Jack stammered in his eagerness to find the words he wanted. "What has that to do with it?" he got out at last. "What right have the Kourds to spoil your vines?"
"Don't you know, Yon Effendi, that if we dare to stop them doing it, or even to drive their sheep and goats out of our fields and vineyards, they think a great deal less of stabbing or shooting one of us than you would of killing a cat?"
"But then they would be hanged for it!" cried Jack. "Have you no—oh, what is the word for it?—have you no—police?" He said the word in English, and a rush of old, new thoughts and impressions came crowding into his brain.
"Police?"
"The men who keep order, and take people to prison."
"Do you mean the zaptiehs? They are worse than the Kourds. The Turk and the Kourd are the upper and the nether millstone, grinding us to powder. If one of us is fool enough to complain of a Kourd or a Turk, the Kamaikan—the governor, I mean—says he will enquire into the matter. And he does. He sends for the man who has complained, throws him into a dungeon, and keeps him there till he confesses all the wrong is on his own side; or perhaps until his people pay a sum of money. Or perhaps he may be never heard of again at all."
Avedis did not say this with fierce looks and indignant gestures, but in a calm, matter-of-fact way, as if such things were part of the everlasting order of nature, which has been from the beginning and will be until the end. Jack did not follow every word; but one thing he understood very clearly: they must all stand still and see their beautiful vines destroyed. There was no remedy—why? Because this was not England. England! Now he knew everything. He was an English boy, left alone here in this strange land. And his father—where was his father? "Where is my father?" he cried aloud in English.
"What is that you say?" asked Avedis.
Jack repeated his question in Armenian.
"Come and sit down under the tree," said Avedis.