To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in disguise

by Ely Banister Soane

“La allahu ill’allah!” he exclaimed, “what a land! and yet God made all men, brother, and all countries, in which are ever good and bad, and I trust that thou art of the better. What matter if man be Christian or Islam. Can he not follow the laws of his own prophet, and the ordinances of God? And thou, too, art a stranger, far from thy people, and it behoves both Turkoman and Kurd to treat such an one as his own brother.”

With that he stretched himself in the four or five inches of shade that the boxes now cast, and composed himself for sleep; and I did likewise, my head in shadow and my body burning and sweating in the fierce sun.

Our rest was not for long. Half an hour afterwards we rose and loaded the mules, and once more set out. As the rocks drew closer on each side of the road the heat became intense. There was no wind, and we unwound the handkerchiefs that enveloped our heads, and tried to make miniature canopies of them, with little effect. It took us an hour to get over the stony track to the neck, the exit from which is not more than a few yards wide, a break in an otherwise uninterrupted line of hills that shows an almost perpendicular face to the outside world, a rampart—almost the last—of Kurdistan, to the west. Outside the Darband the ground fell away, and the plain of Chemchemal lay before us, no plain at all in reality. It is, so to speak, a long and broad valley filled with rolling hills intersected by deep ravines, but whose summits are so exactly of the same height that the country looks from afar but a flat plain.

Ahmad Bash Chaush had resolved to leave Chemchemal, and striking farther north take a more difficult but nearer route through the hills, stopping during the night, or what should remain of it, at a village he knew of. Our caravan was now a considerable one, for we had joined with two small parties, with a mixture of queer muleteers. There were three Arabs, men of the low country about Kifri, some Turkomans, a Shuan Kurd or two, and a Persian from Teheran, looking very out of place in his globe hat and short skirts among these men of turbans and long garments.

In company with these we jogged along, our faces to the now declining sun. Chemchemal was hidden behind the ridge formed by the ever-rolling hummocks and hills of the plain. From various spots great pillars of smoke arose; for the grass, dried with the summer heat, was burning furiously, and at night would shine like great beacons. A few miles further we saw Chemchemal—it was just sunset.

The little town lay in a great hollow, and above stands the mount, an artificial eminence similar in shape to the mounts seen at Erbil and other places once occupied by the Assyrians. The tents of the Turks were pitched around the foot of the mount, and made a gleaming white spot in the dusky scene.

Here, while yet Chemchemal lay indistinct, we left the road and the bulk of the caravan and proceeded in the gathering darkness, our way lit by a roaring furnace of flame that rushed up from a gully as from out of a volcano. Beyond Chemchemal lies the last range of hills westward on the Kirkuk road. This last is approached by a gradual slope—formed by innumerable little hills of rounded shape over and about which the track winds. The village to which we were bound lay well up in the eastern face of this range, and now our difficulties commenced, for the track started forking and branching, leading to the various villages of the Shuan Kurds hereabout. At eight o’clock we separated in the darkness from a large number of our companions, but, relying upon the local knowledge of one of the Arabs, who said he knew the road well, did not attempt to follow them. We had passed no water since leaving Bazian, and all were getting thirsty, but Jum’a, the Arab, promised us to be at the village in an hour or two. He had missed the right track, though, and we commenced to wander among these low hills, a cloud of dust accompanying us, and rendering our thirst considerably worse. From the dark ahead a shout arose that we had come to water, and we sent the youth on quickly to get our jar filled. A moment later we ourselves arrived there, to find that the mules had made a rush for the tiny stream and had hopelessly befouled it before a single one of us could get a drink. And now we knew that we were lost, for there is no spring on the road we had expected to travel, besides which this track was heading in a wrong direction. The Arab, however, persisted that he knew the way, and a lively discussion ensued as to whether we should throw the loads there, where there was at least a drop of water, or push forward. The fear of being attacked in the night by Kurds overcame the greater part of the company, and in deference to them we once more got under way, heading for what we thought to be the right direction. We were gradually rising, and the curious effect of a dry climate and no breeze was well illustrated here. We would descend into a hollow to a temperature that made us sweat, and a moment after, rising again, come to the cool of the night, which struck chill.

LOST IN A DESERT

We stumbled along thus for two or three hours, too tired to say much, the monotony of the dark night varied only by the falling of a mule, or the refusal of a donkey to proceed, till a volley of shots rang out, the bullets whizzing over our heads to the accompaniment of an inferno of barking from watchdogs. We stopped behind a protected hump and shouted to our assailants to desist. These to satisfy themselves of our harmlessness came running down from their village, and finding us what we affirmed—harmless travellers—put us on our way. But we must have missed in the darkness again, for we dragged on hour by hour, always rising gradually and never getting out of, or above, the knolls and hummocks. We seemed to wind round and round these interminable little hills. We had reached that stage where to sit on a mule is almost fatal, for one falls asleep—and off the beast. Most of us had walked some distance, and in the dark stumbled along tired and disgusted. We could see that it wanted but a few hours to morning, and yet, with the hope that pushes a man to foolishness, we went ahead. At last, however, we came to a point where the road definitely turned south—we wanted to go north—and there men and mules alike gave in. The beasts fell about, refusing a sharp, stony rise before us, and, disgusted with everything, we let them lie, loosening and casting off their loads where they stood or fell. The youth was parched, his tongue so swollen that he could not speak, but only grunted, and he, as well as Ahmad Bash Chaush, had been walking some fourteen hours without resting. Not stopping to arrange the loads or collect the nosebags and small gear that lay about, we fell upon the stones of the road, and, from the time we had stopped, during the process of throwing the loads and tying the animals to them, no one had spoken a word—though the process usually demands a great deal of talking.

I suppose we slept for a couple of hours or so, when the cold woke us. I was shivering, and chilled through. A morning breeze had risen and blew from the hills above, lowering the temperature by many degrees in a few seconds. The false dawn was just showing in the east, and, with the unthinking simplicity of the land, we sat up and smoked cigarettes in the hope of getting warm. Far away, on the other side of the plain under Bazian, we could see the big grass-fires still blazing, and sighed not a little for some of their warmth. The silence of the early morning was broken only by the swish of the wind through the dry grass, and an occasional rifle shot told of vigilant Kurds in their villages.