One evening at sunset I joined Haji Rasul where he sat meditating on his bench. He had a companion and assistant who performed the labour connected with their daily life, cooking, cleaning their room, spreading the bed-clothes and the carpet upon which we sat. This youth was a native of Smyrna, a simple Turkish lad, the best specimen of his race I ever met. He was a rarity in Muhammadan lands, a Sunni converted to Shiism, for the old Haji had converted him in Smyrna. Despite his travels he could talk nothing but Turkish. A constant companion of this strange pair was a small white cat, to which they were both strongly attached. Having been with them since kittenhood, it fully reciprocated their affection, and had developed a high degree of feline intelligence. The old Haji had brought it from Aleppo, and it possessed a little cage in which it performed its journeys. Its food was specially cooked for it by the youthful Turk, and it had regular time and its own dish, for meals. Spotlessly clean it was, and very exclusive, desiring no intercourse with the roof-prowling cats of the caravanserai, whom it ejected from its neighbourhood. Both Persians and Kurds have a strong liking for domestic cats, and in the bigger towns of Persia it is a sorry household that does not possess one or two, as petted as any in Europe. It was a strange sight to see the rough Kurds who sometimes came to see Haji Rasul, gravely rolling cartridges for it to pursue, or stroking its arching little back with a lighter hand than they ever laid upon anything else, the while talking seriously to it in their rough tongue. Haji Rasul himself talked Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, and a little Persian. He had acquired these during his twenty years’ wandering. From Sauj Bulaq he had started twenty years before, and had walked via Kurdistan and Anatolia to Constantinople. There he had learned the art of making sweets. Saving a little cash, he embarked for Jedda, whence he performed the great pilgrimage. From Medina he walked to Damascus, and finding employment, rested there. Later he went by ship to Salonica, and thence to Smyrna, where he remained some years collecting money to make the long journey to Kazimain and Kerbela, near to Bagdad, the most holy shrine of the Shi’a Muhammadans. It had taken him two years working by slow stages to get from Smyrna to Kirkuk, and he was attempting to collect enough cash here to get him to Bagdad. At any rate he could not have gone when I saw him, for the Hamavand had closed the road to Bagdad by their raids.