Nov. 9. Darling Father. It's no good telling you where I am because it isn't so much as marked in the ordinance map, so I'll content myself with relating how I got here. I left Baghdad on the night of the 2nd by train - you won't be surprised (being acquainted with Mesopotamian railways) to hear that the engine broke down before it started and we set off 2 hours' late, ie at midnight. Consequently when I woke we were at Qizil Robat [Sa'diyah, As] - exactly where we were at the same hour when you and I went up to the Persian frontier. However, I didn't mind; the Persian hills were within sight and the country had already the jolly upland air which greets you like a benediction when you've been months in the plain. We stayed an hour or more at Qizil Robat - it's where they screw the Rs 5 fee for passports out of the Persian pilgrims who have evaded the invitation of the police to pay it in Baghdad. I dressed and breakfasted on the hard boil egg of Constantine's contempt, together with good hot tea out of your thermos. We then strolled on the Kingerban [Kingirban]. It was a miracle my carriage kept together. Mesopotamian railways are eighteen months older than when you saw them. We've no money for new rolling stock, nor spares to allow for docking and repairs. The result you may guess. The handles of the doors come off in your hand, if you thoughtlessly open a window you can't shut it for lack of any strap to hold of; the taps in the washing rooms don't work and when I got hot water from the engine I had to stop the hole in the basin with paper for want of a plug - I need not have bothered; when I withdrew the paper plug the water wouldn't run out! I didn't care - it was so delicious to feel a cold air and to sit lazily in the sunny corner of a carriage reading a novel and looking at the low hills. Motors were waiting for me at Kingerban. I got off a little after 2 and reached Kirkuk at 6 in the last flicker of daylight - just as we did; no we were well into the night. The Divisional Advisor is Major Marshall, with whom I stayed. I had the same room in the little courtyard with a stream running through it - do you remember? - and how very much I wished that you were in the room opposite! I had a long talk with Major Marshall about local politics. Kirkuk, you know, has refused, and has even refused rudely to swear allegiance to Faisal. It is half Turk, half Kurd and the Turkish element certainly wishes to get back to Turkey which, since Kirkuk is in the middle of 'Iraq, can't be countenanced. The Kurdish part may possibly want to join up with a Kurdish state, if ever one materializes; meantime the whole province is under an Arab Mutasarrif who dares not fly the Arab flag, can't fly the British and therefore flies none. He came to dinner, did Fattah Pasha; a more or less honest official of the old school who finds himself in a very delicate situation, the only compensation of which is that he is bosom friends with his Advisor.
Next morning I had a visit from the Mayor, who is a Turk and the chief agent in the pro-Turkish movement, but since it's best to have the Kirkuk situation undefined, we talked of nothing but the weather and the crops.

I got off by motor at about 11, eastward to Sulaimani [Sulaymaniyah, As]. The road ran at first through a broken country of little mud hills, confused and ugly because they lack all mountain architecture. Gradually the jumping hillocks gathered themselves together and coalesced into an upland down country with broad gracious curves and grassy hollows where a tiny spring would rise, cradled in purple-flowered mint. Before long we reached the summit and saw Bellow us the Chemchemal [Chamchamal] valley with a range of real mountains beyond it, barren and rock built, and beyond that, range behind range, the Kurdish highlands, to the Persian frontier and further still. Far to the N.E. the great massif of Kandil[?] Dagh lifted its snowy flanks against the sky. Hills and valleys were almost alike unpeopled and uncultivated; the seer grasses spread their white-gold carpet to the rock, the rock rose stark to heaven and there was nothing else in the landscape, except at our feet the tiny village of Chemchemal, flat mud roofs clustered Bellow an ancient Median mound. It is the country of the fierce Hamawand tribe, a living terror to the Government and the scattered villages (which from their protective colouring and their site among the hill folds I could not see) until we came and discovered the Hamawand to be no more than a pack of some 200 greedy aghas who could be curbed and controlled by a British Assistant Political Officer. We have just built him a respectable house over which the Union Jack was flying, but he had not got into it yet and I found him in the smallest imaginable Kurdish quarters, with his lunch spread out on an upturned box and a Hamawand agha squatting beside him, deep in talk.

