Next morning I was going out of the serai to the bazaar, when to my astonishment and dismay I heard someone calling “Ghulam Husain” from right opposite the caravanserai door, and turning, saw sitting in a saddler’s shop Sayyid Nuri, the youth, son of Shaikh Ahmad, who had annoyed me so in Sulaimania.
I trembled lest one of the Christians should see me with him, or hear him talking to me, for he spoke in a loud voice, and called me by name at every second sentence.
His style of conversation was as ever, a string of questions, and his first was as to why I had changed my style of clothing. I was now, as previously mentioned, wearing a European suit of clothes and a fez unadorned by any handkerchief. Needless to say, my dress included no collar or cuffs, and I still wore the locally made shoes, and carried an abba or camel-hair cloak. I explained to Sayyid Nuri that I was bound for Bagdad, and answered as shortly as possible in order to get away with all expedition. He asked me where I was staying, and I replied, “In a caravanserai near,” for I did not mention that I lived in the place from whose portals he had seen me emerge, lest he should call there, and calling, ask for Ghulam Husain, when my friends the Christians would curse me for a traitor and an enemy in their midst, and I should lose caste with the Musulman for consorting with such people.
Fortunately no one emerged from the caravanserai while we sat in the saddler’s shop, and I managed to get away to the bazaar, where I had been going. I had not expected to meet Sayyid Nuri, for I had thought him to be in Chemchemal with his father, but apparently being unable to rest so near to Kirkuk without being in it, every few days he undertook the arduous journey between the two places for the pleasure of lounging in the bazaar.
I met him again, but hurried by with scarcely a word, leaving him astonished at my haste, and somewhat hurt or offended. Most of that last day I spent with the old Turkish yuzbashi who had befriended me the previous day; and, as I had promised, I dined with the Christians, enduring once the sight of their transition from staid merchants to boisterous idiots, and through all the stages of drivelling till they lay quiet.
Next morning I was occupied with getting my few things together, and purchasing some bread for the road. The journey was not a long one, but the one stage in which it was done was very weary, and is usually reckoned at ten to twelve hours, if one does not stop nor dismount.
The muleteer came after me at mid-day, and I bade farewell to the Christians who gathered in Salim’s office and bade me good-bye with great cordiality. Our starting-point was a long way from the caravanserai, and we had to hire porters to take my baggage to a large ruinous place at the extreme western edge of the town, where a large caravan of donkeys was loading for Altun Keupri. As usual, a number of travellers were not ready, so I sat in an archway in the portico of the serai and got into conversation with a long Mukri Kurd, very like my own Hama I had left behind, who was exercised as to how he should bind his head with a piece of twine. On being asked the reason for this strange anxiety, he said that he had missed the road from Keui Sanjaq to Kirkuk, two days before, and getting among the hills, had been attacked by Hamavands, and thrown off his donkey down a ravine, hitting his head. He now bound it together to keep the pieces of his skull in contact till they should stick again, but as he felt his head aching in all kinds of places he was seeking advice as to how to make one piece of twine bind all the aching spots together. In the middle of the confusion of loading, a couple of Turkish mule-mounted soldiers pushed their way into the place, upsetting donkeys, bursting loads, and creating damage and confusion generally. They then found some five mules in the stable somewhere, and proceeded to drive them out of the caravanserai, ignoring the heaving mass of donkeys, loads and men they had just thrown into turmoil. The mules, urged by the points of the soldiers’ hangers, came trotting forward, mixed up in the rack and riot, and a fight followed between our caravan and the soldiers, who persisted in trying to force their way through. All the people around seemed to be joining in the fight, and the situation was only saved by a stampede of donkeys into the street, leaving a free passage for the mules and soldiers, who got away, somewhat the worse for wear, to meet a yuzbashi outside who cursed and swore at the delay.
LEAVE KIRKUK
It took another hour before we were loaded, and as we were starting I remembered I had left something with Salim, so I ran back all the way to the bazaar to get it, the muleteer saying he would keep my mule. It took me, I suppose, twenty minutes or more to return, to find the caravanserai empty, so I started out on foot, walking quickly. They must have started immediately after I left, for I walked right through the outskirts of Kirkuk, through Quria the suburb village, and for a couple of miles along the plain before I found them, and as I was carrying a large water-melon I had bought, and was walking at my quickest under the hot August sun, I was not sorry to get astride my beast and open out my clothing to let the sweat dry a little. The sun temperature in these parts at this time is about one hundred and forty degrees.
There was the usual mixed crowd of travellers. Almost the first I addressed was a native of Sina, of Persian Kurdistan, going to Bagdad. He had, for a Kurd, travelled widely, having followed six or seven trades anywhere from Teheran to Bushire on the Persian Gulf. He offered to come with me as a servant and companion to Bagdad, on the terms usual in such engagements, the price of his passage and his food. I assented to this, but as it turned out, I left Altun Keupri before he was ready, and so missed him.