at the other end. But no set, not a man was to be seen sooner did its occupants see us in the tiny village. Only a than they seized their rifles, few gaping women watched our jumped from the boat into arrival, and as I landed another the shallow water, and dashed came out of one of the reed into the shelter of the reeds, huts and advanced to meet me. through which we could hear them pushing and crashing their way. This seemed rather odd: why should two grown men flee in terror from the launch, at the sight of which the marsh-folk of our last night's halting-place had shown only curiosity ? The deserted craft was loaded with bardi. Were its owners genuinely dismayed at the launch's appearance, or was it a case of guilty consciences? As we slowed up to push the heavy black boat out of our way, I leaned over and pulled aside some of the bardi. Below it I saw four long poles. Without doubt, these were the telephone poles which a few nights earlier had been stolen from beneath the very nose of the sentry at the military post near my headquarters, and of which the disappearance had caused so much stir. I gave orders for the birkash, with its illicit load, to be towed behind the launch. We had almost given up hope of finding an ishan on which to spend the night, when the sight of half a dozen grazing buffaloes told us that a village could not be far off; and within half an hour the launch was banking in beside a small mound. "Enter," she said in a harsh clear voice. Enter, in the name of Allah." Turning to the other women, she gave a string of rapid orders, which they hastened to obey. It was evident that she was accustomed to obedience. In a very short time I was seated on a pile of rough cushions, and provided with the strong sweet tea of Arab hospitality. I learned that the name of my hostess was Awasha, and that she was the A girl entered the hut and whispered in Awasha's ear, and I saw as she glanced hastily at me that a look of fear had replaced the confident expression in her eyes. Conversation languished, and she sat opposite to me in constrained silence. Suddenly she seemed to come to some decision, and, rising to her feet, beckoned me to the far end of the hut. 'Look," she said, and showed me a little hammock made from a piece of sacking on which were plainly marked Though it was almost sun- the letters "S. & T." But 1 Supply and Transport Corps. Awasha was delighted. She hastened to the other end of the hut, to examine my offering in the better light of the doorway. School colours are usually bright, and mine were no exception to the rule. The vivid stripes appealed tremendously to Awasha. Holding it up close to her eyes, and then at a distance with her head cocked appreciatively on one side, she appeared enraptured. By this time the look of fear had left her eyes, and inviting me to sit down again on the pile of cushions, she squatted beside me. "Then that is the reason," I said, "why there is not a single man in the village today?" She nodded-then hastily added, "You promised, on your 'hadha wa bukht.' I was silent, wondering how best to deal with this self-confessed instigator of, probably, not a few of the raids and robberies which for so long had disturbed the peace of the district. Sahib," " said the woman, the child itself, the second be and her voice was low and caressing, "I say to the men of this Bait, 'Rob,' and they rob; I say, 'Steal not,' and they do not steal. But if to every child I bring forth your honour will give a dilla'a such as this one" she held up the gleaming square of silk-" then I will say, 'Steal not.'" This was barefaced blackmail; but I basely fell in with Awasha's proposal. After all, governments submit far more readily than private individuals to blackmail-in fact, they have a special name for it; they call it "granting a subsidy." Why should not I grant a subsidy to this ruler of a troublesome marsh tribe I agreed to send a silk scarf to every babe produced by Awasha. A dilla'a, it may here be remarked, although the word has come to be used of any present made at birth, is, strictly speaking, the fourfold gift of a blue stone, a twig of difla, a piece of garlic, and a gold coin, threaded together and hung on the baby's forehead as protection against the Evil Eye: the first because its bright colour distracts attention from cause of its bitter taste, abhorred of spirits. What virtue is attached to the gold coin I have never discovered, but the explanation of the piece of garlic is simple: it causes the Evil Eye to water, and so lessens its malignity! A year or so later, a tall marsh Arab stopped me as I was leaving my office. "Jabat Awasha," he said simply, Awasha has brought forth." She had kept to her bargain. During the whole year, not so much as a breath of suspicion had fallen on the Bait which she controlled with so firm a hand. I promised her messenger to give him the silk scarf on the following morning. The next year, and the year after that, the same message was brought me, and the same dilla'a sent. After that I left. I wonder if Awasha is still "bringing forth with the same regularity I wonder if the three little brown urchins, bedecked with my school colours, are as unpopular as was Joseph of old in his "coat of many colours 1 HASSAIN CHAOUSH. A shabanah is (or rather was, for the term is now only a memory) an Arab who, presented by Government with a brass badge, a rifle, twenty or thirty rounds of ammunition, and the sum of twenty rupees