Come, Tell Me How You Live

by Agatha Christie Mallowan

  ‘That,’ he explains, ‘is the Anaizah tribe, of whom I am one.’

  ‘How is that?’ Max asks.

  And then Aristide, in his gentle, happy voice, with his quiet, cheerful smile, tells the story. The story of a little boy of seven, who with his family and other Armenian families was thrown by the Turks alive into a deep pit. Tar was poured on them and set alight. His father and mother and two brothers and sisters were all burnt alive. But he, who was below them all, was still alive when the Turks left, and he was found later by some of the Anaizah Arabs. They took the little boy with them and adopted him into the Anaizah tribe. He was brought up as an Arab, wandering with them over their pastures. But when he was eighteen he went into Mosul, and there demanded that papers be given him to show his nationality. He was an Armenian, not an Arab! Yet the blood brotherhood still holds, and to members of the Anaizah he still is one of them.

  Hamoudi and Max are very gay together. They laugh and sing and cap stories. Sometimes I ask for a translation when the mirth is particularly hilarious. There are moments when I feel envious of the fun they are having. Mac is still separated from me by an impassable barrier. We sit together at the back of the car in silence. Any remark I make is considered gravely on its merits by Mac and disposed of accordingly. Never have I felt less of a social success! Mac, on the other hand, seems quite happy. There is about him a beautiful self-sufficiency which I cannot but admire.

  Nevertheless, when, encased in my sleeping-bag at night in the privacy of our tent, I hold forth to Max on the incidents of the day, I strenuously maintain that Mac is not quite human!

  When Mac does advance an original comment it is usually of a damping nature. Adverse criticism seems to afford him a definite gloomy satisfaction.

  Am perplexed today by the growing uncertainty of my walking powers. In some curious way my feet don’t seem to match. I am puzzled by a decided list to port. Is it, I wonder fearfully, the first symptom of some tropical disease?

  I ask Max if he has noticed that I can’t walk straight.

  ‘But you never drink,’ he replies. ‘Heaven knows,’ he adds reproachfully, ‘I’ve tried hard enough with you.’

  This introduces a second and controversial subject. Every-one struggles through life with some unfortunate disability. Mine is to be unable to appreciate either alcohol or tobacco.

  If I could only bring myself to disapprove of these essential products my self-respect would be saved. But, on the contrary, I look with envy at self-possessed women flipping cigarette ash here, there and everywhere, and creep miserably round the room at cocktail parties finding a place to hide my untasted glass.

  Perseverance has not availed. For six months I religiously smoked a cigarette after lunch and after dinner, choking a little, biting fragments of tobacco, and blinking as the ascending smoke pricked my eyelids. Soon, I told myself, I should learn to like smoking. I did not learn to like it, and my performance was criticized severely as being inartistic and painful to watch. I accepted defeat.

  When I married Max we enjoyed the pleasures of the table in perfect harmony, eating wisely but much too well. He was distressed to find that my appreciation of good drink – or, indeed, of any drink – was nil. He set to work to educate me, trying me perseveringly with clarets, burgundies, sauternes, graves, and, more desperately, with tokay, vodka, and absinthe! In the end he acknowledged defeat. My only reaction was that some tasted worse than others! With a weary sigh, Max contemplated a life in which he should be for ever condemned to the battle of obtaining water for me in a restaurant! It has added, he says, years to his life.

  Hence his remarks when I enlist his sympathy for my drunken progress.

  ‘I seem,’ I explain, ‘to be always falling over to the left.’

  Max says it is probably one of these very rare tropical diseases that are distinguished by just being called by somebody’s name. Stephenson’s disease – or Hartley’s. The sort of thing, he goes on cheerfully, which will probably end with your toes falling off one by one.

  I contemplate this pleasing prospect. Then it occurs to me to look at my shoes. The mystery is at once explained. The outer sole of my left foot and the inner sole of the right foot are worn right down. As I stare at them the full solution dawns on me. Since leaving Der-ez-Zor I have walked round about fifty mounds, at different levels, on the side of a steep slope, but always with the hill on my left. All that is needed is to go into reverse, and go round mounds to the right instead of the left. In due course my shoes will then be worn even.

