volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

io8 An Ill-Conditioned Sayyid.
We arrived at Takrit (about 150 miles from Mosul
and 120 from Baghdad) soon after noon, and when we
had walked about and looked at the ruins we went into
the poor and straggling bazar to make a few purchases.
The Delegate had spent most of his time on the raft
in making coffee over a brazier, and in lamenting whilst
he drank it his hard fate in having to travel on a raft
where, he said, he was roasted by day and frozen by
night. As a result our coffee was nearly finished when
we were little more than half-way to Baghdad, and
sugar was urgently needed. Our soldier took us to a
shop kept by an Arab and we purchased coffee without
difficulty. When we began to bargain for sugar, the
price of which was trebled
keeper seemed unwilling to
for our benefit, the shop-
sell, even though we were
ready to pay what he asked. Several of the people
who were passing through the baz§,r stopped to .listen
to what we were saying, and as is usual in such cases
several of them passed their opinions and discussed the
price of the sugar as if they were the would-be buyers.
During a pause in the talk our soldier said, " O merchantman,
why are you asking the Beg to pay so much ?
Wallah !
(by Allah) you are trying to cheat him." The
merchant made no reply, but a sinister-looking man
wearing a long black cloak and a green turban (which
proclaimed him to be a descendant of 'All the Khalifah),
said to the soldier, " O dog of blood, thy business is
swords and guns and not sugar and coffee. What is it
to thee if the merchant makes these filthy Christians, may
Allah curse their fathers, pay more than the sugar is
worth ? They have majtdh as we have paras.^ they
are . .
. " Here followed much obscene abuse of
Christians in general, and ourselves in particular. I
retorted in kind to the very best of my ability and tried
to complete my purchase. Presently some mass whizzed
between the heads of White and myself and fell with a
crash on a box, which it split open, and we quickly
realized that the Sa5ryid with the green turban had lost
^ Forty paras = i piastre, 2\d.