Having, acquired a competence in his profession, Seyyid Ullah retired as he grew older; but, like other energetic gentlemen, found that he really needed something to do. For this reason, he took to smuggling tobacco, a profitable occupation, but one that brought him into collision with the Government in a way that mere burglary had never done—for tobacco is a Government monopoly. So one night a caravan of mules on their way to his house were attacked by the guards of the “Regie,” and not only were the loads lost, but there was a dead policeman to explain. He had died of a Mannlicher bullet; and there was only one rifle of that type in Mosul—the property of Seyyid Ullah; who notoriously allowed nobody else to handle it. Moreover the bullet had apparently come from a roof where that poor man was standing at the time.
Some unscrupulous enemy put all these coincidences before the Government, with the result that Seyyid Ullah[{75}] was arrested, and even ordered into gaol. Not that he entered it, for gaol is not for such as he; he merely sat in the coffee-shop outside, and when that enemy who had given the information went past on his way to market, he was mobbed and hustled by the Seyyid’s followers, till a formal petition had to be sent in to the Vali that he should be requested to go inside. Of course they gave him the best room, with a window looking over the street; and the governor of the prison used to give him his company to dinner and pass the time over a backgammon board; but he complained that the damp was bad for his rheumatism.
At last the worthy man was tried; and acquitted without a stain upon his character. The court held (so far as foreign residents could understand) that the policeman had been guilty of contributory negligence, in that he got in the way of a bullet that was travelling about on its lawful occasions; and that all facts about the make of the rifle, and so on, were irrelevant details.
A free man again, Seyyid Ullah came at once to call upon the British Consul, to explain that he quite understood that his release from the machinations of his enemies was due solely to the influence of his Excellency the Bey; and that he was more than ready to undertake any job the Consul desired, in the way of removing any objectionable person, for he must own that the expenses incidental to his acquittal had made a sad hole in his savings!
Some time previous to this, there had been great complaining among the merchants of Mosul over the depredations of a certain gang of thieves, all of whom were well known to the police, and who were plundering peaceful citizens apparently at their own sweet will.
Authority, though most unwilling, was prodded into some sort of activity, and that particular gang was arrested and stowed in gaol. The robberies, however, did not diminish a whit; and after a while the governor of the prison pointed out this fact to the Vali. Evidently “those poor men” had been wrongly arrested after all, and ought in fairness to be released—seeing that they had never been[{76}] tried. This seemed reasonable, but there was the usual delay before doing anything, and in those few days the true explanation came to light. The honourable the governor of the prison was in the habit of letting the gang in question out of the gaol every night, “to go and sleep at their own houses.” They returned again before dawn, thus getting the most satisfactory alibi any man could desire; while, in consideration of his complacency, the governor was taking half their plunder! It is true that this official was dismissed from his post in consequence, but apparently he received no further penalty of any sort.
This may, perhaps, sound a “tough yarn”; yet we may find a fairly recent parallel for it in England. The memoirs of William Hickey record an even worse scandal of one of the London bailiffs in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Our boasted superiority to this sort of thing is of very recent date, and perhaps will not be of very long duration.
The Governor-General or Vali, who ruled this city of confusion and corruption, was perhaps as good a man as could have been selected for a job where his powerlessness to effect any real improvement would have broken the heart of anyone who still had any enthusiasms or delusions left.
Tahir Pasha was an Albanian by blood, though he had grown grey in the Sultan’s service, and had certainly never seen his own mountains since boyhood. Still, “once an Arnaut, always an Arnaut,” and, as a general rule, men of that very striking race are the best possible Ottoman officials; particularly in places where their duty is (or is supposed to be) the preservation of an even balance between the various Christian and Mussulman races.
It is impossible for an Arnaut to despise all Christians just because of their religion; for a large proportion of his own race are of that creed, and it is an axiom that every Arnaut is congenitally superior to every other specimen of manhood. That being so, he may despise all his subjects equally (and very probably does so), but at least he does not despise any one set specially, and there is always a chance of his doing some justice among them.[{77}]