In the bazaars one occasionally sees a knot of swarthy fellows, very ragged, speaking a dialect only the traveller in south-western Persia can recognise. These are the Faili Lurs, Persian subjects, whose presence warrants the institution of a Persian Consul here. This individual forced himself upon my acquaintance in the following manner:—
The frequenters of the tea-house by the caravanserai, during the first few days of my stay, came to know me as a Persian of Shiraz, and as Persians are rare in Kirkuk, the consul heard quickly of my existence. I was waited upon one day by a Kurd wearing a Lion and Sun badge, but with no other sign of his office as a consular servant. He demanded my Persian passport, and could not be convinced that I was a British subject, and consequently not amenable to Persian passport laws. Nothing I could say could convince him, the very fact of my speaking Persian fluently damned my assertions; but I was inflexible, and he eventually went away.
Two days afterwards he turned up again; but this time I was prepared to prove to him my identity as a Persian-born British subject. To this end I had arranged my Foreign Office passport, which bore the visés of both Turkish and Persian consuls in London. These contained a certain amount of writing in the two languages, and under each of these I wrote in Indian ink, which could be erased by licking it off later, the words “Mirza Ghulam Husain Shirazi,” under the Persian visé in the Persian “shikasta” hand, and under the Turkish in the handwriting adopted by Turks. This I now produced with a flourish, displaying with triumph to the messenger and a few of the bystanders with whom I was acquainted the English arms and the signature of Sir Edward Grey—and then turning to the back, the Persian and Turkish visés with my name under each. Perfect success met the scheme, the servant changed his tone and became polite, and the effect upon my audience was to win me many “marhabba” afterwards in the café.
A PERSIAN CONSUL
Next morning I was engaged in a little tailoring. My overcoat was getting too warm, or rather, the weather was getting too warm for the coat, and I had no other garment sufficiently long to be dignified, save a thin corded dressing-gown. Perforce I adapted this. I took off the abundant braiding, removed the waist-cord and sewed on some buttons, and produced a garment thereafter called a “labbada” or long coat, such as religious students and Azarbaijan merchants wear.
I was sewing on the last button, when a knock came at the door, and the servant of the Persian Consul stood there bowing, “Would I come and see the Persian Consul on a friendly visit? He was in the caravanserai and very anxious to make my acquaintance.” So donning my new garment, I followed him along the gallery.
I found him in a room over the gateway, seated at the upper end upon a small carpet. Below him, that is, against the long side wall and nearer the door, was a collection of varied Kurds, of Sauj Bulaq, Sina, Merivan, and other Persian towns. Their head-dress of handkerchiefs indicated their origin. Standing up near the consul was an elderly, thick-set man, bushy-bearded, wearing the baggy trousers and shirt tucked in, that are typical of the muleteers of the Persian border, but his pointed cap proclaimed him a Mukri. The room was partly taken up with three tables, upon which stood basins and copper vessels containing various concoctions. A tray covered with small sweetmeats, just cooked, stood by an earthen oven in a corner; and a young man was engaged in placing therein a fresh tray full of uncooked confections. Sugar loaves lined the walls, hanging by nails, and a smaller table near the window was covered with bottles of colouring matter and the apparatus of a sweet-maker’s trade. Amid all this the consul sat, a grey, fierce-looking man, in Kurdish dress, but he wore upon his head the felt hat and narrow handkerchief of the Kermanshah Kurd.
To this assembly I entered, walking delicately to avoid numerous obstacles on the floor, and all rose, answering my “Salamum ’alaikum” with a sonorous “alaikum as salam,” to which the bearded man added the “wa rahmatullah wa barikatah.”
The consul made place for me by his side, and in excellent Persian replied to my compliments. The assorted Kurds, who understood very little, began a discussion about some tribal feud somewhere, and left us to a conversation in which the bearded man, who turned out to be the proprietor of the sweet business, and a Persian subject of Sauj Bulaq, joined. This old fellow, Haji Rasul, was a darvish of a sect of the Shi’a Muhammadans.
Our conversation turned inevitably upon politics, and thinking my companions must be Nationalists, as are most Persians nowadays, I began to describe some of the doings of the Majlis in Teheran during 1906 and 1907. They listened in silence for some time, offering no opinion, but when I ceased, the consul began with great enthusiasm a flowing eulogium of Muhammad Ali Shah, cursing in the most powerful language the revolutionary movement that tended to put power in the hands of mean schemers, plebeians, and heretics. His arguments hung upon the nail of fanaticism, as I am afraid most of the Royalist arguments ever did in those days, and warming to his subject he read me a homily upon the evil of allowing my young mind to be led away by the specious arguments of them who called upon the saints to witness the right of their evil actions. Apt quotations from the Quran he poured out upon me, growing ever more excited, and at length ceased suddenly, out of breath, and hot. I managed to steer him away from this subject, and he began to relate his difficulties and the qualms of conscience he had had in the matter of his late wife, whom, suffering from some terrible internal disease, he had taken to Mosul to the English doctor there.