  Today we arrive at Tell Ajaja, the former Arban, a large and important Tell.

  The main track from Der-ez-Zor joins in near here, so we feel now we are practically on a main road. Actually we pass three cars, all going hell-for-leather in the direction of Der-ez-Zor!

  Small clusters of mud houses adorn the Tell, and various people pass the time of day with us upon the big mound. This is practically civilization. Tomorrow we shall arrive at Hasetshe, the junction of the Habur and the Jaghjagha. There we shall be in civilization. It is a French military post, and an important town in this part of the world. There I shall have my first sight of the legendary and long-promised Jaghjagha river! I feel quite excited.

  Our arrival at Hasetshe is full of excitement! It is an unattractive place, with streets and a few shops and a post office. We pay two ceremonious visits – one to the Military and one to the Post Office.

  The French Lieutenant is most kind and helpful. He offers us hospitality, but we assure him that our tents are quite comfortable where we have pitched them by the river bank. We accept, however, an invitation to dinner on the following day. The Post Office, where we go for letters, is a longer business. The Postmaster is out, and everything is consequently locked up. However, a small boy goes in search of him, and in due course (half an hour!) he arrives, full of urbanity, bids us welcome to Hasetshe, orders coffee for us, and only after a prolonged exchange of compliments comes to the business in hand – letters.

  ‘But there is no hurry,’ he says, beaming. ‘Come again tomorrow. I shall be delighted to entertain you.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Max says, ‘we have work to do. We should like our letters tonight.’

  Ah, but here is the coffee! We sit and sip. At long last, after polite exhortations, the Postmaster unlocks his private office and starts to search. In the generosity of his heart he urges on us additional letters addressed to other Europeans. ‘You had better have these,’ he says. ‘They have been here six months. No one has come for them. Yes, yes, surely they will be for you.’

  Politely but firmly we refuse the correspondence of Mr. Johnson, M. Mavrogordata, and Mr. Pye. The Postmaster is disappointed.

  ‘So few?’ he says. ‘But come, will you not have this large one here?’

  But we insist on sticking strictly to those letters and papers that bear our own names. A money order has come, as arranged, and Max now goes into the question of cashing it. This, it seems, is incredibly complicated. The Postmaster has never seen a money order before, we gather, and is very properly suspicious of it. He calls in two assistants, and the question is debated thoroughly, though with great good humour. Here is something entirely novel and delightful on which everyone can have a different opinion.

  The matter is finally settled and various forms signed when the discovery is made that there is no actual cash in the Post Office! This, the Postmaster says, can be remedied on the morrow! He will send out and collect it from the Bazaar.

  We leave the Post Office somewhat exhausted, and walk back to the spot by the river which we have chosen – a little way from the dust and dirt of Hasetshe. A sad spectacle greets us. ’Isa, the cook, is sitting by the cooking-tent, his head in his hands, weeping bitterly.

  What has happened?

  Alas, he replies, he is disgraced. Little boys have collected round to jeer at him. His honour has gone! In a moment of inattention dogs have devoured the dinner he had prepared. There is nothing left, nothing at all but some ric
e.

  Gloomily we eat plain rice, whilst Hamoudi, Aristide and Abdullah reiterate to the wretched ’Isa that the principal duty of a cook is never to let his attention wander from the dinner he is cooking until the moment when that dinner is safely set before those for whom it is destined.

  ’Isa says that he feels he is unequal to the strain of being a cook. He has never been one before (‘That explains a good deal!’ says Max), and would prefer to go into a garage. Will Max give him a recommendation as a first-class driver?

  Max says certainly not, as he has never seen him drive.

  ‘But,’ says ’Isa, ‘I have wound the handle of Big Mary on a cold morning. You have seen that?’

  Max admits that he has seen that.

