Come, Tell Me How You Live

by Agatha Christie Mallowan

  There is much business afoot before we can set out for home. We proceed first to ‘Harrods’ – namely, the establishment of M. Yannakos. Here I receive greetings, am offered the chair behind the till, and coffee is brewed for me. Michel is completing the purchase of a horse, which is to be attached to a cart and carry water from the river Jaghjagha to our excavations on Tell Brak. Michel has found, so he says, an excellent horse – a horse extremely economia. ‘How economia is the horse?’ Max asks suspiciously. ‘Is it a good horse? A large horse? A horse of endurance?’ ‘Better,’ he says, ‘a good horse costing a little more money than an inferior horse at a cheap price.’

  One of the bundles of sacking has left the lorry and turns out to be the ruffian who is to be the waterman – a man with (so he says) a knowledge of horses. He is to go with Michel and report on the horse. Meanwhile we buy tinned fruits, bottles of doubtful wine, macaroni, pots of plum and apple jam, and other delicacies, from M. Yannakos. We then proceed to the Post Office, where we find our old friend the unshaven Postmaster in dirty pyjamas. The pyjamas do not appear to have been washed or changed since last year. We take our bundles of newspapers and a letter or two, reject three other letters addressed in European handwriting to a Mr. Thompson, which the Postmaster presses anxiously upon us, and go on to the Bank.

  The Bank is of stone – large, cool, empty, very peaceful. There is a bench in the middle, on which sit two soldiers, an old man in picturesque coloured rags with a hennaed beard, and a boy in torn European clothing. They all sit peacefully gazing into space and occasionally spitting. There is a mysterious bed with dingy blankets in a corner. We are received with pleasure by the clerk behind the counter. Max produces a cheque to be cashed, and we are shown into the office of M. le Directeur. M. le Directeur is large, coffee-coloured, and voluble. He receives us with the utmost amiability. Coffee is sent for. He has replaced the directeur of last year, and is rather sad about it. He has come from Alexandretta, where, as he says, there is a little life! But here (his hands fly up), ‘On ne peut même pas faire un Bridge!’ ‘No,’ he adds, his sense of injury growing, ‘pas même un tout petit Bridge.’ (Note – what is the difference between un Bridge and un tout petit Bridge? Presumably both need four players?)

  Half an hour passes in conversation on the political situation, and the amenities (or lack of them) in Kamichlie. ‘Mais tout de meme on fait des belles constructions,’ he admits. He is living, it appears, in one of these new constructions. One has not the electric light, the sanitation, nor any civilized comforts, but the house is at least a construction – ‘une construction en pierre, vous comprenez! Madame will see it on her way to Chagar Bazar.’

  I promise to look out for it.

  We discuss the local Sheikhs. They are all alike, he says. ‘Des propriétaires – mais qui n’ont pas le sou!’ They are always in debt.

  At intervals during the conversation the cashier enters with five or six forms, which Max signs, and also disburses small sums, such as sixty centimes pour les timbres.

  The coffee comes, and after forty minutes the little cashier arrives with the last three documents, a final request of ‘Et deux francs quarante-cinq centimes pour les timbres, s’il vous plîit,’ and it is intimated that the final ceremonies have been completed, and that the money can now be handed over. ‘C’est à dire, si nous avons de l’argent ici!’

  Coldly, Max points out that he has given notice of his intention to draw a cheque a week previously. The cashier shrugs his shoulders, smiling. ‘Ah well, we will see!’ Fortunately all is well, the money is forthcoming, les timbres are affixed, we can leave. The same people are sitting on the benches, still gazing into space and spitting.

  We return to Harrods. The Kurdish waterman is waiting for us. He reports that Michel’s horse – well, one cannot call it a horse! It is not a horse at all. It is an old woman – just that; an old woman! So much for Michel’s economia. Max goes to inspect the horse, and I return to the chair behind the till.

