After his arrival the divan did not last long. First Majid Beg left, then Lady Adela, rising, retired to an inner room, and the company was dismissed. Tahir Beg asked me to come to his evening reception upon the roof, which took place every night. Returning to my room, I found a caller in the person of a clerk or scribe of Tahir Beg, who was smoking one of my cigarettes and gazing out of the window. Like most of the inhabitants of this queer household he was a Persian subject, native of Sina, but wore the long Jaf dress and zouave jacket. He, however, refused to part with the Sina head-dress, and still wore the low skull-cap surrounded by fringed silk handkerchiefs. He had several matters to discuss. First to recommend a man who had applied for the post of personal servant to me--him I arranged to see in the morning; next, to ask me the right price of a Browning pistol, which he had purchased for seven liras; and lastly, to know if I possessed any books in Persian. I had an old torn copy of _Saadi_, and this I gave him, and he sat there reading it indifferently and going into rhapsodies over verses he barely understood, but whose sonorous syllables and broad vowels appealed to the Kurdish ear. It must also be remarked that among the more cultivated Kurds of the south it has always been the fashion to affect a passion for Persian, which is the reason of so many of the Kurdish poets writing almost solely in that language, and neglecting their own language, which lends itself to poetry of the ballad type very excellently. [Sidenote: A KURDISH LOVE AFFAIR] This young man, Hasan by name, had, I heard afterwards, the reputation of being the “blood” of the place, and a rhymester, doubtless in imitation of his accomplished master, whose verses it was his duty to write down at dictation. He had, it appeared, killed someone in a fight at Sina, and had fled to Halabja for Lady Adela’s protection till the affair could be settled. He had then fallen in love with a maid of his patroness, by name Piruza, a pert girl of Sauj Bulaq, of the Mukri--also a Persian Kurd. I had the pleasure later of witnessing their somewhat hoydenish flirtations. This is one of the most remarkable features of Kurdish life. Among other Muhammadan nations, whose women are strictly secluded, marriages can only be matters of arrangement by third parties; but among the Kurds, where the women are practically as free as in any European country--except that they do not go to the bazaar--free intercourse between the sexes is the rule, and the result is a large number of love marriages, which is all for the good of a race so simple in habits and life.