the playground of children in the summer, he raided the courtyards, and taught all the quiet children of the quarter the wild games he delighted in. The women stood in dread of him, for he would, when sent upon an errand to borrow a pot or pan, a common enough errand in these parts, remain for an hour teasing. [Sidenote: A KURDISH URCHIN] According to the custom of Sulaimania, there were during the day none but women in the houses; and in our quarter, where small merchants and shopkeepers lived, the men were out from early morning to late evening. My interests took me but little outside on some days of the week, and as I became known, and the presence of the old dame rendered such a proceeding not indecorous, the female portion of the surrounding inhabitants would spend some part of their not too fully occupied time chatting. For the most part they were merry people, like all Kurdish women, free from any affectations of speech or manner, saying what they meant without an attempt at softening rough corners from the subject--saying it while they looked one straight in the eyes, so to speak--and laughing heartily at the pleasantries that abound in Kurdish conversation, with no sign of what we call “flirtation,” nor self-conscious tricks of any kind. Breadmaking days were the time for a regular meeting of such, and when, if at home, I would retire to my room. The professional woman baker would arrive early in the morning with a bag of flour, and Ghafur, the child of wrath, would be sent round to borrow a big copper pan from one of the neighbours, the capture of which he usually signalled by beating a tattoo upon its resonant sides all the way up the street. The woman baker was by this time drinking her tea with the old house-dame, listening to the oft-told tale of her son’s death on the Bagdad road, and weeping a tear or two in sympathy. With the advent of Ghafur, she would speedily desert the tea--for she was, and I hope still is, a busy woman--and get to mixing her flour. This operation was always performed under the little space of roofing just inside the open courtyard door, so when the neighbours, bound upon their multifarious house-to-house errands, passed by, it was natural that they should stroll in to assist. If they did not, then Ghafur would be sent to beat them up, an operation which he fully appreciated, for to bake the bread well required two or three, and as we had no earth-oven, someone else’s must be heated, and then of course others who had a little bread to bake would ask the favour of cooking theirs after ours, in the still hot oven; for the heating costs money, and the opportunity of baking at another’s fire is never lost by a good Kurdish housewife. [Sidenote: BREAD BAKING]