The mountain at the head of the valley is a shoulder of Sat Dagh. The terrace fields of a mountain village appear in the lower corner.
No. 7
The very rooms in which we were sitting, sipping tea and smoking cigarettes with his Holiness, had been the scene of what Major Dugald Dalgetty would call “a very pretty little camisado” during the progress of the late campaign. The castle, as a frontier post, was a position of some importance; and it was a shrewd loss to the Sheikh when the Agha whom he had placed in charge of it betrayed his trust to his foes. The Agha was fully aware that his seigneur might feel sore about it. He kept the place strongly garrisoned, and posted around it a double line of sentries and watch-dogs. The approaches on two sides are barred by the rivers, unfordable and icy cold in winter; and on the third side rise precipitous mountains, barely climbable even by day. But one night in a winter blizzard, when the very dogs had crept away to seek shelter, the Sheikh’s men seized their opportunity and wormed their way up to the fort. The howling of the tempest drowned the noise of their[{145}] picks as they cautiously loosened stone after stone from the walling; and at length they formed an opening large enough for one man to creep through at a time. When the next morning broke the treacherous Agha lay dead, with every man of his garrison around him: and the gentleman who was acting as host to the Sheikh and ourselves this evening had been there and then appointed successor. Presumably he was a “sure man.”
Our supper consisted of bowls of whey, and of rice with pieces of chicken. The Sheikh and eight or ten of his principal henchmen ate with us, all helping themselves out of the common dishes with wooden ladles and spoons. They all ate extremely sparingly; but this was probably out of etiquette, the Sheikh himself setting the example because he was feeling indisposed. Upon another occasion, when the Sheikh came to call upon us, his four attendants were credited with having consumed a whole sheep![88]
To his own men the Sheikh spoke but rarely, though pleasantly and often smilingly; and they never seemed to speak to him unless they had been first addressed. With us (as he spoke only Kurdish) he had to converse through an interpreter; and the matters debated for the most part concerned the petty politics of the countryside. He bewailed the universal lawlessness, which, he said (we fear rather inaccurately), was as bad for Kurds as for Christians; and observed that it was strange that neither England nor Russia seemed capable of bringing in reform. “You have gone to India,” he protested, “and you stay there, though you are not wanted. Why cannot you come to us who do want you? You would be welcomed everywhere here.”
Such feelings are well-nigh universal among all the more reputable chieftains. They would appreciate any strong Government, no matter of what nation or creed. The only folk really content with the present condition of Asiatic Turkey are those who have merited hanging: and we grant that this class would poll strong.[{146}]
Hearing that we were returning to England within a few months at the latest, the Sheikh volunteered to accompany us—of course with an adequate “tail.” He would call on the Archbishop of Canterbury and get him to establish schools in his villages; and then he would go on to see King George at Windsor, with whose aid he made no question he could arrange for the settlement of Kurdistan. Alas! We could hold out no hopes. But the suggestion was made in dead earnest; and we fear that when we did start homewards we were careful not to let the Sheikh know.
Finally he desired to consult us medicinally. He was troubled with an affection of the eyes[89]—in point of fact trachoma—and begged us to give him some medicine which was capable of affording relief. We could do nothing for him at the time; but shortly afterwards we were able to bring up an English doctor from the C.M.S. hospital at Mosul and let the Sheikh have the benefit of his professional skill.
It then transpired that in the interval he had consulted a native practitioner; a wandering Yezidi medicine-man who had recently drifted to Barzan. The Yezidi had diagnosed the watering of the eyes as due to an excess of moisture behind the eye-balls, and had proposed running a red-hot skewer through the Sheikh’s head from temple to temple, in order to dry up the “superfluous moisture” at the fountain head! This horrifying suggestion was both made and received quite seriously. But the Sheikh, very reasonably, had elected to consult the English doctor first. We did not feel much surprised at his Holiness’s reluctance to submit to this treatment: but we did feel some admiration for the heroic assurance of the Yezidi doctor in proposing it. Being pierced through the temples with a red-hot skewer would not be a pleasant way of dying; but it would be luxury compared with the sort of devices which the Sheikh’s followers might be expected to practise on the operator, by way of obtaining consolation for the patient’s untimely decease.[{147}]
The Sheikh was, we fear, rather crestfallen to find that the English doctor also wished to operate; and stipulated that he should first see the operation practised on one of his train (who had nothing the matter with him at all). The vile corpus was quite willing; but unfortunately the doctor jibbed at it, and eventually decided to prescribe a slower and less certain treatment. We hope that this will prove adequate: but we should have felt sorely tempted to perform a sham operation on the volunteer, in order to overcome the Sheikh’s reluctance to submit himself to the real one.