  M. Yannakos Junior entertains me with halting conversation on the events of the great world. ‘Votre roi,’ he says. ‘Votre roi – vous avez un nouveau roi.’ I agree that we have a new King. M. Yannakos struggles to express thoughts that go beyond his words. ‘Le Roi d’Angleterre!’ he says. ‘Grand roi – Plus grand roi dans tout monde – aller – comme ça.’ He makes an expressive gesture. ‘Pour une femme!’ It is beyond him. ‘Pour une femme!’ No, such a thing is not believable. Is it possible that such an extraordinary importance attaches to women in England? ‘Le plus grand roi au monde,’ he repeats in awestruck tones.

  Max, the Kurd and Michel return. Michel, momentarily cast down by the vote of censure on his horse, has recovered all his aplomb. They are now going to enter into negotiations for a mule. Michel murmurs that a mule will be very expensive. The Kurd says that a mule is always valuable. The Kurd and Michel go off in search of a man whose second cousin’s husband knows a man who has a mule to sell.

  Sudden appearance of our idiot houseboy, Mansur. He beams welcome and shakes me warmly by the hand. He it is whom it took one whole season to teach to lay the table – and even now he is apt to break out into an eruption of forks for tea. Making the beds strains his mental capacity to the utmost. His movements are slow, dogged, and everything he does is in the nature of a trick successfully taught to a dog.

  Will we come to the house of his mother (who, incidentally, does our washing) and inspect a collection of antikas?

  We go. The room is much swept and garnished. For the third time in two hours I drink coffee. The antikas are brought out – little Roman glass bottles, fragments of glaze and pottery, odd coins, and a good deal of complete junk. Max divides it into two groups, rejecting one, offering his price for the other. A woman enters, who is clearly an interested party. It seems a moot point whether she will complete the sale or have twins first. By the aspect of her it might even be quins. She listens to Mansur’s translations, shakes her head.

  We leave and return to the lorry. Negotiations for the mule having been begun, we go to inspect the water-barrels, which are to be transported in the cart the mule is to draw. Once more Michel is in trouble. He has ordered one water-barrel of such immense dimensions that it would not fit in the cart, and would probably kill any horse or mule. ‘But,’ wails Michel, ‘one big water-barrel is more economia to make than two small ones, and it holds more water!’ Michel is told he is a blasted fool, and that in future he is to do as he is told. He murmurs hopefully: ‘Sawi proba?’ but even that hope is dashed from him.

  Next we meet the Sheikh – our own particular Sheikh. He is looking more than ever like Henry the Eighth, with his immense henna-dyed beard. He wears his usual white robes, and an emerald green cloth wound round his head. He is in an extremely jovial mood, as he proposes shortly to visit Baghdad, though, of course, it will take many weeks before his passport is arranged. ‘Brother,’ he says to Max, ‘everything that I have is yours. For your sake, I have not sown any seed in the ground this year that all the land might be at your disposal.’ My husband replies: ‘How happy I am that such nobility has also turned out to your own advantage. This year all crops are failing. Those who have sown seed will lose money. You are to be congratulated on your acumen.’

  Honour thus satisfied, they part on the best of terms.

  We climb into Blue Mary. Michel dumps a load of potatoes and oranges on top of my hat-box, completely denting it in; the hens squawk; several Arabs and Kurds beg for conveyance – two are accepted. They get in among the hens and the potatoes and the luggage, and off we go to Chagar Bazar.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Life at Chagar Bazar

  WITH AN IMMENSE WAVE of excitement I catch sight of Our House. There it stands, with its dome, looking like a shrine dedicated to some venerable saint!

  The Sheikh, Max tells me, is intensely proud of it. At intervals he and his friends circle round it admiringly, and Max suspects that he is already raising money on it by falsely representing that it belo
ngs to him, and is merely rented to us.

  Mary draws up with Michel’s usual violent application of the brakes (Forca), and everyone rushes out of the house to greet us. There are old faces and new ones.

  Dimitri, the cook, is the same. His long, gentle face is definitely maternal. He is wearing long trousers of flowered muslin and beaming with pleasure. He seizes my hand and presses it against his forehead, then proudly displays a wooden box with four new-born puppies in it. These, he says, will be our future watch-dogs. Ali, the boy, was also with us last year. He is now feeling rather superior, as a second and lesser cook’s boy is now employed, by name Ferhid. There is little to say about Ferhid, except that he looks worried about something. But this, Max informs me, is Ferhid’s chronic condition.

