File 1855/1904 Pt 10 'Koweit:- Relations with Turkey. Sheikh's properties at Fao and Fadaghia' [‎162v] (324/398)

4. I made arrangements to proceed myself to the steamer to watch events,
and, in view of the conflicting reports that I had received as regards the impost
tiou of quarantine, 1 saw no necessity to place myself under any restrictions in
that respect. My boat was the first to arrive, and I remained on the steamer for
some considerable time, watched the Sheikh’s customs-officer and in fact, any
body who pleased, board the steamer and the passengers with their luggage
being disembarked. The steamer arrived about 20 minutes after midnight and
left at 3 A. M. and was on the move, before 1 reached the shore.
5. In the afternoon on Friday. I visited the Sheikh; I quite expected, as I
have said above that 1 should find that the Sheikh’s instructions to the Assistant
Surgeon had been misunderstood I opened the conversation by remarking
that I should be glad if the Sheikh would be so good as to tell me the tenour of
his instructions to the Assistant Surgeon which had astonished me considerably.
The Sheikh asked me what the Assistant Surgeon had reported, and I told hint
the substance of the report that I had the honour to submit to you with my letter
quoted above. The Sheikh replisd that the Assistant Surgeon’s report was correct
in every particular, and added that he had written to the steamer authorities in
Bombay to say that quarantine was imposed on all fast mail steamers, and that
therefore they should no longer book passengers to Koweit by those steamers.
6. I remarked that the passengers from this fast mail had been landed and had
not gone to Basra. The Sheikh began to tell me that they had not been landed ,
when I cut him short by remarking that 1 was on the steamer and saw them being
disembarked. He then said that it was not in his boats, and I did not think it
worth while to point out that there were only three boats alongside the steamer,
while I was there; that one of these was my own which naturally carried no
passengers, and that the first boat after mine into which I saw a number of
Indian passengers being disembarked had carried one of his principal customs
officers to the steamer. The Sheikh then added that he detained all the pas
sengers until noon on Thursday in the boat harbour. As the passengers for the
most part belonged to a gang of Indian boatmen who have come to look after
a wrecked dinghy, subsequent enquiries have served to confirm my first impres
sion that this statement was utterly false. The passengers were seen by two
natives of India in a coffee-shop in the bazar early on Thursday.
7. The Sheikh then began to lay doum his view's about quarantine generally
and brought out the fatalistic saying that he had already quoted in his letter te
your address, forwarded with my No. 334, dated 24th June 1908, “ Mash’Allah
yakun wa ma lam usha lam yakun.” I countered with the equally well known
Muhammadan tradition which I described as the father of all quarantine theories
“ To the place in which there is sickness, go not; and, if sickness comes upon
you, flee not. “ I showed the Sheikh that, in strict obedience to pure Muham
madan tradition, no sound Muhammadan should visit either Bombay or Karachi
and that our quarantine was merely an endeavour to cany out the spirit of that
tradition, while not observing, in all its destructive strictness, the letter.
8. The Sheikh replied, admitting the tradition, that, on the w'hole, he
preferred the letter and that he and his people would be inclined to do without
Bombay and Karachi altogether, if going to those places meant rules and
regulations. They were all for freedom, a truly audacious statement from such
a despot. He then asked about the slow mails, and I said that it seemed, so
far as I had seen, unnecessarv to place any restrictions on them, as it was barely
possible for passengers to land before noon on Thursdays, by which time
they would have completed the five days’ passage from the last infected port,
but, that, if the Sheikh wished, they should, in the strict interpretation of the
Paris Convention, be detained until noon and examined by a competent medical
officer; that, in the event of sickness at Bahrein or Bushire, a longer detention
would be necessary. The Sheikh then said that, if quarantine was essential, they
would do without the slow steamers also.
9. I also asked what would be done to prevent people from the shore land
ing on ships under quarantine, and the Sheikh said that he would not send boats
and that we could arrange to get our post and transact our business, and that