The Throne of Solomon
At about three-thirty, I decided to move east across the plain
so as to be nearer the Mound of Kalar, which I meant to
examine next day. I took leave of the Agha's two wives,
both friendly to me, but frank enough to mention in each
other's presence how very little use they had for each other.
This the Agha himself corroborated, declaring that a wife at a
time is as much as a man can deal with comfortably.
" I think one is enough," said the younger bride, whose
position was secure, with something as near a toss of her head
as her voluminous head-dress would allow. But a look of great
anxiety crept into the eyes of the older and less beloved one.
" I am thinking of divorcing her soon/' die Agha remarked
to die party in general.
And I felt it was not the moment to stand up for monogamy.
Two young women, visiting in Rudbarek, now offered to
escort us across the plain to their home at Lahu for the night.
We set off with them in the pleasant afternoon and, emerging
from the last low undulations of the hills, stepped out into the
openness of Kalar Dasht.
Hasankeif on the river, the same that Yaqut mentions in the
tenth century, is the capital of the plain, where the police stay
whenever any happen to be up here. But Kurdichal on the
eastern hill and Lahu in the south-east are the two biggest
villages, counting about 200 houses each, and inhabited by the
Khwajavend, mixed—in Lahu at any rate—with a number of
All Ilahis who live at daggers drawn with the Kurds.
As we approached this village we were in rich country out
of the mountains. Corn and hemp were grown. Ricks
stood on platforms raised above the ground, dark against the
distance of the western valley, where the peaks of Solomon and
Barir and Qabran floated like smoke above the forest green.
A little stream, the Dakulad, came out from the south-west,
where a forest-clad ridge ends this part of the Sardab Rud