I was sitting in my courtyard a few days after the night attempt on the caravanserai when a moth-eaten creature in a kind of blue uniform with red shoulder-straps presented himself at the door. This was one of the four “policemen” of the place, a visit from whom I had been expecting for some time, for the fat police commissaire had been annoying Habib with enquiries as to my identity and reasons for staying in Sulaimania, and it had occurred to me that he would at some time demand my passport. The policeman now enquired whence I had come, and why staying in Sulaimania; and on my asserting that I was from Constantinople and bound for Persia, but trying to do some business in Sulaimania till the country settled a little, flatly contradicted me, told me I was from Persia, and a suspect, and demanded my passports. These I utterly refused, and offered to come and see the mutasarrif (governor) with him, claiming exemption from such annoyance, as a subject of England, and pointing out that now I had been six weeks in Sulaimania there was time to have seen if I had any nefarious intentions, and to have demanded proofs of my identity sooner. The man was not, however, satisfied, and continued to demand the papers, and I to refuse him, while the people of the quarter gradually collected, and each, as he or she learned, broke into protestations of my respectability, and guaranteed my honesty. As the policeman still remained, the women began to express themselves somewhat freely regarding his behaviour, and at length, seeing that no good could be done by staying--only possible harm--for the people were inclined to be unpleasant to him, he discontinued his demands and returned to the bazaar. My good-hearted neighbours urged me to complain to the mutasarrif, or at any rate get the affair settled over the heads of the police, or, they prophesied, I should have great trouble with them, and the annoyance they would consider it their duty to give me. So I adopted their counsels, and went first to see old Mustafa Beg and ask his views. I found him in his cell, drinking a cup of coffee he had just brewed, and on seeing me he beamed and gave the full salutation, as was his wont, the sonorous “Salamun ’alaikum wa rahmatu’llah wa barikatahu.” He insisted on my taking coffee, which was a long operation, for he had to make it over a little charcoal brazier, and having made it, find another cup, for he had but one in use, and only a single saucer in all when the second cup was found in a bag full of odds and ends. [Sidenote: ANNOYED BY POLICE]