Our mules carried some boxes of ammunition and a load of books—the new instructions of the Parliament for the regulation of rent contracts and municipal affairs. The muleteers were highly amused at this load, commenting upon the waste of money involved in sending regulations to a town where order never existed, and if it did, rent contracts and municipal affairs were unknown, even by name.
As one looks east from Kirkuk towards Kurdistan, a low range of red barren hills shuts out the view, and over these runs the road to Sulaimania, and after crossing the plain behind, through the only gap in a second range to the plain of Bazian, the centre of the Hamavand country. This gap is the place where the wild horsemen have always assaulted caravans going east, and two months after our journey to Sulaimania, attacked and totally defeated a body of soldiers, killing several, and capturing every arm and cartridge in their possession.
But two days before we had started two ragged fellows had come in from this gap to Kirkuk—two long days’ journey—and described the sack of a small caravan there; so prospects for us were not bright.
SHUAN KURDS
Judge, then, of the joy when our leader, the Shefiq Effendi, struck off the road and began taking a course among some low hills almost due north. For by so doing he left almost behind us the Hamavand country and headed for that of the Shuan Kurds, a powerful but peaceable tribe engaged in the keeping of flocks and herds—as their name implies.[48]
By noon we were appreciably rising, the hills were closing in, and we could never see far ahead, for the track wound in and out among steep downs. We passed a Kurdish village, a collection of huts upon a mound, about this time. The women, unveiled, bright in coloured robes, turbaned as only Kurdish women are, came out to stare and to inform men within of our arrival. Soon mounted men came galloping over the hills, appearing from apparently deserted corners of the landscape, and approached our leader. Coming up to him they dismounted and took his hand, greeting him with affection, and then we discovered that he—the military accountant—was a chief of the tribe. And no sooner were we away from Kirkuk, than away went the fez from off his head, to be replaced by a Kurdish handkerchief. Despite the invitation of these villagers, our leader would not stop, and we continued our way through the valleys. Here in some places, surrounded by hills, the wind dropped, and the sun’s heat became so intense as to make the hardiest of these inured folk complain.
We entered one of these valleys, or rather, small flat plains between hills, and here the heat became intense. No breath of wind stirred, and the unfortunate soldiers began to look very sick and weary. Everybody carried some water, but it was quickly finished, and to add to the annoyance of the intense heat, myriads of small agile flies buzzed about the head, settling in eyes and ears and sticking to the lips. One of the women fainted, and fell from her mule; those of the men that had turbans spread the handerchiefs that composed them, holding out corners to shade their heads. Around us, sitting upon the edge of some cliffs, were rows and rows of solemn vultures, a fitting feature of this landscape, where were but the bare stones of the valley, not an inch of shade, nor a blade of grass, nor a drop of water, and a silence and repose more deadly than the uproar of the worst storm. The sweat ran off down the face from the hair, down the chest it rolled, to soak through the clothes into the bedding one sat on. The mules sweated and stank, and the dust rose, choking one’s already parched throat.
For two hours we wound along the flat thus, till we reached the end of the valley, where the hills closed in, and the track mounted here. For another half-hour we crawled up, zig-zagging along a steep and stony path, and all at once met a breeze—and a view.
For before us were the higher hills of the Shuan downs—great green ridges and hill-sides, waving with long grass and bright with flowers. Deep, steep valleys lay in the shade between them, and in the distance, dim even in this clear air, rose the snowpeaks of the Zagros—and Persian Kurdistan.
We were now well within the Shuan country, and so long as our road lay in it we were safe, for the Hamavand would not come out of their own country into that of the Shuan, with whom they are friendly, besides having a goodly respect for the strength of this pastoral tribe. So we stopped at the first stream without thought of robbers, and threw our loads for a while. There was but a trickle, or rather, three pools in the bed of the stream, at the bottom of which a tiny spring bubbled up, and it was a long time before we all got a drink. There was one tree, too, in this delectable gully, and the soldiers promptly bivouacked under it, striking and beating other equally weary foot-passengers who would have shared the shade. Our particular party, which consisted of the original travellers from Mosul, fared better in the matter of water, for one of us discovered a fresh spring about a quarter of a mile lower down, whither we repaired with drinking-basins and earthen water-pots, and made an excellent meal from this and bread and dates. We were sleeping soundly—the sleep that comes quickly to the dweller in the open air, oblivious of the sun and flies—when the order came to load up; and as the effendi insisted upon our all starting together, there was a terrible rush.