By E. S. DROWER
Lecture given on July 31, 1940,
Brigadier-General Sir Percy Sykes, ly&J.E.,
C.B., C.M.G., in the Chair.
I had an introduction from a Yezidi friend to a young man there,
Rashid ibn Sadiq, and my first call was on him. His father was away
in the Jebel Sinjar, so Rashid did the honours, preparing tea for me
himself as I sat under the pergola in his courtyard. I told him what
I wanted, and he promised to help in every way that he could, and was
as good as his word. He sent there and then for one of the qawwals,
and that evening two of them visited me. I must explain what qawwals
are. They are the third grade of the Yezidi priesthood, and it is they
who travel with the sanjak, the image of the sacred peacock. Their
chief duty is to chant, and their chants are transmitted from father to
son and never written down. They must also be able to play the
shebab and the daff, the sacred flute and tambour. Above the qawwals
are the pirs, and above these the shaikhs. All three orders are heredi¬
tary, and a member may only marry within his own rank. A fourth
hereditary order is that of the faqlrs, who are ascetics and wear next
their skins a black woollen tunic which is considered very holy, also a
sacred thread and belt. Then there is a lay order, the kocheks, who
wear white and are often made custodians of the shrines.
I became friendly with the qawwals, particularly with one of them
who had served in the Levies when he was young. Ever since then
he has polished his teakettle and Primus with Brasso and talked of the
English. When he joined the force he was told that he must cut off
his long hair and beard. He was horrified, and was taken before an
English officer. He explained to this officer mat a qawwal may not
cut his hair, and the Englishman, he told me, " asked me about my
THE PEACOCK ANGEL IN THE SPRING 393
religion, and talked to me as a friend." He was allowed to keep
his hair.
Rashid sent me a Yezidi midwife. She was far from clean, and
her hair straggled over her old face. People called her Mama, or
Hajjia, but my name for her was Sairey Gamp. From her I heard
about childbirth and the customs of Yezidi women at such times. She
took me to a Moslem patient directly the baby arrived, and to a Yezidi
woman who had just had a miscarriage, and at both I learnt a good
deal. No Yezidi woman obliged me by having a baby, but I heard
what happened both from a Yezidi woman and from Sairey. A visitor
told me one day that it was believed in the village that I wanted to take
a photograph of a woman having a baby because women in England
did not have their babies naturally, but by surgical operation. She
brought her daughters to see me. One was a tattooist, and as I had
examined many of the tattooings on Yezidi women I was glad to hear
from her exactly how it was done. A thick paste is made from sheep's
gall, black from olive-oil lamp smoke, and milk fresh drawn from
the breast of the mother of a girl-child if the baby is a boy the punc¬
tures fester. The design is drawn in this and then pricked in with a
needle, or two needles tied together. I noted the most common designs,
amongst which were a comb, the sun, the moon, a human figure called
" the doll," and various forms of cross.
Another of our friends was the headman of the village, a farmer,
who told me many interesting things for instance, of the dance per¬
formed when there is a drought. A boy and girl dance round die
village, and the villagers throw water on them.
We became friendly, too, with a delightful old lady of shaikhly
family, Sitt Gule, who had had a tragic life. She was living here in
exile, and her elder son was in prison because he aided some Yezidi
youths to evade military service by crossing the frontier from the Jebel
Sinjar into Syria. The younger son was imprisoned, too, because a
few months before he had stabbed his sister, who wished to marry out¬
side her caste. She was the only daughter, and he had murdered her
in her mother's presence. Sitt Gule was a very dignified old woman,
who always wore white, and had a hard struggle to keep the household
going, for it consisted of three daughters-in-law, eight children and
two servants. She was broken-hearted about her elder son, and begged
me to help to get him released.
Sitt Gule took me one day to see the shrine of her ancestor, Shaikh
Sajaddin. She told me as we came away, " The angel Gabriel is of our
394 THE PEACOCK ANGEL IN THE SPRING
family, too," in much the same tone as someone might mention that
they were distantly connected with the Duke of Norfolk. The ex¬
planation is that the companions of Shaikh 'Adi are by legend sup¬
posed to have been incarnations of angels, so that she could, quite
legitimately, claim angelic descent.
I must stop telling you about our friends in Baashika and describe
the village itself. Layard mentions the cleanliness of the Yezidis, and
I endorse every word he said. It was a delightfully clean village. No
rubbish was thrown down in the streets, there were no dead dogs or
donkeys left to decay, and, above all, there was no litter. Because few
could read there was no newspaper of any kind, and when one went to
the bazaar, one wrapped one's purchase in a kerchief. There was no
post-office, no telephone or telegraph and no radio; in fact, it was the
most blessed escape from the war that you can imagine. The scent of
flowers and herbs blew through the streets from end to end, and the
spring grass came right up to the village. When we climbed the hills
we could see the plain for miles, and just below, the mound of Tel
Billi, where the Americans were excavating till a year ago.
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