Come, Tell Me How You Live

by Agatha Christie Mallowan

  They make a bee-line for me. Presently they are sitting round me in a circle.

  Kurdish women are gay and handsome. They wear bright colours. These women have turbans of bright orange round their heads, their clothes are green and purple and yellow. Their heads are carried erect on their shoulders, they are tall, with a backward stance, so that they always look proud. They have bronze faces, with regular features, red cheeks, and usually blue eyes.

  The Kurdish men nearly all bear a marked resemblance to a coloured picture of Lord Kitchener that used to hang in my nursery as a child. The brick-red face, the big brown moustache, the blue eyes, the fierce and martial appearance!

  In this part of the world Kurdish and Arab villages are about equal in number. They lead the same lives and belong to the same religion, but not for a moment could you mistake a Kurdish woman for an Arab woman. Arab women are invariably modest and retiring; they turn their face away when you speak to them; if they look at you, they do so from a distance. If they smile, it is shyly, and with a half-averted face. They wear mostly black or dark colours. And no Arab woman would ever come up and speak to a man! A Kurdish woman has no doubt that she is as good as a man or better! They come out of their houses and make jokes to any man, passing the time of day with the utmost amiability. They make no bones about bullying their husbands. Our Jerablus workmen, unused to Kurds, are profoundly shocked.

  ‘Never,’ exclaims one, ‘did I think to hear a respectable woman address her husband in such a way! Truly, I did not know which way to look.’

  My Kurdish women this morning are examining me with frank interest and exchanging ribald comments with each other. They are very friendly, nod at me, and laugh, ask questions, then sigh and shake their heads as they tap their lips.

  They are clearly saying: ‘What a pity we cannot understand each other!’ They take up a fold of my skirt and examine it with interest; they pinch my sleeve. They point up at the mound. I am the Khwaja’s woman? I nod. They fire off more questions, then laugh at the realization that they cannot get answers. No doubt they want to know all about my children and my miscarriages!

  They try to explain to me what they do with the herbs and plants they are picking. Ah, but it is no good!

  Another great burst of laughter breaks out. They get up, smile, and nod and drift off, talking and laughing. They are like great gay-coloured flowers….

  They live in hovels of mud, with perhaps a few cooking-pots as all their possessions, yet their gaiety and laughter are unforced. They find life good, with a Rabelaisian flavour. They are handsome, and full-blooded and gay.

  My little Arab girl passes, driving the cows. She smiles at me shyly, then quickly averts her eyes.

  In the distance I hear the foreman’s whistle. Fidos! It is twelve-thirty – an hour’s break for lunch.

  I retrace my steps to where Max and Mac are waiting. Michel is setting out the lunch that Dimitri has packed. We have slices of cold mutton, more hard-boiled egg, flaps of Arab bread, and cheese – the local cheese of the country for Max and Mac; goat’s cheese, strong-flavoured, a pale grey in colour, and slightly hairy. I have the sophisticated variety of synthetic gruyère, silver-papered in its round cardboard box. Max looks at it contemptuously. After the food, there are oranges and enamel mugs of hot tea.

  After lunch we go to look at the site of our house.

  It is some hundred yards beyond the village and the Sheikh’s house, to the south-east of the mound. It is all traced out, and I ask Mac doubtfully if the rooms aren’t very small. He looks amused, and explains that that is the effect of the open space surrounding it. The house is to be built with a central dome; it will have a big living- and working-room in the middle, with two rooms off that on each side. The kitchen quarters will be separate. On to the main structure we can add additional rooms if the dig is prolonged and we need them.

  A little way from the house we are going to prospect for a new well, so as not to depend on the Sheikh’s well. Max selects the spot and then goes back to the work.

  I stay for a while, and watch Mac getting things done by means of gestures, head shakings, whistles – everything except the spoken word!

  At about four o’clock Max starts going round the gangs and bakshishing the men. As he comes to each one, they stop, line up roughly, and produce the small finds of the day. One of the more enterprising of the basket-boys has cleaned his acquisitions with spit!