  ‘Then,’ says ’Isa, ‘you can recommend me!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Habur and the Jaghjagha

  THESE AUTUMN DAYS are some of the most perfect I have ever known. We get up early, soon after sunrise, drink hot tea, and eat eggs and start off. It is cold then, and I wear two jerseys and a big woolly coat. The light is lovely – a very faint soft rose softens the browns and greys. From the top of a mound one looks out over an apparently deserted world. Mounds rise everywhere – one can see perhaps sixty if one counts. Sixty ancient settlements, that is to say. Here, where nowadays only the tribesmen move with their brown tents, was once a busy part of the world. Here, some five thousand years ago, was the busy part of the world. Here were the beginnings of civilization, and here, picked up by me, this broken fragment of a clay pot, hand-made, with a design of dots and cross-hatching in black paint, is the forerunner of the Woolworth cup out of which this very morning I have drunk my tea….

  I sort through the collection of sherds which are bulging the pockets of my coat (I have already had to mend the lining twice), throwing away duplicate types, and see what I can offer in competition with Mac and Hamoudi to the Master for judgement.

  Now then, what have I got?

  A thickish grey ware, part of the rim of a pot (valuable as showing shape), some coarse red stuff, two fragments of painted pots, hand-made and one with the dot design (the oldest Tell Halaf!), a flint knife, part of the base of a thin grey pot, several other nondescript bits of painted pottery, a little bit of obsidian.

  Max makes his selection, flinging most pieces ruthlessly away, uttering appreciative grunts at others. Hamoudi has the clay wheel of a chariot, and Mac has a fragment of incised ware and a portion of a figurine.

  Gathering the united collection together, Max sweeps it into a little linen bag, ties it carefully up, and labels it as usual with the name of the Tell on which it was found. This particular Tell is not marked on the map. It is christened Tell Mak in honour of Macartney, who has had the first find.

  So far as Mac’s countenance can express anything at all, it seems to express faint gratification.

  We run down the side of the Tell and climb into the car. I peel off a jersey. The sun is getting hot.

  We visit two more small Tells, and at the third, which overlooks the Habur, we have lunch – hard-boiled eggs, a tin of bully beef, oranges, and extremely stale bread. Aristide makes tea on the primus. It is very hot now, and the shadows and colours have gone. All is a uniform soft pale buff.

  Max says it is lucky we are doing the survey now and not in spring. I ask why? And he says, because it would be far more difficult to find sherds when there is vegetation everywhere. All this, he says, will be green in the spring. It is, he says, the fertile Steppe. I say admiringly that that is a very grand way of putting it. Max says, well, it is the fertile Steppe!

  Today we take Mary up the right bank of the Habur to Tell Halaf, visiting Tell Ruman (sinister name, but actually not noticeably Roman) and Tell Juma on the way.

  All the Tells in this region have possibilities, unlike the ones farther south. Sherds of pottery of the second and third millennium are frequent and Roman remains are scanty. There is early prehistoric painted hand-made pottery as well. The difficulty will be to choose between so many Tells. Max repeats again and again with jubilation and a complete lack of originality that this is undoubtedly the place!

  Our visit to Tell Halaf has something of the reverence of a pilgrimage to a shrine! Tell Halaf is a name that has been so constantly dinned into my ears for the last few years that I can hardly believe I am actually going to see the actual spot. A very lovely spot it is, with the Habur winding round the base of it.

  I recall a visit we paid to Baron von Oppenheim in Berlin when he took us to the Museum of his finds. Max and he talked excitedly for (I think) five solid hours. There was nowhere to sit down. My interest, at first acute, flagged, and finally died down completely. With lack-lustre eyes I examined the various extremely ugly statues which had come from Tell Halaf, and which in the Baron’s view were contemporary with the extremely interesting pottery. Max was endeavouring to differ politely on this point without contradicting him flatly. To my dazed glance all the statues seemed strangely alike. It was only after a little while that I made the discovery that they were alike, since all but one were plaster reproductions.

  Baron von Oppenheim stopped in his eager dissertation to say lovingly: ‘Ah, my beautiful Venus’, and stroke the figure affectionately. Then he plunged back into discussion, and I wished sadly that I could, in the old nursery phrase, cut off my feet and turn up the ends!

