Outside in the street, beneath my window, a decrepit Arab beggar, in a deep passionate voice, asks for alms for the love of Allah and Mahomet. It is often the first sound I hear in the morning. Later in the day the Arab children make their appearance in groups, begging and wailing piteously. Once the babes in their mothers' arms used to cry the whole day long, but the unfortunates are probably long since gone. The Arab population has been dying by the hundreds, and they look dreadfully shrunken and gaunt. A few escaped, but were shot by the Turks. They have had everything possible done for them.
It is the hour of the muezzin, the most peaceful of the day, for at that ancient call of prayer even the wailing and begging ceases. From the mosque near by, whose open doorway faces Mecca, I hear the high thrilling notes quivering and trembling with all the passion of the East, the high-pitched semi-tone cadences sailing afar out and cutting ever greater ripples on the bosom of the still night air like growing circles from a stone dropped into a placid pool. It is truly wonderful this immemorial custom of calling the Followers of Mahomet. The volume of sound echoing from the minaret is thrown by the muezzin further and further. With extraordinary power his voice rises and falls, describing circles, arcs, and strangely winding parabolas out of the still silences of evening. It is but an appeal. He calls the world to prayer. It is more potent than the appeal of bells. In the muezzin the Mussulman hears the voice of Allah.
Now the muezzin is finished, and everything is so very still. I wonder if they are praying for the relief—as hard as their fellow religionists in the rest of Turkey are praying for the fall—of Kut. The odds, I fear, are against us.
I must sleep! I cannot remain awake five minutes longer. God in His wisdom made sleep the great possession. For the first essential to man is a gift of humour, and the second is the capacity for sleep. Sleep and forgetfulness! How many warriors on this dreadful planet at this fearful hour would willingly drink of Lethe and wake up on their respective battlefields when the war is over?
Eheu! I see the dark forms asleep on the snows of Russia, in the trenches of France, on the mountains of Italy, on the decks swept by the night winds of the North Sea. Who of them would not wish it?
"Nox ruit, et fuscis tellurem amplectitur alis."
"Night descends and folds the earth in her dusky wings!"
April 14th.—Heavy firing began downstream just before the dawn. It continued till about 8 a.m.
The floods are spreading. A little rain fell during the night. Around Kut everything is extraordinarily quiet. I was very seedy during the night with violent pains and nausea, possibly the result of attempting to eat a little liver for dinner. I don't remember feeling worse. I took some opium pills at once, and Graoul came in early this morning with some hot water, which I drank. Have had two eggs sent from the hospital, and am ordered to eat nothing beside the yolk and a half cup of milk. About midday I felt quite bright again, and wrote some letters with one eye more or less closed. One's stomach these days has become an awful snob and simply won't look at anything. How fit I was until these wretched floods!
A report says that we must be fed by aeroplanes, but it seems that it will take three days in which to carry one day's provisions.
I imagine Punch will have something to say on this. We shall be represented as fielding for loaves and cakes and fishes and whisky bottles, Mellins' Food, and some of us charging towards the Tigris under fire from the opposite bank and endeavouring to recover our balance on the edge as we watch the priceless articles falling into the water.