I stayed with him 10 minutes while we changed a wheel and then went on through a broken rocky country which led us gradually upwards to the gate through the mountain range - the Bazian Pass where in the summer of 1919 we broke and scattered the forces of Shaikh Mahmud. That's a long and tortuous tale, vide any White Book. In the pass we met a buxom rosy Kurdish girl with a baby strapped onto her back and a loaded cow walking sedately in front of her - strange pack animal. As soon as it saw us it took fright and attempted to scramble up the stony bank where, cow-like, it collapsed hopelessly under its load. The baby began to cry, the woman beat the cow and the cow struggled effetely till I thought it would break its legs - such a pother we had made in Kurdistan with our motor! So we flew to the rescue, unloaded the cow, set it on its feet, held the baby till the mother had tied up the loads again and then went happily on our several ways. Ours was a very lovely way - the wide rolling Bazian valley clothed in the pale gold of its withered grass and beyond it another range of lowish mountains - Tashlujah Dagh. Here on the wide silent grassy slopes I stopped to lunch. Near by a Kurdish family was gathering cotton from a small field in the middle of the grass - where they came from I can't think; there was no village in sight. We crossed the low Tashlujah Pass and dropped into Sulaimani valley, much broader than Bazian or Chemchemal, equally empty and backed by a yet higher range of bare beautiful hills. Far away down the valley we could see the trees and houses of Sulaimani town which we reached about 5. There were a few scattered villages on the slopes near it and people on the road going home - the women carrying roped bales of dried grass 8 or 10 ft long and 4 ft wide. They looked like some fantastic kind of beetle with the hay towering up over their bent backs and nothing to be seen from behind but a pair of sturdy ankles on which the bales jogged along. It was sunset when we got to Sulaimani. We went straight up to Major Goldsmith's house, an enchanting Persian house with a garden full of yellowing pomegranate trees and rows of late-flowering cosmos. You go in through a little hall in the centre of the house to an open diwan with wooden columns, looking onto the garden and there we sat and had tea. My bedroom, a long Persian room with latticed windows onto the garden was next to the diwan, and beyond it a big comfortable drawing room which has been added on to the original house. The whole place enchanting with its white walls and Persian niched recesses, wooden ceilings and big fireplaces in which we were glad enough in the evening to see a wood fire burning. Sulaimani is between 2000 and 3000 ft up and felt deliciously late autumnal. With Major Goldsmith are his assistant Capt. Beale, whom I've known and liked for long, his secretary, Capt Holt (who retired to bed with measles the day after I arrived, poor dear) and the Levy officers, Capt Makant and Capt Bourn, the first a very nice creature who usually spends most of his time with me on the rare occasions when he comes to Baghdad. We're running Sulaimani as a purely Kurdish province, directly under the High Commission and detached from the Iraq, with whom it won't have anything to do. The Levies are Kurds - we have no British troops there - all the officials are Kurds and all the work is done in Kurdish. We are just now engaged in instituting an elective council, 4 Govt members (Major Goldsmith himself and 3 Kurdish officials) 4 representatives of Sulaimani town and one from each of the 4 districts. These last 4 are now in process of being elected and a queer business it is for no one has ever elected anyone before and candidates are very shy of coming forward - indeed they have to be coaxed forward by the local A.P.O. However we shall get something more or less representative of the country and gradually make it assume more and more responsibility. For the moment Major Goldsmith will be President for the reason that there's no one outstanding to put in, but later we hope they'll chose [sic] someone - possibly an educated man of local origin, of whom there are several in Constantinople [Istanbul] - the Turks having ousted most of the big families and brought them to the capital. If and when that happens the structure will be complete - a little self-governing Kurdish state under the High Commissioner. Meantime it's amazing how much has been done. Under the Turks the whole province was in a pertetual [sic] uproar, not a road was safe, not a function of government fulfilled; now it's peaceful and decently administered, the rapacity of the tribal aghas is checked and the peasant cultivates his vineyard and tobacco patch and brings the products safely into the Sulaimani market. Yet except for a little supervision the people do it all themselves - the Kurdish revenue official estimates and levies the dues, but his books must be open for inspection by the British officer who goes round and verifies his accounts and that's enough to keep his accounts reasonably correct. But of course, you understand, the British officer does it all in Kurdish.

