But I was not to have peace for long. Only a few mornings after this, two policemen turned up, with a message from the commissaire of police, that he wished to see me at once. As I had imagined that he had ceased worrying about my passport, I followed them, wondering what he wanted. He was seated in a tailor’s shop in the bazaar, a fat man, with a cunning look in his little blue eyes, and his mouth concealed under a heavy yellow moustache.
He spoke nothing but Turkish and Arabic, and as I reached him, addressed me in the former.
“Have you a passport?” he asked; “if so, why have you not submitted it to me?”
“Because so far you have not asked for it, nor done anything except hint at the illegal objects of my visit here; had you asked reasonably for it I would have shown it.”
A POLICE ENQUIRY
“Well, I wish to know what you are doing here—why you came, why you do not go, where you came from, your name, your——”
“These,” I broke in, “are known to everyone in Sulaimania but yourself. I came here to do business, and have done some, and would have done more had the place here been in a normal state of quietness. I came from Kirkuk, and as you were with the same caravan you should have known that; and as at Kirkuk my passport was seen and stamped, I am not going to volunteer details as to whence I came there, for it is not your business. As to why I do not go, I am hoping to leave very soon for Bagdad—as soon as your bold Turkish army can induce the Hamavands to leave a road open.”
This kind of conversation in the open bazaar, and among a crowd of Kurds, half of whom understood, he had not expected, and appeared a little hurt at a tone he was not apparently used to.
“Well,” he said, “at any rate I must see your passport, so you had better fetch it.”
So, accompanied by a policeman I went back to the house and got my English passport, and the Turkish travelling passport issued to all who journey in that country. By now it had received ill-use, and the name was illegible, as well as particulars of religion and birthplace. These I brought to him there, and he inspected the travelling passport, and after humming and hawing, said: