Then it was laid aside. But now, after four years of war, I have found my thoughts turning more and more to those days spent in Syria, and at last I have felt impelled to get out my notes and rough diaries and complete what I had begun and laid aside. For it seems to me that it is good to remember that there were such days and such places, and that at this very minute my little hill of marigolds is in bloom, and old men with white beards trudging behind their donkeys may not even know there is a war. ‘It does not touch us here….’
For after four years spent in London in war-time, I know what a very good life that was, and it has been a joy and refreshment to me to live those days again…. Writing this simple record has been not a task, but a labour of love. Not an escape to something that was, but the bringing into the hard work and sorrow of today of something imperishable that one not only had but still has!
For I love that gentle fertile country and its simple people, who know how to laugh and how to enjoy life; who are idle and gay, and who have dignity, good manners, and a great sense of humour, and to whom death is not terrible.
Inshallah, I shall go there again, and the things that I love shall not have perished from this earth….
Spring, 1944.
FINIS
EL HAMDU LILLAH
Photographic Insert
The lorry ‘Queen Mary’ setting out to cross the Euphrates by ferry
The car stuck in a wadi
Chagar Bazar: Excavation in progress
Chagar Bazar: Deep pit, virgin soil at 22.6 metres
(Top Image) Sheik Ahmed
(Bottom Image) Hamoudi, the foreman
Staff at Chagar Bazar: Seated (l. to r.), Agatha Christie, Burn, Bumps; Standing, Serkis, Sabri, waterman, Mansur
Chagar Bazar: Discovery!
Water-carrying donkey
Building the Expedition House at Chagar Bazar: The penditive nearly completed
Building the Expedition House: The corbel dome from the interior
The completed house, from the south-west
(Top Image) Ferryman crossing the Euphrates at Jerablus
(Bottom Image) Basket-boys at work
Chagar Bazar: Arab workmen at bottom of deep pit
Chagar Bazar: Deep pit from south-east
About the Author
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. In 1930 she married the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. She published two books under her married name, Agatha Christie Mallowan. She died in 1976.
www.AgathaChristie.com
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THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION
The Man in the Brown Suit
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Parker Pyne Investigates
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Murder Is Easy
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
Crooked House
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They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
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Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
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Lord Edgware Dies
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Three Act Tragedy
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Five Little Pigs
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Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
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The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 from Paddington
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Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories
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Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
Memoirs
An Autobiography
Come, Tell Me How You Live
Credits
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Copyright
AGATHA CHRISTIE® COME, TELL ME HOW YOU LIVE™. Copyright © 1946 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved.
COME, TELL ME HOW YOU LIVE © 1946. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST WILLIAM MORROW PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2012.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-209370-7
12 13 14 15 16
EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 978-0-06-209371-4
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1 This was written at a time before the opening of the modern Hôtel St. George.
Come, Tell Me How You Live Page 21