  Opening his immense book, Max starts operations.

  ‘Qasmagi? (Pickman).

  ‘Hassan Mohammed.’

  What has Hassan Mohammed got? Half a large broken pot, many fragments of pottery, a bone knife, a scrap or two of copper.

  Max turns the collection over, flings away ruthlessly what is rubbish – usually those things which have inflamed the pickman’s highest hopes – puts bone implements in one of the small boxes that Michel carries, beads in another. Fragments of pottery go in one of the big baskets that a small boy carries.

  Max announces the price: twopence ha’penny, or possibly fourpence, and writes it down in the book. Hassan Mohammed repeats the sum, storing it away in his capacious memory.

  Terrific arithmetic lies ahead at the end of the week. When each daily sum has been added up and joined to the daily rate of pay the amount is then paid over. The man paid usually knows exactly what he is to receive! Sometimes he will say: ‘It is not enough – there should be twopence more.’ Or just as often: ‘You have given me too much; fourpence less is what is owing to me.’ They are seldom wrong. Occasional errors arise owing to the similarity of names. There are often three or four Daoud Mohammeds, and they have to be further distinguished by Daoud Mohammed Ibraham, or Daoud Mohammed Suliman.

  Max goes on to the next man.

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Ahmad Mohammed.’

  Ahmad Mohammed has not very much. Strictly speaking he has nothing at all that we want; but encouragement must be given, however small, so Max selects a few sherds of pottery and throws them into the basket and announces a couple of farthings.

  Next come the basket-boys. Ibrahim Daoud has an exciting-looking object, which is only, alas, a fragment of an incised Arab pipe-stem! But now comes little Abdul Jehar, proffering doubtfully some tiny beads, and another object that Max snatches at with approval. A cylinder seal, intact, and of a good period – a really good find. Little Abdul is commended, and five francs written down to his name. A murmur of excitement breaks out.

  There is no doubt that to the workmen, gamblers all by nature, the uncertainty of the business is its principal attraction. And it is astonishing how a run of luck will attend certain gangs. Sometimes when new ground is being broken Max will say: ‘I shall put Ibrahim and his gang on this outer wall; they’ve found far too much lately. Now poor old Rainy George has had no luck lately. I’ll put him on to a good place.’

  But lo and behold! In Ibrahim’s patch, the houses of the poorest quarter of the old city, straightaway is found a cache of an earthenware pot containing a heap of gold earrings – the dowry, perhaps, of a daughter of olden days, and up goes Ibrahim’s bakshish; and Rainy George, digging in a promising cemetery area where finds should abound, gets unaccountably sparse burials.

  The men who have been bakshished go back to work in desultory fashion. Max goes on till he comes to the last gang.

  It is now half an hour before sunset. The whistle blows. Everybody yells ‘Fidos! Fidos!’ They fling baskets in the air, catch them, and run headlong down the hill, yelling and laughing.

  Another day’s work is over. Those who come from villages two or three miles away start to walk home. Our finds, in their baskets and boxes, are brought down the hill and packed carefully into Mary. A few men whose homes are on our route clamber on to Mary’s roof. We set off home. Another day is over.

  By a curious coincidence, our well that we have started to dig proves to be at the exact spot where a well has been dug in antiquity. This creates such an effect that a few days later five grave beard
ed gentlemen wait upon Max as he descends from the mound.

  They have come, they explain, from their villages many miles distant. They are in need of more water. The Khwaja knows the places where the wells are hidden – those wells that the Romans had. If he will indicate the places to them they will be eternally grateful.

  Max explains that it is pure chance that we have hit upon the spot where a well formerly existed.

  The grave gentlemen smile politely but disbelievingly.

  ‘You have great wisdom, Khwaja; that is known. The secrets of antiquity are to you an open book. Where cities were, where wells were, all these things you know. Therefore, indicate to us the right places to dig and there shall be gifts.’

