So, disgraced and stripped of her good clothes and her ornaments, which, though she might have taken, she refused, Gulchin came to the house of her aunt Asima Khan, my neighbour, a descendant of the ancient priestly families of Hakkari, and as such bearing the masculine title “Khan.” Here Gulchin was reduced to the level of a superior maid, and had to do the housework, but her uncle gave her clothes and protected her, for he, Abdullah, was a grave, respected man, the senior of the quarter. Had Gulchin’s resentment against her husband continued, it would have been well for her, but unfortunately, she was too good-hearted a girl to hate anybody, and really loved him, so she wept tears of regret and remembrance. And worst of all for her she had, in a soft moment, confided her trouble to one of the other women, and had become a subject for chaff, good-humoured enough certainly, but hurtful all the same, and had she not been naturally light-hearted would have led a very sorry life. [Sidenote: GULCHIN] What lost her the respect of her neighbours was the habit she had on hot days of coming outside the house without her turban, bareheaded except for a tiny skull-cap, her thick, long hair exposing its ten or twelve ropes of thick plaits uncovered by the veil that accompanies the turban. But she was perfectly honest; an immoral woman is the exception in Sulaimania, and she scoffed at those who sacrificed comfort to false modesty. Ghafur had succeeded, in a hunt for someone to mend my clothes, in capturing her for the job, and she would spend some of her mornings with the old house-dame, often dropping her work to romp with the child. Her methods were original sometimes, for she had little patience. One morning she swept into the courtyard at a moment when I had just discovered a piece torn out of the sleeve of a shirt, and called to her to mend it. She said she had no linen and no money to buy any, and Ghafur not being there to get some from the bazaar, she tore a piece from her own, and then, seeing the expanse of white skin thus discovered, fled, blushing, to pin it up in a corner.