"Occasionally," I replied, "but not always. The girls are sometimes allowed to choose for themselves. There are instances when they prefer a poor man to a rich one."
"What do their fathers say to this?" said Mohammed. "Do they not beat their daughters if they do not like the rich man?"
"No."
"I cannot understand that," said Mohammed. "If I had a daughter, and she might marry a rich man, but she preferred a poor man, I should whip the girl till she altered her mind!"
The owner of the house entered the room. He was accompanied by three of his sons, all fine-looking lads. They were dressed in green serge, and in a costume which somewhat resembled that worn by the foresters in the opera of Freischütz. Several daggers and pistols were stuck in their sashes, enormous orange-coloured turbans adorned their heads. They squatted down beside the Imaum of the village—a thin man dressed in a white sheet.
The father rose from the divan, and, standing before me, pointed to his tooth.
"What is the matter with it?" I inquired in Turkish—a language which is generally understood by every Kurd, though few of them speak it well.
"It aches; I have heard, Effendi, of your great skill as a hakim (doctor)," continued the man. "Mohammed has told me how you set his shoulder on fire with a piece of wet paper. This is very wonderful, perhaps you could cure my tooth."
Now it is one thing to be able to prescribe a mustard plaster, it is another to be called upon to act as a dentist. However, the Kurd's children were all expectant. They evidently believed that if I put a mustard plaster on their parent's tooth, that this would relieve him immediately.
Mohammed was also of this opinion. He went through a sort of pantomimic performance in the corner of the room, suggestive of the sufferings which he had undergone, and of the subsequent benefit which he had received.