In any case, the politics of Constantinople are too well known to need ventilation here, so we may as well return to our original subject of Persians.
SHAIKH UL ISLAM
I learned soon after my arrival in Constantinople that Kurds abounded, but all of the Kermānjī or Zaza tribes of Northern Turkish Kurdistan, and my hopes of finding a Kurd of Southern Persian Kurdistan seemed as if they would certainly end in disappointment. My reason for wanting to meet one of these people was to complete certain studies to which I had already devoted a year, in Kermanshah of Western Persia.
By chance, however, one of my Persian friends informed me one day that a priest had recently arrived from Sina of Persian Kurdistan; but beyond telling me his title, Shaikh ul Islām, and indicating vaguely where he imagined him to be living, in one of the curious caravanserais of Stamboul, he could tell me nothing; and as the Shaikh in question was a fanatical Sunni, I naturally could not expect my Shi’a friend to interest himself more deeply.
I was resolved to find him, however, and so spent some days tramping up and down the terrible alleys and streets of Stamboul, inquiring at every Muhammadan hotel and doing the round of all the caravanserais I could find, asking for the Shaikh ul Islām of Sina, a question that evoked considerable merriment among most of the Turks to whom I succeeded in communicating my meaning in the few Turkish words I knew. As is always the case in Turkey, inquisitiveness was the greatest impediment and nuisance. Anyone of whom I asked would put a string of questions as to why and wherefore, and who and whence, which my ignorance fortunately prevented my answering.
At last, however, by dint of getting a list of caravanserais, and taking them one by one, I found the Shaikh’s habitation. This particular serai was like most in Constantinople, a two-storeyed building of tiny, windowless rooms round a courtyard, amid which a small house was erected, equally containing separate cells. The first floor had a gallery running round it upon which the rooms opened, and I found my man in a corner cell, or rather found where he was when at home. All this time the weather was indescribably awful, daily blizzards, rainstorms and blizzards again, freezing hurricanes from the plains and uplands to the north and west; and I wondered how this native of sunny Persia, a stranger to these terrible days of darkness, could live, and what is more, raise the courage to go forth into the mire and filth of Constantinople streets.
His servant I saw, a Kurd of Sina, who spoke a little Persian, and who was so astounded at hearing a European speak Kurdish that he quite lost his tongue. However, we made an appointment, and two days after saw me once more facing a blinding snowstorm to shuffle for half an hour from Pera through Galata across the Golden Horn, now a funnel where all the winds of all the ice on earth seemed to blow into Stamboul.
Crawling over the heaps of snow in the caravanserai courtyard, where not a soul was visible, I ascended the rickety staircase and knocked at the low door at the gallery end. Some one shouted in Persian “Kī a” (“Who is it?”), and getting a reply in the same language, told me to walk in—which I did.
A small skylight sufficiently illuminated the place, and at once its arrangements stamped the occupants as natives of Persia. Opposite me, a tin road-samovar sang behind a row of little tea-glasses. Upon the samovar head sat a squat little teapot, and the Kurdish servant was filling a Persian hubble-bubble beside a brazier. Three or four Persian wooden boxes ornamented with brass-headed nails were by the walls, and in a corner were the necessaries of the road, earthen water-pots, tin “af tābeh”—a kind of jug for ablutions—tin wash-basin, and other articles with which every traveller in Persia is familiar. Commencing half-way and covering the floor to the farther end was a gilīm, a kind of carpet, woven in Persian Kurdistan, and seated facing one another, their legs concealed under a quilt apparently supported upon a stool, were two men. Him I sought was a black-browed and bearded priest, an individual surly looking enough to scare away any uninvited visitor. His companion was but an older edition of himself. Their heads were covered by small white turbans, but whether they had changed their native dress for that of Constantinople I could not see, as they both wore heavy overcoats.
A CURIOUS INTERVIEW