So as a rule we had as assistants at the game of kneading and rolling into balls, ready for slapping into thin flap-jacks, the carpenter’s wife from opposite, a sturdy creature, hard-worked and hard-working. She had five children, whom she kept clean and tidy, two of whom usually accompanied her, fair, curly headed youngsters with pale blue eyes, and as rosy cheeked as only a Kurd or a Persian is among the Middle Eastern people. Then there were the two sisters from next door, wives of two brothers who kept a coffee-house, lazy creatures who sat about and smoked cigarettes. Occasionally one, Adela, wife of the ward of the children in whose house I lived, would look in, but she was a haughty creature, of velvets and golden ornaments and diamond rings, the beauty of the quarter, who knew her own importance. She certainly was very beautiful, and had the added advantage possessed by many Kurdish women over those of the neighbouring races--height, and a fine straight height too. But the best of these good-looking Sulaimanian women--for they are a well-favoured people--was Gulchin, flighty, good-hearted Gulchin. She was a tall girl of about eighteen, a little pale for prettiness, but of finely formed features. The gossips of the quarter objected to her because she was light-hearted and ran from house to house much as my serving-child Ghafur did, chaffing and teasing. She had quite a sad little history, too, and concealed under her frivolous manner lay a sorrow that broke out in tears sometimes when the other women returned her harmless badinage with a taunt, when she would fly to her house and sit in a corner sobbing till the natural buoyancy of her spirit asserted itself, and she came forth a little sobered, but still ready to meet the others. She had been the young wife of a certain Taufiq, a handsome lad who had a good position under the local government, and a large house. With him she had been very happy, and had borne him a child. Unfortunately there were a mother-in-law and grandmother, who, each detesting Gulchin, laid their wits together to eject her. So they spread rumours concerning her, to give a cause of irritation to her husband, and at the same time, with the assistance of a hedge-priest, discovered certain invalidities in her marriage bond. With this in hand, they continued the dissemination of scandal, till the husband, hearing it from certain respectable people, came in wrath to Gulchin. She being a spirited girl, and moreover, innocent, naturally gave the retort very direct, and a quarrel occurred which for the time embittered one against the other. The old women now came to Taufiq with the defective bond, and taking the opportune moment of his resentment and wrath, induced him to divorce his wife.