THE QUDSHANIS MOUNTAINS.
From the village of Shwawutha, the scene of the incident related on p. 263. The Zab river is just visible at the foot of the glen, and beyond it rises the great mass of the Kokobuland Dagh. Qudshanis lies just below the snow line, at the head of the lateral valley opposite.
No. 10
As there was after all no personal feeling in the matter, they agreed to that compromise; and we proceeded safely. When we heard the tale later we could only be grateful to[{225}] our host for his consideration; and convinced even more in the semi-fatalistic belief that is apt to soak into one in a land of “Kismet”—the belief that every man is immortal till his work is done.
There was an afterpiece to the play; what had very nearly been a tragedy developing into something resembling a farce. This is not unusual in the East; for the angel, (or devil) charged with looking after the Persian and Ottoman empires, has a strong—if grim—sense of humour; and mercifully sees to it that the most serious and painful of matters shall always have also a ridiculous side. Our kind hosts at Umbi, having allowed reasonable time for their guests to carry out their expressed intentions, reported them at Urmi as already accomplished; saying that the Englishman and his party had been actually killed. “Is it not already done sahib?” is what your servant says to you about some order that he may, or may not, intend to carry out when convenient; and the minds of these gentlemen were working on similar lines. Word was accordingly brought to the British Consul, then staying in Urmi, that some of the men for whom he was responsible had been murdered. At first that official was blankly incredulous. One acquires a large fund of scepticism about all rumours in the East, and this was a man of some experience. Still, the report grew and grew, and was confirmed again and again, and the bald and unconvincing narrative was embellished with corroborative detail; till at last somebody with an artistic mind came in to declare that he had not only seen our corpses lying on a certain pass, but had smelt them as well; and gave the name of the Sheikh whose bridle was now adorned by the writer’s beard! Even consular scepticism broke down under this strain; and a caravan was got ready, and even coffins ordered for us so that decent interment might be given to our bodies; when a Nestorian qasha turned up opportunely from the mountains, and was summoned before the Consul at once.
“Have you heard anything of this reported murder of Mr. Wigram on the Jerma pass, on the 25th day of the month?” was the query.[{226}]
“I have sahib; but I think that on the whole it is not true, because I had tea with him at Qudshanis” (well beyond the scene of the supposed murder), “on the 30th.”
As the road goes north-west towards Van, the traveller gradually enters the land of the Armenian Christians, leaving the Assyrian or Nestorian land behind. Kurdistan, which is the general though unofficial title for the land where the Kurds live, embraces both; and of course any Turk will tell you that there is no such land as Armenia or Armenistan. Under the old régime, the word was carefully erased from all maps or books that entered the country,[117] lest erroneous teaching should be given in the Sultan’s schools; and much in the same spirit, books on chemistry were sometimes barred, because they contained the treasonable formula, H2O. The seditiousness of this is perhaps not obvious: but it will be clear to the meanest capacity when it is explained that H2 means, and can only mean, Hamid II, Sultan of Turkey; and if you supply the obviously understood symbol = between the 2 and the O, you get the appalling doctrine, “Hamid II = Zero,” which clearly cannot be allowed to pass.
Armenia then, does not exist; though there are districts where Armenians are the prevailing type of Christians; and we are now entering one of them. Of course there is a certain amount of “interlacing,” and isolated villages of either form of Christianity are found scattered among the districts mainly inhabited by the other.
Bashkala, which will be found upon the map, is the seat of government for the district; and this place is inhabited mainly by Jews, who are, as always, the financiers and merchants of the land. It is a postal centre, principally remarkable for the fact that the post goes to that point from Van, for distribution to such centres as Julamerk, Neri, and Diza; but only strays on to them, when a zaptieh or policeman happens to be going in that direction. Then he takes on the letterbag, provided that he does not[{227}] forget, or that it is not too heavy for him to carry. Hence letters and papers sometimes spend some time in that office; and we remember the courteous remark of the mutaserif[118] of the place, who observed to us when we called upon him on the way to Van after a winter spent in Qudshanis, “Effendim, the papers you used to receive during the winter had very good pictures in them.” It sounded cool, but after all, the poor man had little to read; the papers were none the worse for his looking at them, and he never meddled with the letters. Also, he always sent them on when he had done with them, and his action did not even imply any delay in the forwarding; so it seemed to us that there was nothing very much to complain about.