Our friend was, as we then understood, one of the gang who had, a few years previously, attacked a British Consul in this neighbourhood.[146] There had been a pretty sharp skirmish, of which this gentleman bore the token in a bullet that had cut the sinews of his right arm. The Consul gained great kudos in the affair; for he not only beat off his assailants,[{330}] but killed their leader, a man who had the reputation of being “proof” against shot and steel. Such reputations are almost as common in these regions now as they were in the highlands of Scotland in the seventeenth century; but (in spite of the local facilities) the possessors of such immunity are not held to have acquired it by direct compact with the Evil One, like Claverhouse and Dalziel, but to have been born with it in course of nature. Mirza Agha, the Kurd in question, certainly did his best to live up to his character; for though he received three wounds that would each have been fatal to most men (two in the head, and one in the body) he did not die until the fifth day after the battle.
This comrade of his was not disposed to take vengeance (as might perhaps have been expected) on all and sundry Englishmen for the loss of his arm. Having expressed his sense of what was befitting, and provided us with an instance of the survival of tribal responsibility, for which as students of history we were bound to be grateful to him, he went on his way and we saw him no more.
Gradually our relations with our neighbours improved. It is difficult to keep up malice against a man who provides good “English salt” (quinine); and thus folk became interestingly, but almost inconveniently, friendly. What ought one to do, when the wife of a Kurd, who has got into trouble with his Agha, asks for your intercession; and all the Christians in the neighbourhood, as well as the man’s own friends, assure you that the object of their prayer is a very good and charitable man, barring the fact that he commits murders occasionally? What is the really “fit and beautiful” in the following cause matrimonial, when the applicants come and throw themselves in the road at your horse’s feet, and declare that you are welcome to ride over them, but get up they will not, till you have promised them redress?
Jevdet, a worthy Kurd of Ghara (outlaw, of course, like every man in that happy Alsatia), betrothed his daughter Amin to a neighbour, Tewfik, in settlement of a debt owed[{331}] to the latter.[147] However, Amin rebelled and ran away to a worthy old man of Amadia, one Abd-l-Aziz, who is a sort of universal uncle to all the neighbourhood, and is at the bottom of most local intrigues. Abd-l-Aziz, resourceful man, thought that an alliance with the damsel’s family would be valuable; so he betrothed her at once to a nephew of his own, and reported her to her parents as “lost, and I don’t know where to find her.” Presently, however, Amin, being a lady, changed her mind—mollified by the news that Tewfik had actually spent the sum of £20 to get possession of her—and got a letter through to him somehow, begging him to come like a true lover, and rescue her from the consequences of her own actions. Under these circumstances Jevdet and Tewfik both came and threw themselves at the feet of the writer and the Consul, assured us that they had no hope save in Allah and ourselves, and begged for redress!
Yet of all the negotiations in which we were engaged, that which sticks most in our memory is the matter of Abdurrahman the Kurd, and the difficulty first of getting him into prison and afterwards of getting him out. Abdurrahman had the impudence to rob a messenger who was bringing down letters to us. He took everything except the letters themselves (which was courteous) and allowed the messenger to come wading through the winter snow to our house, clad in nothing but the envelope.
This was a thing that could not be allowed to pass, and we demanded the arrest and imprisonment of the thief, who was known to the robbed man. At first the governor professed inability to do anything in the matter, and did not see that any duty was incumbent on him. However, an appeal to the Vali at Mosul produced an order, and in due course Abdurrahman was lodged in the town gaol. “Get him imprisoned here, not at Mosul, Rabbi!” had been the advice of one of our servants. “It is no punishment to be imprisoned at[{332}] Mosul; they give bread to the captives there almost every day.” In more primitive Amadia your friends are at liberty to supply you; but if they omit that attention, you do not eat.
Abdurrahman had plenty of friends, so he did not fare badly in the prison; but when he had been there about a week, we received a message from the kaimakam. Would we mind saying if our thirst for vengeance was glutted yet? For if so, our victim might be released. We sent a reply to the effect that it was no case of private vengeance, but of the peace of his Majesty the Sultan; and that if, as we presumed, Abdurrahman had now served his full sentence, of course he could be released.
“Oh no,” replied the ever-courteous but bored Governor, “our wisdom was labouring under a misapprehension in this. As for the peace of the Sultan, his Majesty had not got any; and as for sentence, he had never even tried the man yet. In fact, he had been at some pains to explain to our victim’s relations (a fairly wild sept of Kurds) that it was not his fault that their kinsman was in durance, but purely the doing of that Englishman, who had insisted on it so.”
“Then release him with our blessing,” said we. “Ten days in the hole you call a prison is more than enough for a trifling indiscretion such as he committed.”
“Then please,” came the message in reply, “would we mind coming up to the town to sign a document to that effect?” It had been already prepared, and only needed signature, and a man of our wisdom would understand that this was necessary, and that in a civilized and constitutional land like Turkey, the formalities of law must be observed.