I spent the 5th and 6th in Sulaimani, the first day in seeing the nice little town and walking about in the funny picturesque bazaars. They're a jolly people, the Kurds. Their huge twisted turbans, baggy trousers held up by yards and yards of knotted cotton Bellt and short felt jackets are a joy to look at. The townsmen vary the costume with bright coloured or brocaded silk robes under the jacket and a silver handled dagger stuck into the Bellt, but no one need now carry arms to go about his daily business, though a cartridge Bellt or two looks well when you are swaggering round the town. In the evening the 3 Govt officials came to see me, Qadhi, Mal Mudir (Revenue) and Judge. They all talked Arabic and hastened to assure me that they wanted to have nothing to do with the 'Iraq or Faisal. Independent Sulaimani - I won't even say Kurdistan - is what they're out for, with us to help and advise Kurdish officials and if we could manage to find the money for a railway up from Kirkuk they would be obliged. But I told them I feared the last item wasn't likely to materialize. The 6th was rainy but I had a delightful ride in the morning in the foothills with an Arabic-speaking gendarme as a guide. In the afternoon I saw all the Levy establishment with Capt Makant, barracks hospital etc - one of their barracks is Shaikh Mahmud's big rambling house. And the 4 elected members of the Majlis came to tea. Three spoke Arabic, so I wished them good luck with their Majlis and their government generally and said we wanted to see them on good terms with the 'Iraq whatever Govt they chose to have. The Qaimmaqam also came, Riza Beg, and hinted that Kirkuk might like to join up with Sulaimani but I discouraged the topic feeling sure that Kirkuk won't join up with anyone pour le bon motif. Anyhow they will have to work out their own salvation their own way but let's hope they won't choose too stupid a way.

It rained and thundered in the evening and I didn't feel very hopeful about my projected tour through the mountains but behold the morning of the 7th dawned cloudless and still, the world all fresh and the air limpidly clear after the rain. Accordingly at 9 a.m. Captain Beale and I set off with two or three gendarmes gaily attired to suit our high position (a special Arabic-speaking one, Salih Beg, in brown and gold brocade and bright blue cloth attached to me) and Zaiya with a couple of baggage mules behind. I took nothing with me but a camp bed, chair and bath, and a change of clothes - that's all you need in Kurdistan - and you'll readily understand that my heart leapt to hear once more the Bellls of a caravan chiming at my heels. We rode straight up the ridge behind Sulaimani town and there at the top looked out upon the whole country to where over a sea of wooded mountains a high barren range marked the Persian frontier. As we went down the oak scrub grew bigger and bigger; here and there in some grave yard where the wood was holy and not even a broken branch might be carried away for firewood, great trees shaded the splintered stones that covered the graves. I think Islam sits lightly on the mountaineers; sacred groves are everywhere, a ... forgotten or wholly ficticious saint buried in their midst, with stone heaps to show his resting place and crooked oak boughs set upright among them and hung with fluttering rags by pious passers by. The hill tops are crowned with high places, Haji this or Shaikh that serving as a cloak for a far older worship which calls the Moslems of today to offer sacrifice of rags or whatnot where their ancestors made obeisance to the mountains or the lights of heaven.

So we dropped into tumbled[?] valley and oak-clad slopes all vested in the beautiful habit of late autumn, the oaks discreetly resplendent in russet and green, the willows, poplars and plane trees in the valley bottoms gorgeous in gold and scarlet and palest yellow. Here and there a vineyard still held its last brilliant leaves, or a daring vine swathed a whole oak tree from head to foot in flame colour. Presently a troop of horsemen appeared upon our path - it was the local Qaimmaqam and his henchmen come out to meet Capt. Beale. They rode with us an hour into the Qadha H.Q., a tiny village called Kani Sard, Cold Fountain, where we put up in the Govt buildings. You think that was a fine lodging? I'll tell you what it was like: three mud and stone built rooms opening onto a verandah, the mud and wattle roof of which was carried by 3 or 4 slender tree trunks. There were no doors in the 3 doorways and that was just as well, for light and air came through the doorways only, no suspicion of another opening except a small hole in the roof which is erroneously supposed to let out the smoke when you light a wood fire in the central hearth. I know it doesn't because at night our gendarmes lit a fire in the room next to mine and all the smoke came through the intervening doorway till they blocked it up with something or other. There were benches and a table in the verandah where we presently had a delicious lunch, rice and meat stews and sour curds and small black grapes, the latest of many kinds that grow in these hills. Capt Beale had a busy afternoon. First he assembled five or six merchants who had come out from Sulaimani to buy the season's tobacco crop all through the scattered villages and settled with them the approximate price which they were prepared to pay, so that the Govt tenth might be correctly reckoned. Next he plunged into the accounts of 'Abdullah Effendi, the local revenue official and checked the dues he had taken, page after page all neatly recorded in Kurdish - 'Abdullah Effendi keeps his books remarkably well. But I left them and wandered down the valley Bellow the village, by grassy paths between the plucked tobacco patches and the green winter barley, till I came to a great row of golden mulberry trees where I lay down and looked at the blue ranges of hills and the poplars springing up from the stream bed like lighted torches in the sunshine.

