volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Native Views about Chimneys. 6i
were several small, badly-lighted rooms, and a couple
of good stables, and above the small rooms on one side
were two other small rooms, one on each side of the top
of a flight of breakneck stone steps. We had no difficulty
in renting all this for a sum in piastres equal to five
shillings per week, and we entered into possession.
We had all the rooms and stables cleared out, the walls
and ceilings whitewashed, and the stone floors well
scrubbed, and then we tried to turn out of the court
what seemed to be the accumulations of many years.
As fast as we cleared one part of it another part seemed
to get filled up, and at length we found that the families
living in the inner court used to open the door between
the courts at night and shoot out rubbish and offal for
us to clear away the next day. We nailed up that door
with four-inch French nails and had no further trouble.
As soon as we removed our belongings into our rooms
the weather became very cold and snow fell heavily.
We devoted our attention to making a fireplace in each
of our rooms, but as soon as the mason began to cut
through the walls to make a chimney we got into trouble
with the owner of the house, who set the municipal
authorities in motion against us. I interviewed an
official to whom I tried to explain matters, and his
reply was, "If you must have a wood fire, light it on
the floor in the middle of the room, and let the smoke
go out of the window. Allah is great, but what can
you want with a chimney ? " Fortunately everything
could be " arranged " in Mosul, and in the end we
made our chimney. In a very few days we picked up
in the bazar reed mats for the floor, cooking pots, etc.,
and were glad to live in a place where We could bar the
front door and keep out curious and prying visitors.
Our household consisted of one Hann^, a cook, who had
lived with Europeans in Mosul and understood their
dislike for Oriental dishes swimming in hot fat ; a Kurdish
groom for our horses and donkeys which occupied the
stables, and two or three nephews of HannS. who made
themselves generally useful and came with us on our
daily visits to the excavations in the mound of Kujmnjik.