a month, is placed at the disposal of the Political Officer for the maintenance of law and order in his district. If success can be considered to lie in the prevention of theft by ninety-nine persons, while the qualities were brought to the fore, while discipline killed off hundredth, the shabanah him- be devoted to them, their good self, robs with impunity, then the shabanahs were certainly successful; but in the early-or days of the occupation it was disheartening to have to rely on this sort of irregular gendarmerie. At one time shabanahs were posted in the trucks of the military supply trains running from Basra to Nasiriyah or Amarah to guard against marauders-until it was discovered that they were apt to push off sacks of barley, sugar, or flour as the trains passed their own villages. They were posted on the river transports, to ward off robbers from the marshes until it became clear that an understanding had been reached by which the marsh Arab would get safely off with his spoil, while the shabanah, by opening fire some time later, would divert suspicion to some perfectly innocent section or village. Little mud forts were erected along the river bank, and manned by shabanahs with orders to fire on any suspiciouslooking strangers; and their habit of levying toll on each and every passer-by was the last of these practices, as it was also the most lucrative, to be discovered by the authorities. Yet, despite all these tendencies, there was good stuff in the shabanahs. They were finely built men, tough as leather, and extraordinarily cheerful and willing. Once they were placed under British officers whose whole time could perhaps anæsthetised would be the truer word—their bad ones. Thus from the most unpromising material sprang up the very efficient Levy Force of to-day, a force which during the rebellion of last year did remarkably good work, so long as it was under the leadership of its British officers. Even in the early days, however, when the mere prospect of learning to drill was sufficient to make a shabanah bolt in deadly fear of being sent to "Lun'on" as a soldier, many cases occurred of fine devotion to duty,-witness that of Hassain Chaoush Sergeant Hassain. I was sitting outside my bungalow one hot sultry evening, lazily watching the river, my eyes fixed on a small black dot which I knew would in a few minutes resolve itself into a slender mashhuf making its way down-stream. Idly I speculated as to what it would contain. It would be full of fish perhaps, caught in the marshes some days ago, and now to be sold to the village Arabs and eaten with great relish in an advanced stage of decomposition; perhaps it was bringing "shelib," 1 to be exchanged for the brightly-coloured cotton stuffs which the Arab women love; or it might be carrying a cargo of melons grown in some small patch of cultivation beside the river. In the rays of the setting 1 Unhusked rice 1 Has he seen a tantal 1 ? asked a shabanah standing near me of his companion. The boy landed not far from where I was sitting. "Blood, blood!" he screamed, and fled to his hut. sun the stream looked like a Then, with a shrill cry, he sheet of flame, and it seemed came paddling madly back to my indolent fancy that the again. little mashhuf would be consumed before it reached my bungalow. It was making very slow progress, and down-stream too; perhaps the heat of this oppressive evening had affected even the Arab who propelled it. I wondered if he might be my old friend Ahmad, who, fresh from another journey in the marshes with his boat-load of small groceries stored in empty petrol-tins, was coming to gossip with me about the wild tribes he knew so well. Or perhaps a whole family from the rice-fields were fleeing from the relentless oppression of one shaikh, to take up their abode under another who, they hoped, would prove a milder taskmaster; or it might be that shameless profiteer, Jusif, who used to make long journeys into the marshes to buy chickens for next to nothing, and sell them at outrageous prices for use in the military hospitals. All my surmises were wrong. As the mashhuf floated slowly past the bungalow, the reason of its languid progress was evident: it was empty. Others beside myself had noticed the drifting boat, and a village boy put off to pick it up. With swift strokes of the paddle he drove his own small craft to the middle of the stream, and rose to catch the high prow of the mashhuf. I sent off three shabanahs to bring in the mysterious mashhuf. Lying in the bottom were two dead men; in the body of one was still a long curved dagger, while between them, in strange contrast to those grim still forms, lay a bundle, half-unrolled, of rich orange-coloured silk. Splashed with blood, crumpled and stained as though it had been clutched and struggled over, its shining folds were still beautiful, gleaming and shimmering in the sunset light-surely of the very essence of temptation to the colour-loving Arab. The two men were lifted out of the mashhuf. Both wore the brass badge of my little force of shabanahs. The one with the dagger in his side was dead, but the other stirred and groaned as he was moved, and with regret I recognised him as Hassain Chaoush-with regret, apart from pity for his obviously dying condition, for he was one of the few shabanahs in whom I had any real confidence, and I was sorry to see him with that orange silk. For some time past I had 1 An evil djinn. VOL. CCXI.-NO. MCCLXXV. A 2 |