I came back at sunset to find Capt Beale finishing his accounts. We filled up the hour before dinner with innumerable glasses of weak and highly sugared tea - the moment you've finished one glass they bring you another and it's useless to try and stop them. And we talked of Gallipoli [Gelibolu] where Capt Beale had spent 6 months as a bombing officer till he fell sick of typhoid and was invalided home just before the end of the campaign - the last of 40 officers who had disappeared from the battalion. And the battalion itself had disappeared by that time - there was nothing left of it. It seemed incredible among the tranquil Kurdish mountains that such wicked madness should have swept over the world so short a time ago.

We dined, much as we had lunched, on the verandah and then went to bed, night time being bedtime at Cold Fountain.

Next day, Oct [November] 8, was gloriously cloudlessly fine. It's ideal weather, just cold enough to make one look forward to the warmth of the sun when it has been up 3 hours and never warm enough to make me feel my thin cloth riding coat too heavy. Capt Beale was due back in Sulaimani - I was very sorry to part with him - and I started off at 8 o'clock with Salih Beg and Zaiya, the two mules and three other gendarmes, not for safety but merely to preserve the dignified appearance of my caravan. It was a 7 hours' ride to Shiwah Kel which lies half an hour Bellow the Persian frontier crest. I don't think I've ever ridden through more beautiful or wilder country. Three times did our bridle path rise gaily two or three thousand feet, to drop as cheerfully two or three thousand feet into the next valley. All the time we rode through russet oak woods, scattered and clustered trees on the steep hill sides, groves on the rolling saddles between valley and valley, and the valleys golden with chestnut trees and aflame with planes, while willows and thickets of blackberry bushes lined every stream. Three rivers did we ford, slender autumn waters which in spring must be impassible torrents, and as we went the woods became more gorgeous with vesture of rosy vine and the slopes above the streams were green with freshly sprung grass. And all empty; we didn't pass through a single village though we saw a few on the slopes above or Bellow us, nor did we meet the whole day long more than 40 people all told, little caravans bringing tobacco bales or bags of walnuts to the Sulaimani market and a few refugees from Persia escaping with such meagre goods as they could carry from the confusion that reigns over the frontier. The Kurdistan on our side has become a sort of promised land, with its peaceful and equitable administration, watched over by a handful of young Englishmen. Every man and boy on the road stopped to salute me as I passed, for was I not in person, as you might say, the great and benevolent Government, besides being a stranger and sojourner among the hospitable folk.

After we had crossed the third river, which was the most beautiful of all, we climbed steadily but with infinite and exquisite windings, towards the frontier ridge. It would be worth your while to come to Kurdistan in autumn only to see the yellow colchicum. Every shale slope is scattered over with its huge golden cups, outspread to the sun, a starry embroidery worked on the red-brown earth.

We climbed and climbed. By reason of the absence of villages there had been no food all day and because the hills were so steep I had walked down most of them to save my pony; therefore before we caught sight of the terraced fieldlets of Shiwah Kel I was feeling pretty hungry. We lost our way among the lowest tobacco plots and just got back onto the path in time to meet the Mudir, who with his horesemen came out to greet us - we had sent a man a few minutes ahead to announce our arrival.

