I now had a letter from him, and from Mansur. The former told me of his successes with the shoe-selling, which had, while not great, been satisfactory, and the latter attempted to explain why Makha the Jew had not returned from Juanru with the “run.” Matti was rather inclined to regard my efforts with disfavour, and would, I think, have tried to dissuade me, for he knew that I was not experienced in trading. Habib, on the other hand, was extremely keen that I should open an office in their caravanserai, and in this he was strongly seconded by one Antoine, a merchant of twenty years’ standing in Sulaimania, and two bankruptcies during that time, a feature of Oriental trading which sometimes betokens considerable acumen and astuteness rather than commercial inaptitude. Antoine was a buyer for certain merchants in Bagdad and Mosul, and when I made his acquaintance, was purchasing gum tragacanth. Now I, too, was quite willing to buy tragacanth, but he had become alarmed, and had managed to form a small ring which had little difficulty in shutting me out. I attempted even to make Antoine act as broker for me, and in an interview when Matti was present as witness, forced a promise out of him, but he repudiated it afterwards. Yet he would constantly come along as I sat outside Matti’s shop, and in his queer Persian exhort me to buy skins, or wheat, and affirm that he had made great profit in deals. He had a younger brother who assisted him, a big honest lad, who stood rather in fear of him and his wily ways. For years he had been in close touch with the Musulman merchants, and was considerably disliked by his co-religionists on account of his habit of doing business on Sunday--a day which the Arab and Chaldean Christian observes as strictly as is done in Scotland, and passes in as dull a way. [Sidenote: CHALDEAN ACQUAINTANCES] Matti also was assisted by a younger brother, a somewhat surly fellow, but good-hearted enough, and to him fell the task of cooking their food on the verandah outside the office. For these Chaldeans of Mosul live day and night in their rooms, which are office and home combined; and such men as Matti and Antoine had existed thus, in what we should call a small dark cellar full of merchandise, for two decades. In normal times, that is, when business was good, and passage after dark in the streets not dangerous, the Christians divided themselves into messes of five and six, each taking turn to cook; but now, with the general insecurity forbidding intercourse between Matti’s caravanserai, the Khan-i-’Ajam, and the caravanserai where the other merchants lived, and the terrible depression in trade, they had all retrenched, and with the exception of Matti and Habib, who still kept up the habit, each did for himself; and Habib might be seen every other day watching a sizzling pot anxiously while he sold cottons, or leaving a heap of half-prepared stuffed cucumbers to attend to a Kurdish buyer.