In this and in the general tone there was a marked difference between Persian and Turkish officialdom. The Persian Governor is surrounded by civilians, the Turkish by soldiers, and in the latter case the manner assumed by subordinates is one of the most profound respect. The sealing of my passport took a considerable time, during which, with Qasha ——, I paid several visits, was regaled with Armenian cookery, tried to change a mejidieh at the Treasury, but found it absolutely empty, and went to see a miracle-working New Testament, said to be of great antiquity, in an Armenian house. It was hanging on the wall in a leather bag, from which depended strings of blue and onyx beads. Sick people come to it even from great distances, as well as the friends of those who are themselves too ill to travel. The bag can only be opened by a priest. The power of healing depends on a sum of money being paid to the priest and the owners. The sick person receives a glass bead, and is forthwith cured.
On Gawar Plain I lodged in the village houses, either in semi-subterranean hovels, in which the families live with their horses and buffaloes, or in rooms over stables. Very many sick people came to me for medicines, and others with tales of wrong for conveyance to "the Consul" at Erzerum. No one seemed to trust any one. These conversations were always held at night in whispers, with the candle hidden "under a bushel," the light-holes filled up with straw, the door barred or a heavy stone laid against it, and a watch outside.
The Gawar Christians are industrious and inoffensive, and have no higher aspiration than to be let alone, but they are the victims of a Kurdish rapacity which leaves them little more than necessary food. Their villages usually belong to Kurdish Aghas who take from them double the lawful taxes and tithes. The Herkis sweep over the plain in their autumn migration "like a locust cloud," carrying off the possessions of the miserable people, spoiling their granaries and driving off their flocks. The Kurds of the neighbouring slopes and mountains rob them by violence at night, and in the day by exactions made under threat of death. The latter mode of robbery is called "demand." The servants of a Kurdish Bey enter and ask for some jars of oil or roghan, a Kashmir shawl, women's ornaments, a jewelled dagger, or a good foal, under certain threats, or they show the owner a bullet in the palm of the hand, intimating that a bullet through his head will be his fate if he refuses to give up his property or informs any one of the demand.
In this way (among innumerable other instances) my host at ——,[43] a much-respected man, had been robbed of five valuable shawls, such as descend from mother to daughter, four handsome coats, and 300 krans in silver. In the last two years ten and fifteen loads of wheat have been taken from him, and four four-feet jars filled with oil and roghan. Four hundred and fifty sheep have likewise been seized by violence, leaving him with only fifteen; and one night while I was at his house fifty-three of the remaining village sheep, some of which were his, were driven off in spite of the guards, who dare not fire. I was awakened by the disturbance, and as it was a light night I saw that the Kurds who attacked the sheepfold were armed with modern guns. The reis of that village and this man's brother have both been shot by the Kurds.
Testimony concurred in stating that the insecurity of life and property has enormously increased this summer, especially since the reduction of the Diza garrison; that "things have grown very much worse since the Erzerum troubles;" that the Kurds have been more audacious in their demands and more reckless of human life; and that of late they have threatened the Christians as such, saying that the Government would approve of "their getting rid of them." Very little of any value, the people said, was left to them, and the extreme bareness of their dwellings, and the emptiness of their stables and sheepfolds, while surrounded with possibilities of pastoral and agricultural wealth, tend to sustain their statements. "The men of Government," they all said, "are in partnership with the Kurds, and receive of their gains. This is our curse."
Many women and girls, especially at Charviva and Vasivawa, have been maltreated by the Kurds. A fortnight ago a girl, ten years old, going out from ——, to carry bread to the reapers, was abducted. It became known that two girls in —— were to be carried off, and they were hidden at first in a hole near ——. Their hiding-place last week was known only to their father, who carried them food and water every second night. He came to me in the dark secretly, and asked me to bring them up here, where they might find a temporary asylum. Daily and nightly during the week of my visit Gawar was harried by the Kurds, who in two instances burned what they could not carry away, the glare of the blazing sheaves lighting up the plain.
The people of Gawar express great anxiety for teachers. The priests and deacons must work like labourers, and cannot, they say, go down to Urmi for instruction. A priest, speaking for two others, and for several deacons who were present, said, "Beseech for a teacher to come and sit among us and lighten our darkness before we pass away as the morning shadows. We are blind guides, we know nothing, and our people are as sheep lost upon the mountains. When they go down into the darkness of their graves we know not how to give them any light, and so we all perish."
This request was made in one of the large semi-subterranean dwellings, which serve for both men and beasts in Kurdistan. The firelight flickered on horses and buffaloes, receding into the darkness, and the square mud-platform on which we sat was framed by the long horns and curly heads of mild-eyed oxen.
I answered that it would be very difficult to raise money for such an object in England. "But England is very rich," the priest replied. I looked round, and the thought passed across my mind of Him "who though He was rich yet for our sakes became poor," whose life of self-denial from the stable at Bethlehem to the cross on Calvary is the example for our own, and whose voice, ringing down through ages of luxury and selfishness, still declares that discipleship involves a love for our brethren equal to His own. Yes, "England is very rich," and these Syrians are very poor, and have kept the faith through ages of darkness and persecution.
This plain, the richest in Kurdistan, is also most beautiful. In winter a frozen morass, it is not dry enough for sowing till May, and even June. This accounts for the lateness of the harvest. The Jelu mountains, the highest in Central Kurdistan,—a mass of crags, spires, and fantastic parapets of rock, with rifts and abysses of extraordinary depth,—come down almost directly upon it. There is no wood. The villages are all alike, surrounded just now by piles of wheat and straw on their threshing-floors, with truncated cones of fodder, and high smooth black cones of animal fuel. These are often the only signs of habitations. One may ride over the roofs without knowing that houses are below.