Western knowledge of medicine was widely regarded as the most spectacular among Kurds who had come into contact with Europeans. A travelogue written in the early 20th century has various amusing stories about Kurdish engagement with Europeans:
On another occasion, a Kurd came to one of our European staff, with a request to have a tooth extracted. The Frank, who had served some apprenticeship at that art, did his office deftly; and the Kurd, filled with gratitude, offered two mejids (seven shillings) as a fee. This was refused, as no fees were taken; and the patient was even more astonished. However, he was a Mussulman gentleman, and to receive a benefit without making return for it was unthinkable; hence if his next proposal was bizarre, at least the kindness was genuine. "Look here, Effendim, you are a Christian, are you not? Well, when I get to Paradise, I shall have seventy houris. You will not have any where you are going; and I think I may spare you-two!" An interesting corollary to the above proposition would seem to be that the market value of a houri is 3/6 sterling, plus compound interest on that sum for say twenty years, which seems cheap.
Kurds may have held unrealistic expectations on the field. Some sought out Europeans to address the Muslim world's most serious problem since the seventh century: the evil eye. If Western medicine was so advanced, could it cure the evil eye?
Perhaps our most remarkable patient, however, was a poor fellow who was brought in by a deputation of the men of his village, with a request that we would cure him of the evil eye! If he looked at a crock of milk, it upset; if at a sheep, the wolf got it; if at a child, it was likely enough to tumble into the fire. They were quite fair about the matter, fully recognizing that it was the poor fellow's mis-fortune, not his fault. Still, he was such a nuisance to all the neighbours, that it was to be hoped that English know-ledge would cure him. Unfortunately, we had to own that there was nothing in the British Pharmacopœia that professes to deal with this form of trouble; and though we had, as a matter of fact, plenty of charms against the evil eye in our possession (invocations of the Archangel Gabriel against "that light and vile daughter of perdition" with power to send it away " into the desolate land, where cocks crow not and foot of beast treads not, there to walk up and down in dry places, seeking rest and finding none ") yet we felt on the whole that it would not be proper to use these, and the deputation had to go away disappointed.
In this story, a Kurd makes a tribal request of the Englishmen he encounters, demanding that his arm be healed after being injured in battle with the British. Pretty reasonable demand, yet the Englishmen are not held accountable because, in the end, Kurds are too soft-hearted:
Once, on a journey, we have known surgical aid demanded in rather menacing fashion. We had halted by a spring, when a party of Kurds, all fully armed of course, turned up from the opposite direction, and demanded of our servant who and what we might be. Hearing that we were English, the leader strode over to us at once, displayed a paralysed arm, and observed, "You have got to cure that."
That is quite beyond our power, we fear," said we, you must take that to the hospital in Mosul."
"Well you know, I think you ought to cure it; because you did it."
We did it? We never set eyes on you before."
"Well, if it was not you, it was your Consul; but you English are all one set. He did it when he was shooting at us."
Our friend was, as we then understood, one of the gang who had, a few years previously, attacked a British Consul in this neighbourhood.† There had been a pretty sharp skirmish, of which this gentleman bore the token in a bullet that had cut the sinews of his right arm. The Consul gained great kudos in the affair; for he not only beat off his assailants, but killed their leader, a man who had the reputation of being "proof" against shot and steel. Such reputations are almost as common in these regions now as they were in the highlands of Scotland in the seventeenth century; but (in spite of the local facilities) the possessors of such immunity are not held to have acquired it by direct compact with the Evil One, like Claverhouse and Dalziel, but to have been born with it in course of nature. Mirza Agha, the Kurd in question, certainly did his best to live up to his character; for though he received three wounds that would each have been fatal to most men (two in the head, and one in the body) he did not die until the fifth day after the battle.
This comrade of his was not disposed to take vengeance (as might perhaps have been expected) on all and sundry Englishmen for the loss of his arm. Having expressed his sense of what was befitting, and provided us with an instance of the survival of tribal responsibility, for which as students of history we were bound to be grate-ful to him, he went on his way and we saw him no more.
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