And in that way, things being thus settled, it came about that Matti brought himself to the point of asking a question I suppose he must have wanted to put many a time.
“Now, as you are soon going to leave us,” he said, “I want to put a question to you, at which, if you do not approve, you must not be offended, and will not answer. It is some time now since you first came here, and we have come to know one another pretty well, and I have done my best to help you. But I have seen one thing, and that is, that you have never done business before in Kurdistan, and that even had you, you are not sufficiently interested in the getting of money to succeed. You do not seem to care whether your speculations render you a profit or not, and your conversation, unlike that of a merchant, is never of money, but of such subjects as those talk of who are at no need to study business. You seem at more pains to cultivate a knowledge of Kurdish and Kurdistan than of its business, and you put yourself at more pains to buy a book than to do anything else. Habib, too, has noticed this, and we have often wondered the reason for a Persian, and a Persian of Shiraz at that, coming here at all; for though there were Persians in the old days here, they were of Hamadan, and a Shirazi has never been seen before. Still, you never volunteered any information, and I have not ventured to put any questions, for fear of offending. I must say that it is this very characteristic, this neglect of business for which you are ostensibly here, that has caused the police to notice you, and had you not won your way out of their clutches, Habib and myself would have suffered severely, for they lose no opportunity of bleeding one, and we might have been put under suspicion and blackmailed unmercifully.”
“The only reply to frankness,” I said, “is frankness itself, and I will tell what may possibly surprise you, and which will not, I hope, lead you to consider me an impostor. You, like all the rest, have been deceived into thinking me what I originally represented myself to be, and I have a satisfaction in feeling that while I shall leave the others still under the delusion, I shall have been able to pay you part of the debt of gratitude I owe you by putting you alone in possession of the truth.
A CONFESSION OF IDENTITY
“So I must tell you that I am neither Persian nor Turk, nor Kurd nor Chaldean, but an Englishman, born of English parents in England, and brought up in that land; and that fact will perhaps in itself go to partly explain my presence here, for you must know that people of my race are given to wandering over the face of the earth with no other reason than to see it and the people it supports. I have spent nine years of my life in Persia, and there acquired the language and a knowledge of the habits and customs. To gain an intimate acquaintance with the people of that land, I turned Musulman—ostensibly—and passed through a long course of theological training. Two years ago I found myself in Kermanshah, of south-eastern Kurdistan, and finding the people and language an interesting study, resolved to pursue it whenever possible. So, after having been in England last year for some time, I found the fascination of Kurdistan and its mountains upon me, and resolved to visit it once more for a time. But as a European it was impossible and undesirable; for, as you know, a European would be an alien, a stranger without acquaintance, in an isolated position and a dangerous one, hampered in his movements, and often enough not allowed to go from place to place. Moreover, had I desired to travel thus I could not have done so, for I possessed but little money; so you see, everything pointed to the fact that if I wished to see Kurdistan again, I must go humbly, and as a native. So from Constantinople I set out, disguised, and came away gradually here, where I had wished to remain, in order to learn the language of Sulaimania, which up to the present has been unknown to the Europeans. I have now accomplished this, and want to leave Kurdistan again for a while. But I cannot look over the months I have passed here, Matti, without realising that had you not been here, with your help, your sincerity, your advice, and brotherly friendship—all extended to a man of whom you knew nothing—I should have fared much worse, have fared hardly perhaps, instead of living comfortably with a feeling that when anything went wrong there was always Matti to go to. So, brother, you know now what I am, and why here, and all that remains is to ask your forgiveness, and to tell you that I am, like yourself, a Christian, and no Musulman.”
“Allahu akbar!” cried Matti, using a Musulman phrase in his astonishment, “see the works of God, how inexplicable they are! Ghulam Husain, thou who art not Ghulam Husain, all that you tell me of being an Englishman I know to be true, for I see the truth in your eyes; but what matter it, if the friend be English or Russian, Turk or Kurd. What gives me greater joy than ever I felt before, is to think that he, in whom I found a friendly spirit, is of ourselves—of a Christian nation.
“Yet, had I known it before, how much more help I would have given you, for what I have done has been nought but the calling of mere courtesy, and the hospitable spirit incumbent upon all to the stranger, of whatever faith or race he be. Now, if you are resolved to go, I will give you letters to Khwaja Salim, my agent in Kirkuk, and to Matlub in Bagdad. But I place upon you an obligation, by your soul! that you will not, with the European clothes, put off the thoughts and remembrances of Kurdistan, nor let our names slip from your memory. For we are rough and savage, our ways are not yours—though you know ours, and follow them here like ourselves—what we deem comfort you deem savagery, and the European (I know this, for I have been in Beyrout and Aleppo and met the European) ever scoffs at the Eastern land; but we are still men, and if our lives are spent in a gloom of uncivilisation, it is not because we have refused to emerge from it, but because we cannot; perhaps we should lose our few good points in the strong light of Westernism, and, taking to its comforts, spurn its obligations and become worthless—as I have seen so many become, who have been to Europe and returned. So you have taken us all by surprise; like an enemy in disguise you have penetrated the walls of our strongholds, and I for one am not going to tell the bazaar who has been amongst us.”
BURIAL OF MUSTAFA BEG
Then he went on to ask details of my former life in Persia, and the way I had acquired sufficient knowledge of the land and life to pass in bazaar and mosque as I was doing.
During this conversation, one came to inform us that they were about to inter the body of Mustafa Beg. So, following him, we went outside to the graveyard on the southern hill, where on a bare stony slope three or four mulberry trees, bent double by the fierce “rashaba,” find a footing among Sulaimania’s dead. Here we met the coffin-bearers, who brought the coffin and without ceremony laid it in a shallow grave, covering it with stones and earth. There were but a few of us present, the master of the Military School, Matti, and myself, besides the people hired to bury him; nor could we stay, for the Hamavands were circling about on their ponies not far away.