He had been informed of my arrival, and replied to my greeting in perfect Persian, without a trace of Kurdish accent, inviting me to a seat beside him. He asked a few questions, whence had I come, and where going, and did I speak French, answering to my affirmative with “Et moi aussi, je sais un peu,” a surprising utterance from a Kurdish chief who has never quitted his native hills.
As if this effort were too much for him, he subsided into silence, and thus we sat for a space, the quiet unbroken save for the service of coffee “à la turque,” which the servants handed round. Once he conferred a mark of his favour upon me by handing me a cigarette from his box, and lighting it for me himself.
Presently another Turkish official, arrived from Khaniqin en route for Sulaimania, came in, and being a loquacious fellow, insisted on carrying on a conversation, which was confined to short Turkish monosyllables on Tahir Beg’s part.
He cut the interview short by suddenly rising and retiring to a private room, whereupon we dispersed.
I had yet another call to make. When I had left Sulaimania I had purchased two bills for two hundred and fifty and one hundred and fifty krans (about eight pounds), upon a Jew of Halabja, and t had been recommended by my friend Matti, the Mosul Christian, to go to one Mansur, a native of Sina of Persian Kurdistan, and a Chaldean. This person was a petty merchant, and agent of a greater than himself in Sina, known as Haji Khanaka. As he was from the native place of Lady Adela, he had from the first installed himself in a lower room of her house, and for years had lived as her guest, paying no rent, owning no furniture, and buying no food, for her kitchen supplied him with his excellent meals. In return for this hospitality he performed certain small duties, as a correspondent to merchants and Chaldeans in Sina with whom Lady Adela had dealings, and procured for her any special stuffs or cloths she might require. He was indistinguishable from a Kurd of Sina, for he wore the short tunic, plaited Persian frock-coat, and a turban wound about a felt skull-cap, which is the costume of Ardalan.
He spoke Kurdish, too, absolutely perfectly, and knew Persian quite well. He had already received a letter from Matti regarding myself, and welcomed me to Halabja, putting himself entirely at my service. He lived in a dark lower room, furnished with a couple of carpets and some felts. Upon either side of the far end were the beds, that served their own purpose at night, and during the day were used as couches. They consisted of but a mattress upon the ground, and a roll, composed of pillow and coverlet. Between these beds, exactly at the head of the room, was a large Russian iron box, the mark of the merchant, and above it upon a mud shelf a little heap of devotional books in the Chaldean language. As I entered, Mansur was sitting before the iron box smoking a Persian water pipe, and he rose as I came in, advanced, and with ceremony bowed me to the bed which occupied the highest position, that is, the left-hand far corner of the room as one enters at the opposite end.
He lamented the unfortunate times that had fallen upon Turkish dominions, for he had suffered very considerably in pocket from robberies of his goods in transit from Sulaimania and Kirkuk.
He had also lent a certain amount of money to Uthman Pasha, and cursed the Turks, who, by keeping the Pasha in Sulaimania, prevented his collecting his personal revenues to pay his debts. In Halabja itself he had but little business, except in spring and winter, when the Kurds brought from the mountains the valuable skins he purchased and sent to Sina, whence his co-religionists take them to Nijni-Novgorod for the fair every summer. It was his habit to go home to Sina every year and stay there the summer; but this year, owing to the amount of debts with Lady Adela and the Pasha, he had been ordered by his employer to remain till some wheat had been harvested, or some tobacco sold, when he could press for payment.
HALABJA BAZAAR
After partaking of tea, he proposed that we should take a stroll in the bazaar and see the drawees of my two bills; so we set out, quitting the courtyard by a low, insignificant door which gave on to a cul-de-sac leading to a narrow and dirty street. This in turn became a kind of open square, one side of which was occupied by a row of booths, where the occupants were busy roasting “kebabs,” cutting up sheep, and purchasing fruit from peasants newly in from the gardens. This was the food bazaar of Halabja, and Mansur told me that but seven years before, there was but waste ground here, where now almost the centre of the little town lay.