The Kurd undoubtedly possesses an unenviable reputation for lawlessness amongst the more law-abiding Persians and Turks of this wild and turbulent frontier land. He is handicapped, perhaps, to this extent, that, being an alien to the Turk in language, and to the Persian in religion, he is looked upon as a pariah, and the hand of both is ever raised against him. Being resentful and overbearing, if not arrogant, in manner, and knowing no legal code beyond that which a rifle imposes, he seeks to enforce his {232} own arbitrary ready-made justice, to call it by that name. So the merry game goes on, and up amongst the snows of Kurdistan Persian and Kurd and Turk kill each other on the slightest pretext, and often for no ascertainable cause. The Kurd is always well armed, and usually well mounted--often at the expense of some lowland Persian villager. He invariably affects the national costume, which is an abbreviated coat and enormous baggy trousers, with a capacious Kamarband of coloured silk in which he carries pipe, knife, and odds and ends. Ten armed Kurds riding into Bijar, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, would start a panic in the Bazaar. Shutters would go up and shopkeepers would vanish as if by magic, while the small force of Persian police in the place, who were usually suffering from the combined effects of malnutrition and arrears of pay, would discreetly go to cover, and not be seen again until the visitors had departed. Usually a British military policeman, armed with a stout stick, would be sent to handle the delicate situation, to see that there was no looting, and that the King's peace was preserved inviolate by these quarrel-seeking, pilfering rascals from beyond the hills. Bijar itself, unhappily for the peace of mind and pocket of its shopkeeper-citizens and wealthy agriculturists, is unhealthily near the "Bad Man's Land" of the nomad Kurds. It is built in a cup-shaped {233} hollow surrounded by barren peaks, and its altitude (5,200 feet) gives it a rigorous winter climate. The enclosed gardens which usually lend a touch of picturesque embellishment even to the meanest and dirtiest of Persian towns are lacking at Bijar. It grows wheat and corn in abundance on the long, wide plateau which stretches unbrokenly for miles between the bare, rugged hills. The arable land is so fertile, and its acreage so abundant, that but one-third is cultivated yearly. The average wheat yield is enormous, yet the people are always hovering on the border-line of starvation, the result of mismanagement, misappropriation, and all the other evils which may be grouped together under the head of Persian official maladministration.