(N.B. half a minim is the maximum allowed by the British Pharmacopœia!)
Persian tea-spoons are not as big as English, so perhaps he had not given much more than thirty times the full dose. The consultant gave it as his opinion that as the patient had survived twenty-four hours, he would recover; and the event justified his wisdom.
There was one case brought to us that afternoon, however, that was quite beyond our skill. A man came with a tale of woe expressed in a mountain dialect that we could not follow; and the bishop had to be impressed as interpreter. He heard, and collapsed in a fit of laughter, gasping out, “He wants a medicine to quiet his wife’s tongue, Rabbi.”
“Tell him I am not a worker of miracles, my lord,” said we.
The most important subject of local politics that came up for discussion was an attempt recently made by a reforming local governor to take a census of the men of Jilu. A Government official had come among them with papers and ink, and proceeded to write down all their names. When they asked what it was all about, he explained that it was the elections to the Mejlis-i-Mebussan, the Turkish Parliament; and that if their names were written down properly they should have a member all to themselves,[{175}] who should be a man of Jilu, and should live in Constantinople and draw a fine salary, just for sitting in the capital and representing their grievances to the Sultan.
The idea seemed a good one, and folk gave in their names freely, till the census was nearly finished. But then it occurred to them that perhaps they had been hasty, and that these lists might be used for other things than the election of an M.P. What if they were a basis for taxation? or even worse, for the drafting of their young men to the army? The result was that a “strong deputation” went after the Government mudir (who, by the way, was an Armenian), confiscated all his papers and burnt them. He was disposed to think that he was fortunate in that he had not been himself thrown on to the pile.
A casually minded Government took no notice of the little incident, which after all only concerned an Armenian underling.[102] Had it been a real Turkish official, there would probably have been trouble for every one concerned; and a good many more besides.[{176}]
CHAPTER IX
THE DEBATABLE LAND (GAWAR, TERGAWAR, MERGAWAR)
JILU, take it all round, is the most savage bit of primæval chaos in all the “ashiret” districts of Kurdistan; yet a short journey beyond it brings us to a district which is in a much more advanced stage of geological development, the strange plain of Gawar. Starting in the morning from one of the glens which lie absolutely under the peaks and crags of Galiashin, our caravan has to traverse one of the grandest, narrowest, and rockiest gorges even in this land of wild ravines—the magnificent gorge of Ishtazin. And yet by the evening, after crossing a range that much resembles our own Sussex downs on a large scale, we are camping on an absolutely level plain of great extent—the “Gawar.”
This word, presumably Kurdish, appears to mean a level plain surrounded by mountains; and it is used, singly and in combination, more than once in the neighbourhood. But our new camping-place is “the Gawar” par excellence, “The Level.” It is the bed of an ancient lake, and so has a general family resemblance to the “morfa” of Tremadoc in North Wales, though the hills surrounding it are considerably higher than Snowdon; and the change from mountain to plain is so abrupt and obvious that one can say definitely to a few yards where one leaves the one and enters on the other. The point is further emphasized, by an old pebble beach.