down
to that fact. There was a certain attraction, too, in going unattended
by anyone, knowing practically no Turkish nor Arabic, across Syria and
down the Tigris to Kurdistan. Once there I should be more at home, for
I knew two or three dialects and Persian pretty perfectly, which would
enable me to pass as a Persian among the Kurds, and to hide ignorance
of that habit and custom which are the rule of life in the East. As
to Muhammadan observances, I had in Persia learned all that, and as a
Shi’a could say my prayers, and dispute the Qur’an with the best of
them.
So, all things considered, the scheme recommended itself. It was cheap,
I should see much new country, and many new tribes. I should learn many
more Kurdish dialects, and when I had finished should be in possession
of a truer knowledge of the people, their ways and nature, than a
European possibly could in ten years.
So I sat down and waited for the decision of the weather.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER I:
[1] The Rue Luledjie Hendek.
[2] Autumn 1909.