When they had passed the outcrop of rock that forms the break, and the last man had entered Bazian, the hills above them suddenly rang with the shouts of the Hamavands, and from each side they raced down helter-skelter, their hill-ponies leaping cleverly down the boulder-strewn slopes. At a distance of fifty yards they opened fire, and the first to fall was a “yuzbashi.” The soldiers gathered in a bunch, and the non-combatants attempted to rush back through the gap, to find themselves confronted by three or four horsemen, who fell upon them and stripped them, leading away their loaded animals. The Turks were returning the fire, but, taken at a disadvantage, made no effect upon the quick-moving Hamavands, who wheeled around them. Yet they held out for a little, and attempted to push forward.
In point of numbers the Turks had the advantage, and their weapons were ten-shot Mausers as against Martini carbines, but their shooting must have been of the poorest, for they only succeeded in wounding one Hamavand. Several, too, tried to break away, and were immediately picked off. In a quarter of an hour the “binbashi” fell, shot through the chest, and twelve soldiers, too, were dead, and a score wounded. The remainder cast away their arms, seeing resistance futile, and the Kurds came upon them and stripped the caravan, relieving it of all its rifles and ammunition, carrying away or tearing off the soldiers’ uniforms, and looting the noncombatant passengers. There was an indescribable confusion; soldiers on foot and unarmed strove to escape on all sides, and horsemen with the shouts of a drover to his cattle rounded them up. Squads of Hamavands, driving before them mules of the defeated party, shouted at and encouraged their refractory and frightened captives. As is usual in these cases, everything was being done with the utmost speed, and the Hamavands, infuriated by the resistance they had met with, were more merciless than usual to those whom they stripped. The men they simply denuded, and scared the women with fierce gestures and display of long knives to make sure of their handing over anything they might have concealed.
One of the women who had been robbed told me that some of the Hamavands had brought their wives with them, putting them behind rocks while the fight proceeded, and calling them out afterwards to enquire into the dress of the female captives more intimately than a man could have done; for in these Muslim lands even among the wildest Kurds, a man will seldom offend a Musulman woman’s modesty, and the Hamavand is a singularly pious tribe, stopping even its raiding parties to pray in a body at the appointed times.
The men they left in little more than a shirt—and at last cleared off, taking with them the wife and daughter of one of the majors, whom they subsequently restored after having placed them in the care of the chief’s womenfolk for a time. The remains of the caravan, twos and threes of half-naked men, and weeping women, proceeded on foot, reaching Sulaimania next day, hungry and ashamed.
It was not unnatural that the possibility of such catastrophes, and their actual occurrence, did a great deal of damage to the Turkish name, and indeed in the coffee-houses opinion was freely expressed. The Turks were jeered at, and their soldiery ridiculed. The shaikhs were rapidly becoming a terror to Sulaimania. Not a night passed without murders occurring, and in every case the assassins were known, and were shaikhs’ men. One night an attempt was made upon the Khan-i-’Ajam, where Matti and my other Christian acquaintances lived. Some of them were sleeping on the roof, when sounds of scraping against the outer wall attracted their attention. They waited for a while, and Habib brought out his old Snider rifle. After some time one of the burglars had nearly succeeded in piercing the thick masonry, and at a certain moment, upon a signal, the occupants of the caravanserai raised a shout and fired a shot into the darkness, at which the robbers fled. They, however, became involved with a caravan just coming into Sulaimania, and a cry was raised among the muleteers. The people round about, sleeping on their roofs, woke at the noise, and in the surprise and confusion of the moment, imagining the Hamavands had at last carried out their threat of raiding Sulaimania, commenced a brisk fire upon the caravan, killing some mules and wounding a couple of muleteers who had not been able to convince the natives of their harmlessness in time. The robbers had taken advantage of the turmoil to get away, and by the time the caravan had once more got under way, half the people were beginning to find out the cause.
TOWN DISORDERS
Such events would take place every night, the shaikhs taking advantage of the time to revenge themselves upon their enemies, and at the same time shout defiance at the Constitutional Government. It was seldom that we could sleep quietly from dark till dawn, for the firing around us, and the bullets that often buzzed overhead, kept us alert.
I was sitting in my courtyard a few days after the night attempt on the caravanserai when a moth-eaten creature in a kind of blue uniform with red shoulder-straps presented himself at the door. This was one of the four “policemen” of the place, a visit from whom I had been expecting for some time, for the fat police commissaire had been annoying Habib with enquiries as to my identity and reasons for staying in Sulaimania, and it had occurred to me that he would at some time demand my passport. The policeman now enquired whence I had come, and why staying in Sulaimania; and on my asserting that I was from Constantinople and bound for Persia, but trying to do some business in Sulaimania till the country settled a little, flatly contradicted me, told me I was from Persia, and a suspect, and demanded my passports. These I utterly refused, and offered to come and see the mutasarrif (governor) with him, claiming exemption from such annoyance, as a subject of England, and pointing out that now I had been six weeks in Sulaimania there was time to have seen if I had any nefarious intentions, and to have demanded proofs of my identity sooner. The man was not, however, satisfied, and continued to demand the papers, and I to refuse him, while the people of the quarter gradually collected, and each, as he or she learned, broke into protestations of my respectability, and guaranteed my honesty. As the policeman still remained, the women began to express themselves somewhat freely regarding his behaviour, and at length, seeing that no good could be done by staying—only possible harm—for the people were inclined to be unpleasant to him, he discontinued his demands and returned to the bazaar. My good-hearted neighbours urged me to complain to the mutasarrif, or at any rate get the affair settled over the heads of the police, or, they prophesied, I should have great trouble with them, and the annoyance they would consider it their duty to give me.
So I adopted their counsels, and went first to see old Mustafa Beg and ask his views. I found him in his cell, drinking a cup of coffee he had just brewed, and on seeing me he beamed and gave the full salutation, as was his wont, the sonorous “Salamun ’alaikum wa rahmatu’llah wa barikatahu.” He insisted on my taking coffee, which was a long operation, for he had to make it over a little charcoal brazier, and having made it, find another cup, for he had but one in use, and only a single saucer in all when the second cup was found in a bag full of odds and ends.
ANNOYED BY POLICE