Nevertheless Shushan adhered to the name of "Shack," which she softened until it sounded like the French "Jacques." Evidently she thought the harsher sound uncouth, if not disrespectful.
"But don't you think we ought to ride on?" she resumed.
"Presently. In three or four hours we shall come to that queer little village with the black, egg-shaped mud huts—Charmelik, that is the name. The people are Kourds, and will want to talk to us. What shall we do? You do not know Kourdish, any more than I."
"No; but I know Turkish. Some Kourdish tribes speak Turkish, and we can give them to understand we come from one of these. I will talk for us both," said Shushan, whose courage was rising to meet the exigencies of her life. Jack, as yet, knew only the few words of Turkish he could not fail to pick up in a town partly inhabited by Turks, like Biridjik.
"They will think that odd," he said, "unless I were deaf and dumb."
"Be deaf and dumb then," she answered, after a thoughtful pause. "You are going to Urfa, to be cured by a wise Frank hakim there; and I, your young brother, go with you, to be ears and tongue to you."
"A splendid notion!" Jack said. It was not the first time he had had occasion to admire the Armenian quickness of resource, and dexterity in eluding danger. These were nature's weapons of defence, developed by environment, and the survival of the fittest. Yet they had their own perils. Does the world recognise how hard—nay, how impossible—it is for oppressed and persecuted races to be absolutely truthful?
Just as they rode on, the glorious sun shot up with tropical splendour and tropical swiftness. It was late September now; the heat was still great, and the travellers were not sorry when at last they saw in the distance the black huts of Charmelik, the walls of the khan, and the minaret of the little mosque. Shushan, in spite of her fatigue, seemed to have changed places with Jack. She planned and exhorted; he listened to her meekly. For fighting, the Englishman comes to the front; for feigning, the Armenian. "Now, I pray of you, Yon Effendi—that is, Shack—remember, you are not to speak; and also, which is harder, you are not to hear—not if a pistol goes off close to your head. You may talk to me by signs, or on your fingers."
Jack gave his promise; and, as both their lives depended on it, he was likely to keep it. At first they thought the khan might be safer to stay in than the huts, but a caravan from Urfa had just stopped there, and both the open enclosure and the rooms round it (if rooms they may be called) were quite full. Moreover, the Kourds of the village came about them with welcomes and questions and offers of hospitality. So Jack gathered from their looks and gestures. He stood among them, gazing about him with as vacant an expression of face as he could manage to assume, only praying they might not be rough with Shushan, for such a set of wild-looking savages, as he thought, he had never seen before; although, of course, since coming to the country, he had seen many Kourds.
After a while Shushan touched him, and motioned to him to come with her. One of the Kourds led them to a hut; and, as it appeared by his looks and gestures, invited them to consider it their own mansion, with the same magnificent air with which a Spanish grandee might have said, "This is your own house, señor."