Like all Kurdish villages, Shiwah Kel is built into the steep hillside above the cleft of a stream. In front the houses are two stories [sic] high, the lower story for beasts and the upper for men; at the back the roof is level with the path which separates that house from the one above it, if there is one above it. The top story [sic] stands back upon the roof of the stable. You climb up a ladder made of a single knotched tree trunk and go into an open diwan, the roof of which is carried on the usual tree trunk columns. Here you sit down on carpets and cushions while someone makes tea. The fire may be in the middle of the diwan in which case there's a good deal of wood smoke, or it may be in a fireplace in the end wall with possibly less smoke - chimneys aren't anything to boast of in this country. Behind the diwan there's a room almost pitch dark for it's lighted only by the door and a few lattice-like openings into the diwan. Here the family lives in incredible filth. To one side there's a long narrow room, the length of diwan and living room - I suppose it serves as diwan in winter when it's too cold to sit in the open, but now it's mostly empty, and it's the room where I'm lodged. Here's a plan which may serve for any Kurdish house passim with few variations: [illustration] You'll observe that my room has the advantage of a couple of windows opening onto the stable roof. They are closed by an inner wooden shutter and an outer wooden lattice-work, also openable. No glass. The floors are mud, the walls are mud, and strange creeping things, or running things, into the nature of which I don't further inquire, come out of the crevices. The season for fleas is, God be praised, nearly over.

Now come back to Shiwah Kel.

We went into the house the Mudir was using, for this isn't the village where he lives, and sat down in the diwan. The narrow little gorge Bellow us was filled with glorious chestnut trees and the babble of the stream was music in my ears - think how long it is since I've heard the sound of running water! But I was much too hungry to listen and the best of all moments was when the Mudir produced not only glasses of tea, but also a tray covered with thin flaps of Kurdish bread on which reposed a bowl of sour curds and a couple of skewers of piping hot kebabs. After that I felt equal to grappling with him in Persian a language in which I can always stumble along. Most of them speak it a little, the frontier being a stone's throw away, though it's the frontier not of Persian Persia but Persian Kurdistan.

I went away after a bit to continue this letter to you, which is being written at all odd moments, and at 6 came back to dine with the Mudir. At 8 the faithful Zaiya provided me with a hot bath and I slept a clear 10 hours without another thought. Already I feel like a wholly different person from the one that left Baghdad a week ago.

There are not only very few people but also wonderfully few birds and beasts. We saw some ibex on the way to Shiwah Kel and there's wild sheep which I haven't seen. Red legged and rock partridge, some jays and once a largish hawk - that's all I've seen. In spring the whole country is a paradise of flowers. A black arum growing starkly out of the ground, the blue and yellow autumn crocus, a pink dianthus and a purple mint are all that are flowering now, but I've noticed lots of flowering plants, salvias and saxifrages in abundance. Besides these there are all the bulbs, tulips irises, gladiolus and I don't know what more. They've all disappeared now. My companions think nothing of autumn. When I stand in amazement before the glory of the chestnut trees and the flaming vines they say only that it's a very nice place in spring. They love the spring and speak constantly of its flowers.

High villages like Shiwah Kel - it must be close on 8000 ft - are under snow for at least 3 if not 4 months of the year. I wonder how the people keep themselves alive when the tea and sugar run out and the roads to Sulaimani are snow bound. Wood they have at least in plenty and the oak trees provide also fodder for the cattle - you may see oakleaf stacks packed close between the stems of any little oak tree near the village.

We set out again on Nov 9, the Mudir with us and anyone else who happened to be in Shiwah Kel, such as a Revenue Officer, just to swell the caravan for the first few miles. Our road for the first part of the day ran along the hillside Bellow the Persian crest, up and down and in and out through oak woods. Twice we passed a tiny village built up the side of a gorge with the usual glory of chestnuts, willows and blackberry bushes, the tobacco plots and winter barley straggling down the hillside. But don't think for a moment that you've got in these poverty stricken villages anything like peasant ownership of the soil. They all Bellonged to the Mudir, or at least he owned the greater part of them, his father having been a Qaimmaqam in Turkish times and clearly having made the most of his opportunities. The house where I slept in Shiwah Kel Bellonged to a merchant and in the first village we passed I noticed an unusually good house and found that it Bellonged to the same merchant. He has a wife and family in each and another establishment elsewhere so that whenever he goes about his business he finds himself at home - like your Spanish grandee. The third village, rather larger than the others, was where the Mudir lives. We got there at 11 and stopped to lunch. I wandered about and photographed and then sat in the sun in the Mudir's diwan drinking tea and waiting for lunch. When it came it was particularly good, with an excellent stew added to the rice and bread and curds, and a bunch of grapes. The Mudir's house is palatial, just double the size of the one I planned, the second half being for the women. Also you climb up into his diwan by a real ladder.

