Old Mustafa Beg, too, who had never ceased his morning calls, also came and insisted on being allowed to go and see the police commissaire himself and urge him to move in the matter. The old man always had a great sense of his own importance, and could not see what was so obvious, that he had been shelved, stowed away into this remote corner of the Turkish Empire to be allowed to wear out and give out gradually. He had received a fresh appointment in the last few days, which was equally a sinecure with the former one, for he could not get to the place, and had he done so the Kurds would have ejected him.
He was very keen for me to accept the invitation of the Mudir of the Military School to a great rejoicing to be held by the Turkish part of the population in honour of the anniversary of popular government in Turkey, and he showed me copies of telegrams received by various officials. There were orders for no less than one hundred and twenty guns to be fired; five hundred liras from the revenue were to be expended on a feast and upon decorations. All loyal subjects were called upon to place lamps upon their roofs at night, and flags over their doors by day.
The bazaar was to be closed, and a band was to play from morning till night, when the fireworks were to be let off in the big open space in front of the Serai. The band played, I remember, by fits and starts; but it was somewhat defective, for the bandmaster, whose pay was irregular and small, had pawned several of the brass instruments. Some ten guns were fired, the Tabur Aghassi, who was temporarily responsible for the affair, having abstracted the full amount of gunpowder from the armoury and sold the bulk to the gunmakers of the town. So the affair was a little ineffective, particularly as the Kurds refused to close the bazaars or decorate.
Mustafa Beg, however, did not foresee this, and imagined it was going to be a very fine affair, and his disgust afterwards was as loudly expressed as his praise before.
A night or two after this we were awakened, as we were nearly every night, by shots, but this time they were very close, and an uproar accompanied them. Two or three dark figures could be discerned running along the roof of the bazaar, and they ran the gauntlet of all the fire of the surrounding population, that was sleeping on the roofs with its guns beside it. Like all these affairs, however, it died down without anyone being the wiser, and we slept again. In the dusk of early morning I heard a voice calling from the street, “Agha Ghulam Husain!” and looking over the roof edge saw Matti, who had run from the caravanserai, and who was still doing up his waistbelt.
DEATH OF MUSTAFA BEG
“Come quickly!” he said.
Snatching up my abba, I ran downstairs and joined him in the street. He was very agitated, and in reply to my questions could only gasp out “Khan-i-Ghafur Agha”—the Ghafur Agha caravanserai—towards which we were proceeding almost at a run.
Round the door a little crowd had gathered, and at the far side, near the room I had once stayed in, next door to Mustafa Beg, a knot, among whom I recognised the municipal and regimental surgeon, a little Greek. As I approached they beckoned, and I ran forward to see what they surrounded.
Lying where he had fallen was old Mustafa Beg, his face, always white, now a dreadful colour in the dusk of dawn, contrasting with the orgy of red his body displayed. A knife had entered the pit of his stomach, ripped it for nine inches, and allowed all that was inside to emerge. He lay in a pool of blood into which the bystanders stepped, and which made a little morass around him. He was conscious, but too feeble to do aught except move his eyes and whisper. He had asked for me, and now I had come, and leaned over, ear to his mouth, he whispered to me to undo his belt.