THE MOUNTAINS OF DIZ AND TAL, FROM THE PASS ABOVE QUDSHANIS
Looking across the Zab Gorge, which at this point is about 3,000 feet deep
Then followed a deed as brutal and dastardly as it was characteristically Turkish. Hormizd, Mar Shimun’s eldest brother, a young man of three-and-twenty, had been at Constantinople for his education—at the Turkish Government’s own invitation—for a period of over two years. As soon as Turkey entered the war, he had been arrested and placed in confinement, and obviously could have had no personal responsibility for any of the events that had occurred subsequently. He was now sent under guard to Mosul to be used for the foulest of blackmail.
The Vali of that city was no longer worthy old Tahir.[158] With the good luck that had generally attended him, and which he had generally merited, he had been gathered to his fathers little more than a twelve-month before. His successor, Haidar Beg, was a ruffian—a fit tool for higher placed ruffians—and this man now sent Mar Shimun the message: “Your brother is in my hands, and unless you surrender he dies.”
The brothers were almost of an age. They had been bound together from infancy by ties of the closest affection. It is vain to hope that any words of ours can succeed in conveying to our readers the poignancy of the trial to which Mar Shimun now found himself subjected. But his choice was the choice of Guzman the Good. “My people are in my charge, and they are many,” he answered; “how can I betray them for the sake of one, though that one be my brother?” And, on the receipt of this answer, Hormizd was put to death.
ENTRANCE TO AMADIA.