Chapter IX: Afloat

We rode into Diarbekr on Christmas Day, arriving just in time to share the plum-pudding at the house of Major Anderson, the Vice-Consul.

They say of Diarbekr that its houses are black, that its dogs are black, and that the hearts of its people are black--and they say so truly. The first moment that one catches sight of it in the distance one is impressed by the blackness of its walls, built of a black volcanic stone. When one gets inside, the people look dourly at one, and the Zaptiehs ride closer together. But this may be because they have no other choice, the streets being often only four feet across. It is quite easy to cross a street from on high by jumping from one roof to another; and it is certainly cleaner, for down below we are ankle deep in mud, in which great boulders are embedded--relics, presumably, of ancient pavement or fallen houses. If you want to take the air at Diarbekr you walk round and round the flat roof of your house and watch the life of your neighbours on adjoining roofs; or else, closely accompanied by armed cavasses, you ride out into the bleak, stony country, and follow up some mud stream in the hopes of getting a shot at wild duck and snipe.

* * * * *

A week later we sat on the banks of the Tigris by the Roman bridge which spans the river just below the black walls of Diarbekr. The raft on which we were about to embark was moored to the shore and the men were loading our belongings. A dancing-bear stumped about to the tune of a bagpipe made of the skin which answers so many purposes in the East. When inflated they can be used either for carrying water for people inside, or for carrying people on water outside. We were using 260 of them in this latter way. They were tied on to two layers of poplar poles put crossways, forming a raft about eighteen feet square. At one end were two small huts made of felt stretched across upright poles; the fore end was weighted down with bags of merchandise laid side by side across the poles to form a rough floor.

The two kalekjis (raftsmen) waded in and out with a great seeming sense of hurry but without appearing to accomplish anything.

"Can't you hurry the men up?" said X.

"No," I answered, "we are in the East."

"You might try," she said; "you always leave me all the talking to do."

"They do not understand my Turkish," I said apologetically.

"It would not take you long to learn enough for that," went on X.

"I do know the swears," I answered humbly, and I stood up amongst the men and delivered myself of them.

"Quick! quick! the Pasha is angry!" said the men.

Our crew had assembled; there were our two personal attendants, Hassan and Arten. Hassan was now our interpreter, for, although he could only talk Turkish, he could interpret our signs to other Turks until we learnt the language. Arten, we found, was more Armenian than cook, and sang us Christian hymns in his native language when we felt low after meals. Then there were two kalekjis in charge of the raft; they were Kurds; we had yet to discover their qualifications. Two Zaptiehs forming our escort made up the number. We did not yet look upon them as individuals, but as part of an abstract regime in the country with which we now felt tolerably familiar; the outward aspect of it was a ragged uniform and an antiquated rifle, which served many useful purposes but had forgotten how to eject bullets.

"Hazir dir, hazir" (Ready, ready), shouted the kalekjis. The owner of the dancing-bear hurriedly thrust his fez under our noses.

"Don't give him anything," I said, "a bear has no business to be dancing in this country; he ought to be trying to eat us in a cave."

"The demoralisation of the bear comes from the West," said X, who was studying the primitive habits of the natives, "we must pay for it."

"Does this abuse of the hat emanate from the same source?" I inquired, as she dropped a coin into the fez.

"That would be an interesting point to inquire into," said X, and she made an entry in her notebook.

The worst of X was that you never knew whether she was laughing at you. It is a most uncomfortable position, which men as a rule resent. But I was another woman, and took it philosophically, especially as X accused me of the same failing, and we never see ourselves as others see us.

We boarded the raft: the coil of rope which had fastened it to the shore was hauled in, and we drifted slowly out into the centre of the muddy stream. We were followed by another raft, laden up with bags of merchandise, which was coming with us to share the protection of our escort.

We went into the sleeping-hut to ascertain the length of its possibilities. Boards had been nailed across the poles to form a floor, and on this was spread a thick native felt mat. Dwellers on land little know the feeling of luxury recalled to my mind in writing these words:--the luxury of being able to drop all the things addicted to dropping, especially when dressing, with the knowledge that they would not disappear for ever in the depths of the Tigris waters; the luxury of being able to walk in the ordinary biped method of placing one foot in front of the other.

This was not the case in the open part of the raft, where the floor, formed of poles and sacks, exhibited a network of rounded interstices. The water gurgled and spluttered below them: one's foot invariably slipped into them when cautiously manipulating a journey across the raft by hopping from a slippery pole to a sliding sack; and unattached articles dropped through them on to the skins below, and were occasionally rescued in a dripping condition before they were washed away altogether. The water showed spiteful discrimination in its washing-away proclivities. I recall certain chinks in the more roughly boarded floor of the hut where we had our meals, through which the cook had a habit of brushing his cooking refuse, and where, if one was rash enough to look, there could be seen an accumulation of tea-leaves and bones and bits of decaying delicacies which one associated with meals of past ages.

The felt walls of the hut were lined on the inside with white cotton tacked on the poles. There were two small glazed windows, one of which opened. The door was a single width of felt tied with tape. There was just room inside for our two camp-beds--with a space between, which would admit of one of us occupying it at a time. At the foot of each bed stood our two Eastern sacks, which contained all our worldly goods. I feel constrained, on mentioning this form of luggage, to say a word of warning concerning it. In one sense it is easy to pack, because you need not fold anything up, but can simply stuff it in and give the bag a shake; and it is easy to unpack, if you do it in a wholehearted manner--standing in the centre of a large room or a vast desert where you can turn it upside down and spill everything out on the ground. But under ordinary circumstances the bundle of hay with the needle in it is nothing to this sack with your clean handkerchief in it. X and I had a mutual understanding owing to which we never attacked a sack while the other was within hearing; but whenever she appeared in a half-fainting condition and asked the cook why on earth tea was so late, I knew what she had been doing. She had asked me, as a personal favour (the only one I've ever known her ask) not to attack my sack in the morning, because it was a pity to have the whole day spoilt, and if I did it in the evening to go to bed before she did.

But to return from this digression. Having examined our quarters, I arranged a rug on the open part of the raft and sat down to take in the surroundings.

Arten was unpacking cooking-pots in the second hut, and the other men sat about on the sacks smoking silently. The boatmen sat on a pile of sacks in the middle and manipulated the oars which served to steer the raft and keep it in the fast part of the current. The oars consisted of single young willow-trees, with short strips of split willow bound on one end with twigs, forming the blade; they were tied on to rough rowlocks made of twisted withies wound round heavily-weighted sacks. The Tigris at this point is singularly hideous. There was not a single blade of vegetation to be seen anywhere; the country was a stretch of mud hills and stony desert, and the mud banks of the river were only relieved by the hosts of water-birds that darted in and out or waded in the shallows. The high black escarpment, crowned by the massive black walls of Diarbekr, and fringed by a swampy tract of willow gardens, rose up sharply above the mud flats. As we were carried along the winding course of the sluggish river a higher mud bank shut it altogether from our view, and I felt we had severed that link with the world which one feels so strongly on arriving in any town of a distant uncivilised land, where a European mail occasionally arrives and a telegraph wire eliminates the isolation of its natural position.

We were drifting into an unknown world at the mercy of these unknown Kurds. We were alone with the birds and the mud banks and the rippling waters.