Come, Tell Me How You Live
Page 21
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
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr. Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
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
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
Double Sin and Other Stories
The Pale Horse
Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories
The Hercule Poirot Mysteries
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The A.B.C. Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews and Other Stories
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labors of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
The Underdog and Other Stories
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
The Miss Marple Mysteries
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 from Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories
The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries
The Secret Adversary
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
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollin
s.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
1 This was written at a time before the opening of the modern Hôtel St. George.