In such a land as this, life is a hard matter; all cultivation is on terraces, built as described above, and subject to the constant danger of destruction by flood or avalanche.[{287}]
Barring such accidents the terrace fields are fertile enough, if they have a sufficiency of water; but this again has to be supplied them artificially by leading the irrigation channels from the main stream (often along precipitous faces of rock) and maintaining them carefully when built. Millet and rice are the staple crops; the former furnishing food both for man and beast, for its long stalks are excellent fodder. Its grain is very sustaining as food, as we know from experience, but it is not attractive. In fact bread made from it rather suggests that your host has run short of flour, and has eked matters out with an equivalent weight of sawdust! Even so, however, “it is better to eat millet bread and carry a gun, than to be an unarmed rayat under the Ottoman” under present conditions.
Roads are of course unknown in the land, and there is no such thing as a wheeled vehicle from one end of Hakkiari to the other. Tracks scramble up the gorges along the slopes of shale, and climb by what are known as stangi over and round projecting noses of precipice. A stanga is a built up track; the stones being often held in place, by their own weight only, on branches of trees stuck in crevices of the rock, and projecting out over the torrent.
Mules can get along these roads fairly well, being to the manner born; and sheep and goats do well enough also. But certain villages have a happy immunity from the attentions of the raider, owing to the fact that no quadruped can be driven along the tracks that lead from them. Such cattle as they possess were either born on the land, or were carried up in the days of their calfhood on men’s backs. As for horses, it is a tradition that they cannot be got through the gorges at all, and nobody but a mad Englishman ever thinks of attempting such a thing. It has been done twice, however; once by the writer, and once by a military Consul from Van. Of course the horses were not ridden; and in fact had each of them two men to look after their needs, one at the head to lead them, and the other at the tail to hold them on to the track when it went round sharp corners at a steep angle. This secured that when the poor beast slipped at such a place, he did not fall into the[{288}] river, but onto the track; after which a man held his head down to prevent his struggling to rise (which would have meant disaster), till all the men who could get a hold of him were gathered round. Then came the signal, “Are you ready—lift!” and the astonished horse found himself raised with a straight hoist upwards, like a baby, and so set on his feet once more. Thus they were got through; but they all left their shoes behind!
The bridges which cross the river form quite a feature of the land, and show considerable engineering skill; though the crossing of them needs a steady head as they are constructed at present. In principle, they are true cantilevers. Piers are built at some convenient place, and a long “bracket” of poplar trees is built out over the stream from each shoreward side. The butts are weighted down with stones, and the projecting ends are perhaps forty feet apart. Two long poplars are then slung side by side between the ends of the converging brackets, and a floor of withy hurdles makes the bridge complete.
As the trunks are very elastic, the whole structure swings considerably even if it does remain horizontal. Often, however, it acquires a pronounced tilt to one side or the other; and in any case a three-foot track without any sort of parapet is narrow for a bridge. By old rule, you ought not to look down in crossing such a place, lest the sight of the torrent whirling below should unnerve you. In this case, however, look down you must, and make the best of the vision of the torrent as seen through the withy hurdle floor; for that floor is full of holes and other traps and stumbling blocks, and if you trip, disaster follows! Even natives sometimes condescend to be led across these places, or even to crawl; but animals vary as much as menfolk in their behaviour on such occasions. The writer has known a plains-bred horse walk over one of these bridges as if to the manner born, without even a man to his tail; and has seen a mountain-bred mule jib till he had to be ignominiously towed through the river by a combination of tethering and baggage ropes!
One would expect that the useful donkey would be the[{289}] very best of all possible animals for use in this land; but the Assyrians of Tyari have a prejudice against him. “He that is Lord of Ears”—his name is quite unmentionable,—is iyba for the ashirets. Iyba is an institution that needs some explaining. The word means “shame;” but the European presently gets the impression that it can be extended to cover any mortal thing which he orders, and which for any reason the native does not want to do. Anyway, the poor donkey is iyba, and no mountaineer will own one. A legendary man of Tyari dared to do so once; but life was made such a burden to him by the jeers of all his kin, that at last he hove the unfortunate jackass into the Zab from one of the bridges we have been describing, and was free of further reproach. A mule is honourable enough, if you are so fortunate as to own one; but it is etiquette to address a hybrid beast like that in Kurdish (which is a second tongue to all mountaineers); whereas your ox, being a proper and biblical sort of animal, is addressed in Syriac, which is a good Christian tongue.
So far does prejudice against the ass go, that when the Gospel for Palm Sunday has to be read, the priest (who usually translates the text as he reads from the “Old Syriac” of the Pshitta into the Vernacular) substitutes a word that means “colt” for “ass.” One poor rector, who determined to be faithful to the text, found that sundry “aggrieved parishioners” were complaining of him to the Patriarch for a shameless falsification of the sacred Scriptures.
Nor is there a prejudice only against the ass. Few mountaineers will eat the hare, or the pig, in that these come under Levitical prohibition. And as regards the eating of other animals, we remember this conversation with a certain trusted servant and steward, which speaks for itself. “Tell me O Rabbi; is the thing really true which they say, that the French do eat frogs?”
“It is true, O deacon; and they say that they are good.”