DARBAND-I-BAZIAN
“He placed here a wall and gate and three or four pieces of cannon, two of which were planted on the height in order to fire upon the Turkish camp below; and vain would have been Sulaiman Pasha’s attack on this pass, had not a Koordish chief called Mahommed Bey, a son of Khaled Pasha who was united with the Turks, led a division of the Turkish troops and auxiliary Koords up the mountain, by a pass only known to some Koords, and which had been neglected as impracticable, so that Abdurraham Pasha found his position turned, and his guns on the height pointed against himself. He was then obliged to retreat, and the wall was razed by the Pasha of Bagdad, who afterwards advanced to Sulaimania.”[69]
It was very hot that noontide, and do what we could, it seemed impossible to get any shade, though we piled the loads high and stretched a cloak over two sticks; so perforce we lay upon the stones sweating. Together we shared a meal of water-melon and bread—the former they had found in a Hamavand cultivation. Then the darvish and the youth had to go far away where the stream ran to attend to their animals, while I was left with the head-man, Ahmad. I had taken a great liking to him, for he was a quiet, respectable man, who minded his own business, and, while showing no distinction between himself and his passengers, assumed no hectoring bearing, as is so often the case with the muleteer and his native passengers. Together we sat and smoked our Kurdish cigarettes of chips, and he asked me, at length, my religion, for he remarked that he had not seen me pray, and supposed I could not therefore be a Musulman.
So, liking the character of my man, I resolved to try the truth upon him, and, quoting the words of a greater than myself, said:
“Thou hast heard that I am of Persia, thou speakest such of the tongue of that land as thou knowest to me; yet though I am of Persia in a measure, I am not Persian, and though I be not Persian, neither am I Kurd, nor Arab, nor Turk.”
“What, then?” he asked.
“Nor yet am I of the tribe of the Nasara (native Christian), for I am of the land they call England, which is in Ferangistan.”
“What! of Constantinople that is,” he replied; “then you are a Turkish subject!”
“No,” I said, “nor yet a Turkish subject. I am a subject of a land far from Turkey.”
“And what God do they worship?”