n Baghdad had been subject to sudden upheavals. Once he was
arrested and convoyed back to Constantinople; and just before the advance
of the British his life was in great danger. Naturally enough he had
little love for the Turk and staked everything on the final victory of the
Allies.

He intended writing a book on the history of his family, in which he was
much interested. For material he was constantly purchasing books and
manuscripts. In the East many well-known histories still exist only in
manuscript form, and when a man wishes to build up a library he engages
scribes and sends them to the place where a famous manuscript is kept with
an order to make a copy. In the same way Hamdi Bey had men busied
transcribing rare chronicles dealing with the career of his family--extant
in but one or two examples in mosques. He once presented me with a large
manuscript in Persian in which his family is mentioned, the mention taking
the form of a statement to the effect that seventeen of them had had their
heads removed!

Next to various small tradesmen with whom I used to gossip, drink coffee,
and play dominoes, my best Arab friend was Abdul Kader Pasha, a striking
old man who had been a faithful ally to the British through thick and
thin. The dinners at his house on the river-bank were feasts such as one
reads of in ancient history. Course succeeded course without any definite
plan; any one of them would have made a large and delicious meal in
itself. True to Arab custom, the son of the house never sat down at table
with his father, although before and after dinner he talked and smoked
with us.

[Illustration: A jeweller's booth in the bazaar]

I had a number of good friends among the Armenians. There was not one of
them but had some near relation, frequently a parent or a brother or
sister, still among the Turks. Sometimes they knew them to be dead, more
frequently they could only hope that such was the case and there was no
further suffering to be endured. Many of these Armenians belonged to
prominent families, numbering among their members men who had held the
most important government posts in Constantinople. The secretary of the
treasury was almost invariably an Armenian, for the race outstrips the
Jews in its money touch.

With one family I dined quite often--the usual interminable Oriental feast
varying only from the Arab or Turkish dinners in a few special national
dishes. All, excepting the aged grandmother, spoke