The little community of Jacobites snatch their daily bread from field and vineyard which lie at the mercy of marauding Kurds, whose practices were not, unfortunately, to remain for us a matter of hearsay. The second night at Khâkh was marked by the only misadventure that has befallen me in Turkey. We had intended to leave the village early on the following morning and everything was prepared for our departure; even my saddle-bags, duly packed with note-books and camera, were lying ready in my tent. In the middle of the night I was awakened by a rustling noise, and starting up I saw the figure of a man crouched in the doorway. We had grown careless with months of safe journeying in dangerous places, and neither Fattûḥ nor I had taken the trouble to set a guard over the camp. The thieves had found us an easy prey; before the servants and zaptiehs were roused, they had made off into the night and we were left to reckon up our loss. What money I had with me had been taken out of my tent, the servants had been robbed of all their spare clothing, and various other small objects were missing, but the real disaster was the disappearance of the saddle-bags which contained my note-books. We stood helpless, gazing into the darkness into which had vanished the results of four months’ work. A rifle shot fired by Selîm had awakened the priest, who came hurrying down to inquire into our case. Deeply distressed was he, poor man, to hear of our misfortune, for we were the guests of the village, and he feared that ill might fall upon him and his flock for suffering us to come to harm. I listened to a great deal of divergent advice, and finally decided to send for the Chelabî, who is the feudal chief of the Kurdish tribes in the Ṭûr ’Abdîn. Accordingly at the first dawn Fattûḥ and a zaptieh were dispatched across the hills to bear him the news. A certain village lay under suspicion, a little robbers’ nest situated in the depths of a wild and rocky valley a few miles to the east. The people of Khâkh were well used to the depredations of the men of Zâ’khurân, and during the course of the day we were provided with more positive evidence against them. It chanced that the thieves had carried off a parcel of my gloves, and these they shed along the path as they ran. Gloves lying upon the rocky ways of the Ṭûr ’Abdîn are exceptional objects, and the path by which they were found was that which led to Zâ’khurân. Evening brought the Chelabî, pacing sedately upon his mare with twenty men behind him, all dressed in white garments and armed with rifles ([Fig. 204]). I went out to welcome them and brought their leader to my tents, where he listened to my tale over a cup of coffee and gave me many assurances of redress. This done, he repaired with great dignity to the roof of the priest’s house, converted for the time into a court of justice, and received, until late into the night, deputations from the neighbouring villages. Next day the judgment seat was removed to Zâ’khurân, and Fattûḥ went with it as witness to the crime and representative of the plaintiff; at dusk he returned and reported that the Chelabî had arrested four men, selected, so far as could be ascertained, by empirical methods from among the inhabitants of the district, but that no clue had been found to the missing note-books. It was now time to invoke a higher power, and I entrusted a zaptieh with a letter to the Ḳâimmaḳâm of Midyâd and with a telegram which was to be sent from Midyâd to the Vâlî at Diyârbekr. The Ḳâimmaḳâm entered into the business like a man. On the following evening ten zaptiehs arrived from Midyâd, and next morning fifty foot soldiers marched into our camp. The nature of evidence is not clearly grasped in the East, and by the third day after the robbery there was no person in the country-side, except, I believe, myself, against whom a charge of complicity had not been raised, but there continued to be no further proof than that which we had had from the beginning, and it pointed to Zâ’khurân. To Zâ’khurân, therefore, the miniature army took its way, leaving me divided between regret for the disturbance which my own carelessness had brought about, and gratitude for the good-will displayed on every side. So difficult, however, had it become to protect the innocent, that but for the notebooks I should have left the guilty in peace. My servants were plunged in grief; their honour was gone—indeed whose honour was left intact?—and in sackcloth and ashes we passed the day. And then ... in the grey dawn we were wakened by a voice shouting from the hills: “Your goods are here! your goods are here!” Every man in the camp leapt up and ran in the direction of the sound, and there, lying upon a rock among the oak scrub, was all that we had lost. Nothing had been injured, nothing was missing, except some money, which was subsequently refunded to me by the Ottoman government, at the instance of the British Vice-Consul in Diyârbekr—and it may well be questioned whether any other government would have recognized a like liability. The villagers of Khâkh assembled round the tents and shed tears of thankfulness over the recovered objects, and I mounted in haste and rode off to Zâ’khurân to set a term to the pursuit of criminals. The cause of the restitution was there apparent. The village was deserted; men, women and children had fled into the hills taking with them all that they possessed, and it was reported by a picket that the Chelabî and the soldiers were engaged in capturing the flocks of the community. I sent a messenger after them and rode myself to Midyâd to ask for a universal amnesty. Revenge is not so sweet as it is said to be, nor is it so easy when wrong is afoot to determine who is the more wronged.
Two days and a half of journeying brought us to Diyârbekr. The way was without interest, except for that which was supplied by the dragoman of the British Consulate, who had
