So I strolled out, and entered the little place where a dozen people were sitting round on high benches, and had a place made for my fez—not me—by a Kurd, distinguishable by his headgear. I found that my companions had already spoken of me, and I was thus introduced as a Persian of Shiraz, by name Ghulam Husain, which the Turks could never get hold of, calling me Husain Ghulam Effendi, or Husain Effendi. My fellow-travellers must have advertised my place and circumstance, for tea was brought, and the Kurd beside me, getting up, took away from before a muleteer a little table upon which to put my glass. It is the custom in Turkey in Asia, and Europe too, to greet a newcomer with the “Marhabba,” at the same time raising the hand to the eyes.[29] The habit is, besides being an act of politeness, a very true gauge of the relative importance of newly met persons. By the number of “Marhabba” the stranger gets, he can judge the position he shall take among those assembled. On this occasion everyone, including two Turks in uniform, saluted me thus, and I replied to all in the popular fashion, dabbing at my forehead in everyone’s direction, only uttering audibly, “Marhabba, Effendim,” to the Turks.
My Kurdish neighbour, I found, knew a little Persian, and had been to Teheran and Kashan. He introduced himself as a Kurd of the Mukri, a native of Sauj Bulaq, the Mukri capital, and lamented the fate that kept him in Turkish territory mending shoes. Here I began to get in contact with the sentiment I found often expressed by Christian and Kurd alike all over southern Kurdistan and eastern Turkish territory, a leaning towards Persian rule and custom, and an emphatically expressed aversion to all things Turkish. Among the Kurds this sentiment takes so strong a form, that many of them set themselves to make a study of the Persian language, and employ it in all transactions requiring writing, never using Turkish unless forced to do so.
Half the occupants of the coffee-house were Turkomans, natives of Altun Keupri, which is one of the settlements which originated in the times of the Seljuq Sultans—in the Middle Ages. They are a pleasant race, and proud of their descent; nor do they display much sympathy with the Ottoman Turks, whom they regard as plebeian, and their contempt for their mincing and malpronounced Turkish is unbounded. Their own language, which is the same as that of Azarbaijan in Persia, they call Turkoman, and it is a rough, forcible tongue pronounced in the guttural manner the Turkish originally displayed.
REMINISCENCES OF PERSIA
After consuming a couple of glasses of tea, I rose and returned to my darvish, whom I found seated behind my tin samovar, tea prepared, the room swept. He had procured a number of flaps of bread, a large bowl full of “dugh” or “airan,” as the Turks call it, which is curds mixed with water.
In Persian fashion he rose as I entered, his hands crossed before him, nor sat till I was installed upon my strip of carpet and had requested him to do so.
My muleteer now appeared, and Qadir, one of my fellow-travellers, Kurds both. These sat upon the door-step, and by the light of a candle we partook of tea. These two, hearing myself and the darvish speaking Persian, introduced us to the rhyme which is ever being quoted all over Kurdistan—
“Laoza laoza arawia
Turki hunara
Farsi shikara