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Updated: June 9, 2025
And then, after about a week of marching, came Tugendheim back to us, ragged and thirsty and nearly dead, on a horse more dead than he. He had bought himself free from the Kurds with the gold Ranjoor Singh gave him; but because he had no more gold the Persians had refused to feed him.
He hurried out of the house with Meshadi, ran up the hill to the Kurd village that lies there, entered, said to the fierce Kurds, 'Give back those girls to us. And they, as they looked into his face, could not resist him though they were armed and he was not. So they gave the Assyrian girls back to him and he led them down the hill to their homes."
I picked my way through the narrow streets, scattering ragged Kurds right and left; past part of the covered bazaar, until I came to a house with a large courtyard, thronged with a motley array of Kurdish irregulars, armed with every sort of weapon. It was there that Soane administered his stern but practical justice, for he thoroughly understood how to handle these men.
But they are to receive an escort of us Kurds to take them through Persia. We mountain Kurds are not afraid of Persians." "Which Kurds are to provide the escort?" Ranjoor Singh asked him, and the Kurd shook his head. "Nay," he said, "that none can tell. It is not yet agreed. There is small competition for the task.
The women said the battle had not begun; and the prisoners bade our Kurds swallow tribal enmity and hurry to do their share! The chief listened to them, saying nothing. Has the sahib ever watched a savage thinking while lust drew him one way and pride another? Truly an interesting sight!
In the debatable land were a number of native villages, and such inhabitants as remained in them led an unpleasantly eventful existence. In the morning they would be visited by a Turkish patrol, which would be displaced by us in our rounds. Perhaps in the evening a band of wild mountainy Kurds would blow in and run off some of their few remaining sheep.
The travellers were crossing a recently reaped corn-field, when half-a-dozen Kurds, armed with stout cudgels, sprang out from their hiding-place among the sheaves, and, seizing the bridles, poured out a volley of mingled oaths and menaces.
Some fell in with a thing the Turks call a hamidieh regiment; that is a rabble of Kurds under the command of Tenekelis." "What are they?" "Tenekelis? The word means 'tin-plate men. We call them that because of the tin badges given them to wear in their head-dress. In no other way do they resemble officers. They are brigands favored by official recognition, that is all.
A few words from the zaptiehs, who had advanced among them, seemed to put the Kurds at their ease, though they did not by any means appease their curiosity. They invited us to partake of their frugal lunch of ekmek and goat’s-milk cheese.
One small fragrant herb, that was the most abundant of all, we were told was used by the Kurds for making tea. All these filled the evening air with perfume as we trudged along, passing now and then a Kurdish lad, with his flock of sheep and goats feeding on the mountain-grass, which was here much more luxuriant than below.
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