“See,” he said, “I eat this morsel not because I delight in its flavour, for it is of the poorest, nor because I crave a plenishment of belly, but I am performing that duty which is incumbent upon all of us, even pagans, the conservation of the flesh, which God has given into the keeping of our intellects.”
THE END OF SPRING
Though the restless spirit of the Western had been long calmed within me, yet it was not quelled, and here asserted itself. For sixteen days I had remained in Kirkuk. The weather, with that suddenness of progress to hot and cold that it exhibits upon these dry plains, had grown oppressive; the plain which, when we arrived, was covered with green, if scanty grass, was now a bright yellow, the dried stalks were scorching, and the mules’ daily expedition to the plain to graze was almost a farce. In that peculiar way that marks the approach of summer, the sun shot up at a high velocity from behind the crimson hills towards Kurdistan, climbed to his ever-mounting zenith, hung there, it would seem for twelve hours or so, and as quickly descended; the hours of cool daylight were but three. Towards sunset the decrease in temperature was hardly appreciable, for the world was heating, and it took an hour or two of darkness to make it reasonably cool. As has been said before, the town is situated in a position that in our climate we should call “sheltered,” which in these lands means extra hot and stifling. The afternoon hours were approaching that temperature which induces sleep behind closed doors, and the one occasion upon which business called me outside, at about three in the afternoon, showed me an empty town, and also scorching heat of the sun in Kirkuk in May.
Besides, the fez, the most utterly ridiculous headgear man ever invented, protecting neither from heat nor cold, acts with such calorific power as to make one’s scalp regularly boil in sweat under a hot sun.
Flies, too, were breeding like microbes. My daily journey to the bazaar took me past some butchers’ shops, and I noticed one morning that the never-cleansed beams upon which the meat hangs were unrelieved black in colour—flies, solid, and overlaid with flies, that hardly even moved when the butcher swept his long knife along, squashing hundreds, to cut meat next moment without even wiping his blade. Fortunately the custom of the country doubtless prevents a great deal of disease that might result from such condition. Butchers’ shops open in the early morning till about the second hour; one sheep only at a time is killed, and until that is sold another does not appear. Consequently owing to the short time during which it is possible to purchase meat, there is a great rush of buyers, and the flesh of the sheep and goats does not remain long enough than to have one thin layer consumed by flies.
Water was becoming scarce too; the river, which had run fairly full as we entered the town, was now the merest trickle, and all the water was obtained from wells. To waste such a valuable would have called upon the stranger the wrath of all in the caravanserai, so a scanty rinsing of hands and face was all that could be attempted, and that only when I could by stealth draw a potful and convey it unseen to my room. There are public baths in Kirkuk certainly, but even the natives, bound by tradition and custom to extol all indigenous institutions, admitted that they were not very nice. Nevertheless it surprised them that I did not patronise the “hammam”; but what upset my neighbours was the fact of my shaving myself, which I had attempted to do in private, knowing the prejudice against it. For the East reckons a barber as a very mean fellow, and to perform upon oneself, if it be the beard, a transgression of the Quranic law, and if it be the head, a dangerous folly. And whether it be the result of this repugnance to the trade or a naturally despicable nature that consents to the odium, it is a fact that Oriental barbers are as a class very mean fellows indeed.
Through the offices of my friend the consular watchmaker, I was taken one day to see a notable of Kirkuk, one Reza, called by the Muslims Shaikh Reza, and by the Christians, who hate him, Mulla Reza, an inferior title.
This worthy is the principal priest of the place, and though a Sunni, and a fanatic at that, has no objection to seeing and being polite to the dissenters of Islam, the Shi’a, among whose ranks both myself and the watchmaker were classed.
A KIRKUK PRIEST
He inhabited a house adjoining the mosque wherein he officiated, one of the best houses in Kirkuk. His courtyard was laid out in flat beds in the Persian fashion, and a few mulberry trees veiled the bareness of the high walls. He received us in a long room, well carpeted, and was alone. A very reverend seigneur this indeed; the frown of sanctity sat blackly upon his brow, unlightened by his white turban. At his elbow on the floor was a gramophone, from whose trumpet a raucous Arab voice had just ceased to shriek verses of the Quran—to such uses are European abominations adaptable! Hearing that I was from Shiraz, he at once began to quote Hafiz and Sa’di, for he spoke excellent Persian; and then, producing a manuscript book, read some of his own poetry. He versified in four languages—Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish; but preferred Persian to all of them, having a just contempt for the majority of Turkish verse, consisting as it does nearly all of Arabic and Persian.