  We have also a new house-boy – Subri. Subri is tall and fierce and looks very intelligent. He grins and shows teeth of assorted white and gold.

  The Colonel and Bumps have tea ready for us. The Colonel does things with military precision. Already he has instituted a new custom of lining up the men in military formation at bakshish-time. They think it is a great joke. He spends a lot of time tidying up. The days when Max goes into Kamichlie are his great opportunity. The house, he announces proudly, is now as neat as a new pin. Everything that has a place is in its place, and quite a lot of things that have not got a place have been found a place! So much so that all kinds of inconvenience will arise!

  Bumps is our new architect. His nickname has arisen out of an innocent remark made by him to the Colonel on the journey out. In the early dawn, as the train was approaching Nisibin, Bumps pulled up the blind and looked out with interest on the country where the next few months of his life were to be spent.

  ‘Curious place this is,’ he remarks. ‘It’s all over bumps!’

  ‘Bumps, indeed!’ cries the Colonel. ‘Don’t you realize, you irreverent fellow, that each of those bumps is a buried city dating back thousands of years?’

  And from henceforth Bumps is to be our new colleague’s name!

  There are other new acquisitions for me to see. First, a second-hand Citröen, which the Colonel has christened Poilu.

  Poilu turns out to be a very temperamental gentleman. For some reason or other he always chooses the Colonel with whom to misbehave, obstinately refusing to start, or else staging a break-down at some inconvenient spot.

  The solution of this mystery dawns on me one day, and I explain to the Colonel that it is his fault.

  ‘How do you mean – my fault?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have christened him Poilu. After all, if our lorry started as Queen Mary, the least you could do was to christen the Citröen the Empress Josephine. If so, you’d have had no trouble!’

  The Colonel, like the disciplinarian he is, says that at any rate it is too late now. Poilu is Poilu, and will have to behave himself. I look sideways at Poilu, who seems to be regarding the Colonel with a rakish air. Poilu, I feel sure, is contemplating that most serious of military crimes – mutiny!

  The foremen next come rushing up to greet me. Yahya looks more than ever like a great happy dog. Alawi is looking, as always, very handsome. Old Abd es Salaam is, as usual, full of conversation.

  I ask Max how Abd es Salaam’s constipation is, and Max replies that most evenings have been devoted to the exhaustive discussion of it!

  Then we go to the antika-room. The first work period of ten days is just concluded, with the bumper result of a find of nearly a hundred tablets, so everyone is very jubilant. In another week we are starting to dig at Tell Brak as well as Chagar.

  Back in the house at Chagar, it seems as though I had never been away, though, owing to the Colonel’s passion for order, the house is looking a good deal tidier than I have ever seen it. Which brings me to the sad story of the Camembert cheeses.

  Six Camembert cheeses had been bought by Max in Alep under the impression that you can treat a Camembert cheese like a Dutch cheese and store it away until wanted. One had been eaten before my arrival, and the Colonel, coming across the other five in his tidying round, had stacked them neatly at the back of a cupboard in the living-room. There they were rapidly overlaid by drawing-paper, typewriting-paper, cigarettes, Turkish delight, etc., and languished in darkness – unremembered, unseen, but not, let it be said, unsmelt.

  A fortnight later we are all sniffing and hazarding guesses.

  ‘If I didn’t know that we’d got no drains –’ says Max.

  ‘And the nearest gas-pipe must be about two hundred miles away –’

  ‘So I suppose it must be a dead mouse.’

  ‘A dead rat at least!’

  Life indoors becoming unendurable, a determined search is made for the hypothetical disintegrating rat. Then, and only then, is the discovery made of a gluey odorous mass which has once been five Camembert cheeses, and which, passing through the coulant stage, are now coulant to the nth degree.

