RENT A HOUSE
The old lady, Baji Raihan, allowed us to look over the little place, and offered to rent three rooms, two below, and the unfinished one above, for the equivalent of seven shillings a month—not an exorbitant sum, as the house was near to all the bazaars and business caravanserais. She herself occupied the room under the finished upper chamber, and would continue to do so. We, therefore, finding it reasonable, decided upon the place and made our way to a coffee-house. This, like all the coffee-houses of Kurdistan, was an edifice of high arches or domes supported upon heavy pillars, ingress being effected anywhere. High benches were ranged around, and in a recess was the apparatus of the place, two large samovars, and tea-glasses, and saucers, which stood upon a wide shelf made of mud and brick. The floor was bricked, and a water-carrier, his skin over his shoulder, came in every two hours and sprinkled the ground to keep the place cool. Here we found a large number of merchants, Christian and Kurd, and I was introduced in the manner of Kurdistan, my name being announced to those who asked it, after they had greeted me with the “Marhabba” of these parts.
The talk was mostly of the punishment of the Hamavands (for which the Turks were supposed to be collecting an army at Chemchemal), of local politics, or of harvest prospects. Here, in the coffee-house, the news of the place is exchanged, prices of merchandise discussed and fixed, bargains made, sales and purchases effected. It was announced by Matti that I had fresh “run” from Juanru, and a little man, whom Matti informed me was a respectable grocer, came forward and made an appointment to come and see the stuff next morning. We sat for some time, and I acquired an idea of the difficulty of the intricate Sulaimanian dialect of Kurdish, one of the most peculiar of all.
We then dispersed to our respective houses, and I found Hama in the widow’s house making tea, which, as I did not require it, was handed round to the women. As the evening was close, I had my carpet put in the yard on the ground, and having eaten, sunset being meal-time in Sulaimania, I sat upon my bed-clothes smoking and chatting with the women, who had disposed their sleeping apparatus upon the floor or on the roof, to which they ascended by a rude ladder. Their conversation was of the shaikhs, but as they appeared nearly all to be related to the Shaikh family, they only deplored the recent murder of Shaikh Sa’id, and I was constrained to enter into a flow of pious expressions of regret. They also touched upon the question of marriage, but I hazarded the opinion that a Shi’a could not ask in marriage a Sunni woman without trouble occurring with the relations, and they were nonplussed, thinking of no other suggestion to make, than that I should turn Sunni, an action which, as a good Shi’a, I repudiated, and rising said my prayers, as well to finish the argument as to convince them of my sincerity.
Rest, however, was rudely interrupted by the sudden rise of the hot north-east wind, here called the “rashaba,” which blows from the hills with the force of a gale. This, coming suddenly, and across newly mown fields, smothered us with chaff and dust, which was followed by a sharp rain-shower which drove us to shelter, and we did not finally sleep till the sky was clear, about midnight.
CHAPTER XII
LIFE IN SULAIMANIA
Matti came in early next morning, and with porters we took away the goods and deposited them in the new house, where we found two or three buyers of my merchandise waiting. These chose the skins of “run” they desired, and having at last settled a price which gave me a profit of some twenty-five per cent., we repaired to the shop of one of them to have the goods weighed by a public weigher. When we arrived that functionary was not forthcoming, so I installed myself in the grocer’s shop, high up above the raisins, almonds, walnuts, and spices that he sold, and smoked cigarettes while he vended and attempted to carry on a conversation with me in Persian, of which he knew a little. It had often been a mystery to me how a retail grocer made his money; but now, being a wholesale dealer in an article he sold retail, I saw the game, which he was frank enough to display. His scales were not of the fairest, to start with, and when weighing, he would, when possible, leave in the pan the heavy wooden spoon with which he ladled out the grease. If a large amount were required there would be a haggle over the price, and the buyer probably got his purchase at a reasonable weight, but the small buyer who came for a few ounces was invariably defrauded, either by the calculation of the price, which he probably could not work out, or by the deficient amount given him. And so with three shahis worth of raisins, or the kran’s worth of almonds, which the grocer handed to the buyer in a long spoon which reached the remotest basin without necessitating his moving. In no shops in Kurdistan, except the drug and spice sellers, is anything wrapped up, and this habit makes a handkerchief the most essential part of a man’s gear. To buy in the bazaar one goes provided with at least three handkerchiefs, if the mixing of dates, meat, and fruit in one handkerchief is to be avoided.
Hama at last found a weighing man, who appeared with an immense steelyard supported upon a long pole, to carry which two porters had to be called, each with an end upon his shoulder. The weights were entered in a little book, and the names of the buyers, sellers, and material under them. We then made up the account, and having paid the weighing fee, half each, settled down to counting out twelve hundred krans, in two-kran pieces, a process that took half an hour, with the examination for bad and cracked coins. This done, we left, with expressions of esteem on both sides, the money wrapped in the ever-necessary handkerchief.
We banked it with Matti, who locked it with the rest of my money in his iron box, and then we sent for “kebab”—scraps of meat cooked over charcoal—and with these and bread, made what is called the “merchant’s lunch.” All the afternoon I sat outside the office making the acquaintance of the Kurdish merchants round about. One of these, a certain Hama Ali, spoke Persian extremely well, and was very proud of having been to Kashan in Persia, where he had unsuccessfully attempted to trade against a ring of Persian merchants; and while cursing their business astuteness, praised their nice manners and hospitality, and that to a Sunni, who is hated among the Persian Shi’a.
The evening meal was a frugal affair of boiled rice and meat, and a cucumber or two procured for me in the bazaar by the old dame of the house; and an hour after eating I turned in upon the stones of the courtyard, that being the coolest place, for the nights were stuffy.