  None of Max’s protestations are believed. Rather is he regarded as a magician who keeps his secrets. He knows, they murmur, but he will not say.

  ‘I wish to goodness we’d never struck on that beastly Roman well,’ says Max gloomily. ‘It’s causing me no end of trouble.’

  Complications arise when the men have to be paid. The official currency of the country is the French franc. But in this part of the world the Turkish mejidi has been in use so long that the conservative inhabitants regard nothing else as satisfactory. The bazaars deal in that currency though the banks do not. Our men refuse persistently to be paid in anything except the mejidi.

  Consequently, having got the official currency from the bank, Michel has then to be dispatched to the bazaars to change it into the illegal currency that is the ‘effectif’ locally.

  The mejidi is a large, heavy coin. Michel staggers in with trays of these – handfuls, bagfuls! He pours them out upon the table. They are all very dirty, and smell of garlic!

  We have nightmare evenings before pay-day counting out mejidis, almost asphyxiated with the smell of them!

  Michel is invaluable in many ways. He is honest, punctual, and most scrupulous. Unable to read or write, he can carry the most complicated accounts in his head, returning from market with a long string of purchases, sometimes as many as thirty, reciting the price of each accurately, and putting down the exact amount of change. He never makes a single mistake in accountacy.

  He is, on the other hand, overbearing in the extreme, extremely quarrelsome with all Mohammedans, very obstinate, and with an unfortunately heavy hand on machinery. Forca! he says, his eyes gleaming, and immediately afterwards an ominous snap is heard.

  Even more disastrous are his economies. Putrescent bananas and dried-up oranges he is chagrined to find unappreciated. ‘Were there, then, no good ones?’ ‘Yes, but more expensive. These are more economical.’

  It is a great word – Economia! It costs us a good deal in pure waste.

  Michel’s third slogan is Sawi proba (Make trial).

  He says it in all kinds of tone of voice – hopefully, coaxingly, eagerly, confidently, sometimes despairingly.

  The result is usually unfortunate.

  Our washerwoman having been unaccountably slow in delivering my cotton frocks, I venture to put on the Empire Builder’s wife’s shantung coat and skirt, which I have previously not had the courage to wear.

  Max takes one look at me.

  ‘What on earth have you got on?’

  I say defensively that it is nice and cool.

  ‘You can’t wear that,’ says Max. ‘Go and take it off.’

  ‘I must wear it. I’ve bought it.’

  ‘It’s too frightful. You look like the most offensive kind of memsahib – straight from Poonah!’

  I admit sadly that I have had a suspicion to that effect.

  Max says encouragingly: ‘Put on the greenish buff with the Tell Halaf running lozenge pattern.’

  ‘I wish,’ I say crossly, ‘that you would not use pottery terms for describing my clothes. It’s lime-green! And a running lozenge is a disgusting term – like something half-sucked and left by a child on a village shop counter. How you can think up such disgusting descriptions for pottery patterns I cannot think!’

  ‘What an imagination you have,’ says Max. ‘And the running lozenge is an extremely attractive Tell Halaf pattern’.

  He draws it for me on a piece of paper, and I say that I know all about it, and that it is a most attractive pattern. It’s the description that’s so revolting.

  Max looks at me sadly and shakes his head.

  As we pass through the village of Hanzir we hear the following conversation.

  ‘Who are these?’

  ‘They are the foreigners who dig.’

  Gravely an old gentleman surveys us.

  ‘How beautiful they are,’ he sighs. ‘They are full of money!’

  An old woman rushes up to Max.

  ‘Khwaja! Mercy; intercede for my son. They have taken him away to Damascus – to prison. He is a good man, he has done nothing – nothing at all, I swear it!’

  ‘Why, then, did they take him to prison?’

  ‘For nothing. It is an injustice. Save him for me.’

  ‘But what has he done, mother?’

  ‘Nothing. I swear it before God. Before God, it is true! He had done nothing but kill a man!’

  Now a new anxiety arises. Several of the men from Jerablus fall ill. They are in tents at Chagar Bazar. Three men are laid up, and difficulty arises because the other men will not go near them. They will not take them food or water.