  We have many local conversations on the various mounds approaching Tell Halaf. All hereabouts are various legends of El Baron – mainly the incredible sums he paid out in gold. Time has exaggerated the amount of gold. Even the German government, one feels, cannot have poured out the streams of precious metal in the way tradition has it! Everywhere north of Hasetshe are small villages and signs of cultivation. Since the arrival of the French and the departure of the Turkish rule, the country is being occupied again for the first time since Roman days.

  We get home late. The weather is changing, a wind starts blowing, and it is very unpleasant, dust and sand flying in one’s face and making one’s eyes smart. We have a pleasant dinner with the French, though it has been a difficult business smartening oneself up, or rather, I should say, cleaning oneself up, since a clean blouse for myself and clean shirts for the men is all one can do! We have an excellent dinner and spend a very pleasant evening. We return through driving rain to our tents. An unquiet night, with dogs howling and the tents flapping and straining in the wind.

  Forsaking the Habur for the time being, we make an excursion today on the Jaghjagha. An immense mound quite near at hand has excited my interest, until I discover that it is an extinct volcano – the Kawkab.

  Our particular objective is one Tell Hamidi, of which we have heard good accounts, but it is difficult to reach, as there is no direct track. It means taking a line across country and the crossing of innumerable little ditches and wadis. Hamoudi is in great spirits this morning. Mac is quietly gloomy, and opines that we shall never get to the mound.

  It takes us seven hours of motoring – a very tiring seven hours, with the car sticking more than once and having to be dug out.

  Hamoudi surpasses himself on these occasions. He always considers a car as a kind of inferior though swifter horse. In any moment of uncertainty with a wadi ahead, Hamoudi’s voice rises excitedly, giving frenzied orders to Aristide.

  ‘Quickly – quickly! Give the machine no time to refuse! Rush at it! Rush at it!’

  His disgust when Max stops the car and walks ahead to examine the difficulty is extreme. He shakes his head in utter dissatisfaction.

  Not so, he seems to say, should you treat a high-mettled and nervous car! Give it no time to reflect and all will be well.

  After detours, checks, and the taking on of local guides, we do at last reach the goal. Very beautiful Tell Hamidi looks in the afternoon sun, and it is with a sense of achievement that the car drives proudly up the gentle incline to its summit where we look down on a marsh teeming with wild duck.

  Mac is sufficiently moved to utter a r
emark.

  ‘Ah,’ he says in a tone of gloomy satisfaction, ‘stagnant water, I see!’

  It is hereafter to be his nickname!

  Life now becomes hurried and hectic. Examination of Tells is daily more zealous. For the final selection three things are essential. First, it must be sufficiently near a village or villages to get a supply of labour. Secondly, there must be a water supply – that is to say, it must be near the Jaghjagha or the Habur, or else there must be well-water that is not too brackish. Thirdly, it must give indications of having the right stuff in it. All digging is a gamble – among seventy Tells all occupied at the same period, who is to say which one holds a building, or a deposit of tablets, or a collection of objects of special interest? A small Tell offers as good prospects as a large Tell, since the more important towns are the more likely to have been looted and destroyed in the far-distant past. Luck is the predominant factor. How often has a site been painstakingly and correctly dug, season after season, with interesting but not spectacular results, and then a shift of a few feet, and suddenly a unique find comes to light. The one real consolation is that whichever Tell we select, we are bound to find something.

  We have made a day’s excursion on the opposite bank of the Habur to Tell Halaf again, and we have done two days on the Jaghjagha – a much overrated river, from the point of view of appearance – a brown, muddy stream between high banks – and have marked down one Tell – Tell Brak – as highly promising. It is a large mound, with traces of several periods of occupation, from early prehistoric to Assyrian times. It is about two miles from the Jaghjagha, where there is an Armenian settlement, and there are other villages scattered around not very far away. It is about an hour’s drive from Hasetshe, which will be convenient for supplies. As a drawback, there is no water at the Tell itself, though possibly a well could be dug there. Tell Brak goes down as a possibility.