volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

214 Ths Great Swamp Al-HM.
mosque in the town, and a great fight took place, in
which most of the men on both sides were kUled. The
remainder of the Yazidis left the village and went to
co-religionists in the Sinjar hills, and the Arabs departed
westwards, but, concluded the speaker, God only knows
what is the truth
The shekh then addressed himself to Muhammad
and began to talk about the roads to Mosul. The result
of their conversation was that we were not to attempt
to follow the track which ran by the north side of the
Sinj§r hills, but to cross the hills from north to south at
their western end, and then to proceed to Mosul via
'Iran, or Ghiran, Balad Sinjar and TaU 'A'far. He
then told us that a high Turkish official from Stambul
was then either in Balad Sinjar, or in a neighbouring
village, and that he passed Khatuniyah a few weeks
ago with a large body of soldiers. He did not know his
name, but he knew that his business was secret, and
that wherever he and his soldiers had passed they had
left behind then murder, rapine and robbery. Before
he left us for the night he promised to send his son with
us the next day as far as the pass over the Sinjar hUls.
The day again broke bright and clear, and when the
sun rose in splendour we felt that the rain and snow
were really things of the past. I went and examined
the ruins of the buildings of the old town, and of the
strong wall which had at one time enclosed its whole
area; originally the wall had only one gateway, and
that was on the south side. The waters of the lake
were of a beautiful turquoise blue, and on its northern
and western shores stood large numbers of cranes and
herons, and smaller birds of a kind which I never saw
before. The shekh said that the waters of the lake
flowed into the great swamp Al-Hul through a channel
on the west bank, and it seemed possible. There were
many pelicans and fine Mesopotamian geese fishing diligently,
and the whole scene reminded me of the banks
of Lake Manzalah, near Port Sa'id, before the British
drained it. We left the peninsula and walked along
the tongue of land to the mainland, and made ready to