  This avoidance of the sick is very strange. But, then, everything seems strange in a community where the value of human life is not accounted as important.

  ‘They will starve if no food is taken to them,’ says Max.

  Their fellow-workmen shrug their shoulders.

  ‘Inshallah, if it is God’s will.’

  The foremen, albeit reluctantly, vindicate their acquaintance with civilization and render some grudging service. Max broaches delicately the question of hospital. He can arrange with the French authorities for the two men who are seriously ill to be admitted to hospital.

  Yahya and Alawi shake their heads doubtfully. It will be a disgrace to go to hospital, for in hospital disgraceful things happen. Death is always preferable to disgrace.

  I think wildly of mistaken diagnoses, of neglect. ‘What are these disgraceful things that have occurred?’ I asked.

  Max goes deeper into the subject. Then, after a long series of questions and answers which I do not follow, he turns and explains.

  A man was admitted to hospital and there he was given an enema –

  ‘Yes,’ I say, waiting for the story to proceed.

  Max says that that is all.

  ‘But did the man die?’

  ‘No, but he would have preferred to die.’

  ‘What?’ I cry incredulously.

  Max says that it is so. The man returned to his village, nursing a deep and bitter grievance. Such an indignity was too deep! Death would to him have been preferable.

  Accustomed as we are to our Western ideas of the importance of life, it is difficult to adjust our thoughts to a different scale of values. And yet to the Oriental mind it is simple enough. Death is bound to come – it is as inevitable as birth; whether it comes early or late is entirely at the will of Allah. And that belief, that acquiescence, does away with what has become the curse of our present-day world – anxiety. There may not be freedom from want, but there is certainly freedom from fear. And idleness is a blessed and natural state – work is the unnatural necessity.

  I think of an old beggar we came across in Persia. He had a white beard and a dignified and noble mien. He spoke proudly, for all his outstretched hand.

  ‘Give me of your munificence a trifle, oh Prince. It concerns me that I may avoid death.’

  The problem of the two ill men becomes more acute. Max goes into Kamichlie and lays his troubles before the French Commandant. The officers there are always kind and helpful. Max is introduced to the French military doctor, and the latter drives out with him to the mound and examines the patients.

  He confirms our fears that the men are really ill. One man, h
e says, must have been already in a very serious state of health when he came to us, and there could never have been much hope of his recovery. He recommends that they should both be brought into hospital. The men are persuaded to agree, and they are driven there forthwith.

  The French doctor also very kindly gives us some really powerful aperient medicine, which will, he assures us, move a horse!

  This is certainly needed, for the men are constantly coming to Max with graphic accounts of constipation, and ordinary laxatives seem to have no effect whatever.

  One of our sick men has died in hospital. The other is well on the way to recovery. Word comes to us of the death two days after it has occurred, and we learn that the man is already buried.

  Alawi comes to us with a grave face.

  It is a question, he says, of our reputation…

  My heart sinks slightly. The word reputation always precedes the expenditure of money.

  This man, he goes on, has died far from his home. He has been buried here. That, in Jerablus, will be a great reflection upon us.

  But we cannot help the man’s dying, says Max. He was already an ill man when he came, and we have done all we can.

  Alawi waves death aside. Death is nothing. It is not the man’s death that matters. It is the burial.

  For what will be the position of this man’s relations – of his family? He has been buried in a strange place. Then they will have to leave home and come to where his grave is. It is a disgrace for a man not to return to be buried in his home town.

  Max says that he doesn’t see what he can do about it now. The man is buried. What does Alawi suggest – a present of money to the sorrowing family?

  That will be acceptable, yes. But what Alawi is really suggesting is disinterment.

  ‘What! Dig him up again?’

  ‘Yes, Khwaja. Send the body back to Jerablus. Then all will be done honourably, and your reputation will not suffer.’

  Max says that he does not know whether such a thing can be managed. It doesn’t seem to him practicable.