We got off again after lunch, the Mudir riding with us for half an hour or so. Our path led over a shoulder and down into a beautiful little village called Suraban - for a wonder it's in the ordinance map and so was the Mudir's village, Naurek. But they're always so wildly spelt that when you read out the names no one recognizes them. I don't wonder; no one who isn't familiar with Kurdish could possibly catch them. They usually mean something but as I don't know what they mean they sound to me like variants of a root that must be as near as I can guess Chwolaghan - that at least would account for the typical Kurdish village name. Naurek comes doubtless from some other root.

After Suraban and its little clustered fields we came into a wider valley, Awa Suwail - Awa means water. And there was quite a lot of Awa, a lovely trout stream, laughing over the stones, the steep slopes above it, along which we rode, covered with golden colchicum. We crossed it and sauntered up the opposite hillside, long fields of brown grass intersected by streams, each one with its thicket of trees and bushes - they were fields of nature's making. No one lived in them or cultivated them. But nearish a village you might see cows wandering about as they pleased and bringing themselves home at night. The Mudir drew my attention to proof of the peacefulness of the land.

When we're not riding with a Mudir conversation with Salih Beg fills up the time. He is very pleasant and obliging, as well as being so well dressed, but a little foolish. The following is typical of our talk:

Salih Beg. Khatun, do you see that girl? her mother was 80 when she was born.

G.B. 80! wallahi! that was very old.

Salih Beg. Yes, 80 or 60 - yallah! 60.

I concluded that the mother may have been 35.

He's never at a loss for an answer. I ask him where some path or other goes - he hasn't the smallest idea, but what he says is: "Khatun, it goes into the districts in that direction" pointing down the path. No doubt he's correct.

By 3 o'clock we had climbed up to Spiara where it was generally supposed that we should meet the Mudir of Penjwin - I don't know on what ground and if I were the Mudir nothing would induce me to spend a night at Spiara. Nor will I ever, please God, do it myself again. Not that the villagers weren't amiable. They were all assembled under the principal chestnut tree to greet us as we arrived. They always do this as you come into a village - we send a man on five minutes ahead of us to give them time to gather together. If you give them a quarter of an hour you'll meet 5 solemn duffle-clad figures coming single file down the path to welcome you. They salute gravely, right about turn, and solemnly walk back with you.

Well, as I say, the people were as polite at Spiara as elsewhere but the village was poorer and dirtier than any I had stopped at. I was taken to a house with a diwan room of the usual type and the family, who were living in it were bustled out into the black chamber of horrors behind. They didn't however take their fleas with them and I discovered that I had been premature in supposing that the flea season was over. It was at its height at Spiara. I don't think any people can be dirtier than the Kurds at their best. They can't wash for 4 or 5 winter months because it's too cold and probably they think it isn't worth while to wash during the other months. They never take off any of their masses of clothes, summer or winter, more especially the huge twisted headdresses of men and women alike are never removed or undone. They wear their hair very fashionably in long locks over the cheeks and ears and in the case of the women the long black curls usually hang down the back under the headdress. As soon as spring comes the fleas in the houses are too much even for rudimentary Kurdish susceptibilities and the whole village betakes itself to summer houses made of leafy oak boughs on the hillside. Now that I've tried to sleep at Spiara, I don't wonder.

A deputy Mudir came riding in soon after my arrival, a strapping young man of whom I saw a great deal at all moments because my room was apparently his record room and he came in and out unconcernedly to fetch his office books whenever he had a mind to make a note about customs dues - we were still only an hour or so from the Persian frontier. After dark there was no light but the fire light in the open diwan, and dinner was a few hens with rice and sour curds and bread. I longed to pay for my board and lodging but that would be an insult. However the women and children made it up by begging at every odd moment, so I discharged my debt vicariously.

In the morning four ragged and miserable individuals, two quite blind and two half blind, came along the path in single file to where we were saddling the horses. I felt it couldn't be a coincidence so I took the necessary steps and I hope they wish that an English sahib spent every night at Spiara.