THE GORGE OF THE ZAB
One of the reaches near Tal
No. 13
One case of this second-sight, or vision, concerned the writer himself when making a late autumn visit to Qudshanis from Van in 1907, in company with the late Bishop Collins of Gibraltar. We were expected at the place; but terribly bad weather made them not only give up hope of our arrival, but even hold special services of prayer for our safe return to Van. Under these circumstances, a certain deacon of Tkhuma, Nwiya[137] by name, who was servant to the Rev. W. H. Browne, came rushing in to his master early one morning in great excitement. “They are coming, Rabbi; they are coming after all. I saw them in a vision by night, and they will be here this day. But I saw them coming up the valley, not down it as Mr. Wigram said he would come. The bishop was wearing a black hat, and Mr. Wigram a white one.” Three hours later, the avant-courier we had sent before us actually arrived; and in the course of the day the party reached Qudshanis by the route named by the deacon (which had been adopted when the more direct route proved impassable), the bishop wearing an astrakhan fur cap, and the writer a sun-helmet. Any suspicion of confederacy may be ruled out of the question[{306}] without hesitation, for it was a physical impossibility; and clairvoyance, or some form of thought transference, seems to be the most natural explanation of so strange a coincidence of foreword and fact.
Every nation has, of course, its own superstitions about the mystery of birth, as exemplified in the case of our own ancestors by the belief in “the changeling.” In the case of these Nestorians, the danger that menaces the new-born is a sort of fearful night-hag, called the khwarha, that carries off and destroys the child. To guard against her visits, the child must be watched day and night for the first days of its life (baptism is usually administered on the eighth day), while an onion and a wool-comb must be kept in the same room. The smell of the former makes the spirit sneeze and deprives her of power; while the latter (which is of iron and so exercises a protective influence of itself) entangles her long locks, so that she flees in terror.[138] An old man in the household of the Patriarch tells how he was once set to take his turn at watching a certain important infant, and was so far negligent that he went out of the room to smoke a cigarette. As he did so, he saw the terrible khwarha approach, change herself into the form of an ibex with very long horns (deponent sayeth not what was her appearance previously, which is a pity), and dash into the room. Of course the conscience-stricken watcher dashed in after her; but to his huge relief found his charge sleeping quietly (a happy effect due no doubt to the protective influence of the comb and the onion), so all ended well. Still that moment is a remembrance of horror to that old man to this day.
Here, as in other districts that we have referred to, the power of faith-healing is a very real thing. Recourse is had to any church that chances to be “Lord of Name” for that purpose, and the result is quite often successful. Certain ordeals have to be gone through at times, success in them being an omen of success in the prayer. Thus the church of Mar Abd-Ishu, in Tal (once the hermitage[{307}] of an ascetic of great local fame, and situated in a cave high up on an almost inaccessible precipice), is a great place of resort for childless couples who desire offspring. After prayer, it is the proper thing to pass through “Mar Abd-Ishu’s passage,” which is a natural cleft in the rock, somewhat analogous to St. Wilfrid’s needle at Ripon.
An easy passage is a sign of the granting of the prayer; but failure does not imply (as in the English parallel) a bad private character. It only means that the saint expects his fee; and this must be promised him before he will grant what is required. As a matter of fact, a slim person can usually get through the hole easily, but an adult can only do so at one particular angle; and if he is not fortunate enough to hit on this, he may have difficulty; for no assistance may be given by the unauthorized spectator. A Kurdish chief attempted it once to the writer’s knowledge, seeing that he desired a son; but he stuck firmly in the crevice and could neither get back nor forward! Scared almost out of his wits, he jumped at the idea that a gift to the saint might let him through; and when small gifts were not accepted, he raised his terms till he was offering all his sheep and half his rifles, and still the saint held on! He was then told, however, that big bribes were no good; but that he must promise exactly what the saint happened to want, and that his Holiness was sometimes very capricious. The Kurd had to go through a good deal of exercise in guessing what it was that a saint in paradise, who had been an ascetic on earth, would be most likely to covet; but at last he hit on the right thing (or got into precisely the right position), and was released on promising some forty-five piastres, or eight shillings. It is pleasing to add that he paid up faithfully, and that he subsequently got the son that he desired; so that his respect for Christian institutions has much increased.
This shrine, indeed, has a high reputation among all faiths. It has only been robbed once, by Kurds; and on that occasion the robbers were promptly put to death by their own fellow tribesmen, and the spoil returned.[{308}]
Lunacy meets with a peculiar treatment among the men of Tyari (their neighbours declare that all the tribe are mad together, and support that statement by various tales at their expense, which it is well not to repeat in their vicinity[139]). When all visits to a church of Name fail, the patient is absolutely buried alive. He is prepared for burial exactly as if he were a corpse, borne to the graveyard on a bier, and interred with the full church service. A small opening is left for him to breathe through; and at the end of twenty-four hours, he is carefully resurrected. The nervous shock has often beneficial results; but naturally not always.
It must be owned, too, that the last case in which this treatment was tried to the knowledge of the writer produced a good deal of ill-feeling, because it was so doubtful whether the man was cured or not. He was buried quite properly; and his friends came at the right time to disinter him. But as soon as the stones were removed, he sprang up, exclaiming, “I am risen! I am risen! it is the Last Day!” Then, looking round disgustedly on the men who had come to assist him: “Whoever would have expected to see you at the Resurrection of the Just?”
Query: is that man still mad? His friends would like to think so. But they have an uneasy feeling that he “knows a hawk from a hernshaw when the wind is southerly.”