  Accusing eyes are turned on the Colonel, and the horrible remains are entrusted to Mansur for solemn burial at a spot remote from the house. Max explains to the Colonel with feeling how this confirms what he has always known – that the idea of tidiness is a great mistake! The Colonel explains that the tidying away of the cheeses was a good idea; the fault lies in the absent-mindedness of archaeologists who cannot remember that they have Camembert cheeses in the house. I explain that the real mistake lies in buying ripe Camembert cheeses en bloc to store for the season! Bumps says, why buy Camembert cheeses, anyway? He has never liked them! Mansur takes away the horrible remains and buries them obediently, but he is, as usual, puzzled. Presumably the Khwajas like these things, since they pay good money for them? Why, then, destroy them, when their good qualities have become so much more evident than they were before? Obviously it is all a part and parcel of the extraordinary ways of employers!

  The servant problem on the Habur is very different from the servant problem in England. You might say that here the servants have an employer problem! Our fancies, prejudices, likes and dislikes are quite fantastic, and follow, to the native mind, no logical pattern whatever!

  For instance, various cloths of slightly different texture with different-coloured borders are issued, and are supposed to be used for different purposes. Why this elaboration?

  Why, when Mansur is using a blue-edged teacloth to wipe mud from the car’s radiator, does an incensed Khatún emerge from the house full of condemnation? The cloth has removed the mud most successfully. Again, why unmerited censure when a visit to the kitchen reveals the fact that the breakfast things after washing up are being wiped with a sheet?

  ‘But,’ protests Mansur, anxious to vindicate his conduct, ‘it is not a clean sheet we are using. It is a dirty sheet!’

  Incomprehensibly this seems to make matters worse.

  In the same way civilization’s invention of table cutlery presents a perpetual headache to a worried house-boy.

  More than once I have watched through an open doorway Mansur nerving himself to the task of laying the table for lunch.

  First he adjusts the tablecloth – very seriously trying it both ways, and standing well back to observe which effect is the more pleasing artistically.

  Inevitably he plumps for the length of the cloth being placed across the table, so that there is a graceful fall on either side and the ends of the table show an inch or two of bare board. He nods approval, and then, a frown gathering on his forehead, he peers into a somewhat moth-eaten plate basket, bought cheap in Beyrout, in which reposes assorted cutlery.

  Here is the real problem. Carefully, and with every sign of mental strain, he places a fork on each cup and saucer and a knife to the left of each plate. He stands back, and studies the effect with his head on one side. He shakes his head and sighs. Something seems to tell him that that is the wrong arrangement. Something also seems to tell him that never, not even at the end of the season, will he really have mastered the principle behind the varied combinations of those three units – knife, fork, and spoon. Even at tea,
the simplest meal, his arrangement of a single fork does not meet with favour. For some inscrutable reason we demand, at a time when there is nothing serious to cut, a knife! It simply does not make sense.

  With a deep sigh, Mansur proceeds with his complicated task. Today, at least, he is determined to please. He looks again. He lays a couple of forks to the right of every plate, and adds a spoon or knife at alternate places. Breathing heavily, he places plates in position, bends and blows on them ferociously to remove any adherent dust. Tottering slightly with the immense mental strain, he leaves the room to inform the cook that all is in readiness, and that the latter can now remove the omelette from the oven, where it has been keeping hot and getting nice and leathery during the last twenty minutes.

  Ferhid, the boy, is then sent out to us. He arrives with a worried look, as though to announce some major catastrophe, so that it is quite a relief when all he has to say is that dinner is ready.

  Tonight we have all the dishes that Dimitri considers most high class. We start with hors d’oeuvre, hard-boiled eggs smothered in rich mayonnaise, sardines, cold string beans, and anchovies. Then we have Dimitri’s speciality – a shoulder (?) of mutton stuffed with rice, raisins, and spice. It is all very mysterious. There is a long stitching of cotton which you have to cut. After that, quantities of the stuffing are easily obtained, but the actual meat eludes one, and only at the close of the course does one, on suddenly turning over the joint, discover the actual mutton! After that we have pears from a tin, as Dimitri is forbidden to make the only sweet he knows, which we all dislike – namely, caramel custard. After this, the Colonel proudly announces that he has taught Dimitri to make a savoury.

  Plates are handed round. On them is a small strip of Arab bread smothered in hot grease, which tastes faintly of cheese. We tell the Colonel we do not think much of his savoury!