But in his commercial schemes, Hama, with all the characteristic of the Kurd to the fore, quite forgot that he had left outstanding at Halabja a number of debts which he must collect before more money was risked, and was hoping to rake in a good profit on a new undertaking, while disregarding the loss on the old one. So I had to send him back to Halabja, for he had disposed of the fifty pairs of shoes mostly on credit, and had but a hazy idea of who the buyers were. He sat at the edge of the tank twiddling his fingers and puzzling his brains to remember to whom he had given the shoes, while I tried to make a list, which was finely descriptive where he could not remember the names. One had taken a pair for twelve krans, “who was the second rider of Majid Beg’s men from Narinjalan”; another, “a big man who sits at the corner of Shaul the Jew’s shop, in the bazaar”; another, “a man I met in the coffee-house, who was talking to Hama Rasha of Ababail”; and so on. Lady Adela herself had taken some, and there were quite a number of her servants whose shoes, according to Hama, were also chargeable to her, though apparently she never consented to pay for them. So I sent him away again to Halabja, and in his place engaged a small boy, son of the Hama who was the caravanserai keeper of Matti. This boy was content to serve for a penny every three days, and his food. He was a child of extraordinarily acute intelligence. He had picked up some Persian in the bazaars, and displayed great aptitude in learning it when spoken to him. But if his intelligence helped him thus, it also assisted in making him a great trial to both his father and the Christians in the caravanserai. For he was the leader of several gangs of small hooligans, was continually fighting, and obeyed only in a small degree his father. His mother, a most estimable soul, who came to make bread for me, was in despair of him, for he was quite out of her hands, and did just as he pleased with her. By making himself a great nuisance to the Christians, he had instituted a kind of toll, which he received on demand, a piastre or two at a time. He would, for instance, come to Habib, demanding his fee, and if it be refused, as it was sometimes, would jump upon the unfortunate man’s back and half throttle him, or sweep round and round his office, overturning the wares and dealing destruction as he went. If he were chastised, he returned, fortified with genuine fury, to the fray, and the easiest way to deal with him was to give him his twopence. When he came to me, I naturally earned the gratitude of all his victims, but he still found time to run round to the caravanserai and hurl a taunt or two at its occupants. He was a child of the Aorami, that tribe of Kurdistan which is not Kurd, which claims descent from Rustam himself, and counts its place of origin to be Demavend. The neighbours were not particularly pleased at his advent, for he carried war into their territory, and from the roofs,