The Cradle of Mankind; Life in Eastern Kurdistan

by W. A. Wigram; Edgar Thomas Ainger Wigram

Fortunately they postponed sentence till they had reported the case to Mar Shimun; and the Patriarch ordered that he should be released, that his property (which had naturally been confiscated) should be returned to him, and that he should be conducted out of the district. They obeyed, only retaining one “kodak” as a trophy, and led him to their frontier. Still, it was not in human nature to refrain from representing that the journey was very dangerous; and that they could not dream of letting so honoured a man go without a large escort—and a large fee for each member of it, payable in advance.

Thus escorted, the traveller was taken to the border of the Christian territory, where as luck would have it, they encountered a party of Châl Kurds.

“What have you there?” said the Châl men.

“A Frank of sorts, who says he wants to study your manners and customs,” said the Tkhumans.

“Hand him over to us, and he shall have ample opportunity,” said the Kurds.

So he had; for having been once robbed by the Christians, he was now robbed over again by the Kurds, and this time there was no Patriarch to appeal to. Thus it was a very tattered and woe-begone traveller who was at last delivered at Amadia. He was certainly uninjured personally, save in self-esteem; but otherwise nothing was left him but the clothes he stood up in, which were not many; and perhaps he was fortunate in retaining as much as that!

Amadia is the nearest Government centre to the Tyari and Tkhuma districts; and in connexion with it we may here recount an adventure of that worthy old qasha Tuma mentioned in the last chapter. His reverence had come down to the place, accompanied by a deacon, on some business of his own; and both had been promptly arrested.[{302}] It was not for any particular crime, but perhaps in the expectation that some reason would turn up if they were kept long enough; perhaps on the principle of tribal responsibility for the acts of any individual, for the men of Tyari had been doing some raiding about that time!

Government having some experience of the fact that Tyari men are hard to catch and harder to hold, a sentry was kept permanently in the cell with the pair, and another posted outside it. Still, the qasha’s pocket-knife was not taken from him, but left him for his meals. Of course, the cell door had to be opened at times; and on one of these occasions the key (which according to local custom was not of metal, but a notched slip of wood) was given to the qasha to hold for a moment. Instantly he “spaced” the notches with his thumb, which is the usual way of measuring anything in this country, and noted the shape of the key. Before very long, the sentry contracted the habit of going to sleep in the cell; and in those intervals, priest and deacon contrived to get a slat of wood out of the roof, and set to work with no other guide than the memory of the measure taken, to make a duplicate key. It was soon finished; and one morning the sentry’s slumber was rudely interrupted, by finding both his prisoners at his throat. He was tied up and gagged quietly; and then came the exciting moment, when the key was first tried in the door. Greatly to the credit of the locksmiths, it fitted; and soon the sentry outside the door, who was not more watchful than his fellow, was safely locked up beside him in the cell and left to await discovery. The priest and deacon were off, on the road to their own mountains; with two good Martini rifles, late Government property, as compensation for their stay at the Government house!

Wild tribesmen on the one side with a tribesman’s virtues and vices, attractive mischief-loving boys on another, are all these mountaineers; but there are other aspects of their character that show them as capable of acting like devoted men. This comes out most markedly in their attachment to their own historic Church and their readiness to work on its behalf. One good case of this came to the writer[{303}]’s knowledge in the village of Rabat, in Tal. Here the brother of the headman of the village was murdered by some Kurds; and the crime must have been one of peculiar atrocity, for even the leathery Kurdish conscience was so severely shocked that the local Aghas decreed that a blood-fine must be paid; and a sum of £60 was actually handed over in cash at their order. The headman accepted the money, as a sign that the feud was finally closed, but declared that he would take no compensation for his brother’s death. He handed over the whole sum (a far larger amount than he had ever seen before or was likely to see again) for the repair of the village church, which stood in great need of it. Spurred by this example the whole village turned to, and the edifice was pulled down and rebuilt; every man, woman and child in the place helping to drag the stones from the mountain, tending the kilns where the lime was burnt, or assisting in some other way. The land being almost treeless, the fuel for the kilns was provided by the sacrifice of many of the walnut trees that grew round the village; and be it noted that these were not only valuable property in themselves, but also the source of the one luxury allowed to these people during their long and rigid Lent. The gift meant that the donors would most of them live on millet bread and water, and nothing else, for several Lents to come; so it may be understood that those who gave a walnut tree gave what cost more than the signing of a cheque. No man took a penny for his labour, save a party of artisans from another district, under whose directions the whole was carried out;[136] and as these guilds of builders have that secret of proportion that a modern architect often strives for in vain, the result has been a singularly impressive building, vaulted, and proof against everything save wanton destruction; a monument for some centuries to come of the devotion of the villagers to their church.

True it is that this devotion may take bizarre shapes at times. One district was annoyed by the proselytising efforts of some Romish teachers, who were seeking (of[{304}] course quite rightly on their principles) to draw away the Nestorians to another obedience, and had succeeded with a certain number of them. A zealous deacon of the old church, much annoyed at this declension from the ways and faith of the fathers, disclosed to the writer a notable scheme for soaking the walls of the little Roman chapel with paraffin, and setting light to it during service, so as to dispose of chapel and worshippers at once.