We went and sat in the verandah outside, where Salim’s brother was cooking a meal, and Salim himself having divested himself of his business garments--the long striped tunic, Aleppo gold-threaded belt and fez--donned loose clothing, and enveloped his head in a handkerchief. For a time he rummaged about in his room, and at last came forth with two little glasses and a bottle wrapped in wet rags, to keep the contents cool--and I perceived that I had met a drinker. The drink was araq, a fiery spirit flavoured with aniseed and aromatic gum, and he insisted on my joining him in three or four glasses of the stuff, followed by morsels of sweet water-melon, which is taken to remove the unpleasant aftertaste from the mouth, and quench the thirst the spirit generates. As it grew darker, we repaired to the roof, where benches were set about. The sun had just set, and from the roof one could see over Kirkuk, with its flat roofs, to the great desert westwards, where the gold of the setting sun was blotted by the shape of the big mountain, standing lonely and unsupported by foothills or rising slope, in the west. How little did these lineal descendants of the Assyrians know that the very prospect they looked over, the town in which they lived, had been founded by their ancestors, and the mount under which the caravanserai lay, called “Qala debeit Seluk”--“The fortress of the Seleucids.” [Sidenote: CHRISTIAN MANNERS] There was but little time to enjoy the prospect, for the sun having set, it grew dark almost immediately, and the chatter of the Christians and their invitation to drink prevented any attempt at a stroll in the cool breeze. Every one of them was provided with a little bottle of the araq, and by the bench of each was a pail of water in which they kept their bottles cool. I created, I fear, a bad impression by refusing to drink with them, and finding their conversation of very little interest, relapsed into silence, at which they were not a little surprised, for the spirit moving them, they grew extraordinarily loquacious, and failed to understand why their merriment was not shared by me. Salim besought me to join them, for, he said, “It creates a bad impression upon your hosts to refuse their drink, for which we live, counting it our only pleasure in a wretched life. Besides, what kind of an Englishman will it be that does not drink, and drink level with the rest?”