Among other customs strange and stupid, is the one which forbids a woman to appear in the bazaars at the risk of loss of her good name[54]: why, seems hard to say, for there never was a more moral town than Sulaimania. Possibly it is for the same reason that reckons it improper for a man to wear ornamented socks, or bows on his slippers, or to remain in his house by day or treat his wife as a woman, and a hundred other pranks of caprice which are hard and fast rules of Sulaimania society and life. And the infringement of any one of these little rules is met by a horrified look and the hackneyed old expression, “Aiba Bokum,”[55] which has worked so hard here, and is used to prevent so many actions, that any progress or improvement is always stifled by that terrible “Aiba Bokum.” [Sidenote: SULAIMANIA HABITS] If I would speak to my own wife in the street, if I would bare my head to a cool breeze in a public place, if I would be too friendly with a Christian, or speak civilly to a Jew, these are all “Aiba Bokum,” and but the least of them. But would I in rash moments of philanthropy and idealism suggest killing the flies on the putrid meat of the shops, or ridding the town of fraudulent beggars, or building a sanitary house, or cleaning a street, or doing anything of any benefit to myself or others, then I should become a raving lunatic from hearing day and night the pained protest of “Aiba bokum”; if, indeed, I were allowed to remain in the town. In this, Sulaimania is only too like the rest of the Muhammadan East, particularly those parts farther removed from the West, whose creed is, “That I do as did my fathers, and leave undone that which they did not, and curse the innovator.” Nor is this creed to be set aside lightly, even though it mean inconvenience to the people themselves. Some years ago a doctor of some skill came here, hoping--as he was the first arrival in a town full of dirt-diseases--to make a speedy fortune, as others have done among the Kurds.[56] Two months after he had established himself he left for Persian Kurdistan, carrying his implements upon his back, his head ringing with the phrase “Aiba bokum.” After him came a photographer, who at first was fairly successful, but a Sulaimanian of profound knowledge unearthed the saying of a holy man that representations of persons must have the head cut off with a penknife, or the artist’s soul would annoy that of the portrayed, appearing in his likeness in the last day. So the unfortunate Sulaimanians beheaded themselves on paper and expelled the photographer. After a time came the phonograph, the most popular of all Western inventions in the Orient, and this was taken up by some individuals, and stopped upon the death of Shaikh Sa’id as an impious instrument.