The only thing I could think of was to go and see him quietly, saying that I was making a pilgrimage to Biara, to which place it was the fashion to journey now and then, calling the jaunt a pilgrimage. It took me some days to make up my mind to this course, for I did not want to hurry, nor to go sooner than was necessary; and meanwhile the days passed in idleness, attendance at the divans of Lady Adela and Tahir Beg, and walks with Mansur the Christian, in the late afternoon, to a garden just outside, where he would squat in the grass, and producing a little bottle from his pocket, consume his araq accompanied by nuts or melon seeds, as is the habit of drinking in Persia. His greatest efforts were to induce me to join him, asserting that it made him miserable to drink alone; but I did not wish to open any possible channel along which thoughts might flow detrimental to the excellence of my Islamic orthodoxy, and which might on occasion become words. When I had mentioned to Hama that I was going to see the Shaikh ul Islam, he was somewhat astonished, and very much hurt because I would not tell him my business; for such a lack of confidence was unusual he said, between a master and his servant, and reflected upon the latter’s integrity. So I bound him to great secrecy, and told him that the Shaikh ul Islam owed me money and I was going to try and recover it, but did not want to wait till he came here, as he was a man of uncertain temper and contumacious nature, and might endeavour to injure me if he found his creditor suddenly installed, so to say, on his door-step. This was sound Kurd sense, and Hama extolled my reasoning, and advised the purchase of four loaves of sugar as a present for the Shaikh, for it is a fault to go and see such a person without something in the hand. So one fine morning, having hired for the day for four krans (or one shilling and eightpence) a mule, we loaded it with the four sugar loaves in a saddle-bag, and set forth, having provided the usual bread and cigarettes for consumption on the way. The road lay east from Halabja, towards the great wall of Aoraman, and at the base of the hills south of Shahr-i-Zur. For half an hour we passed along a level road, looking out upon our left across the great depression, imagining what a sight this hill-girt basin of a plain must have been when Nushirwan the Just ruled the land, and gardens and towns covered its still fair face. To the north, in a blue distance soon to be dispelled by a fierce sun, lay the piled-up mountains of the Azmir, behind Sulaimania, whence faint wreaths of blue smoke from the burning grass ascended like the fume of an offering to the sun, as a vindication of the ancient religion of Zoroaster that had its fires upon these same mountain-tops, a votive duty forgotten by man and perpetuated by Nature.