The Baghdad Railway Club

by Andrew Martin

  ‘Salaam,’ I said at length, since it was obvious that he would not say it. He nodded, not so much to return the greeting as to confirm his victory. He looked with satisfaction at the flies.

  ‘A really, really poor show,’ he said.

  His English was excellent – I had to give him that. You’d think he’d spent years in the saloon bars of London; or the dining rooms, since he didn’t drink. He said something very rapidly, which might very well have been: ‘The other kafir. Where’s he got to?’, in which case I ought to have stood him down on the spot, but that would have taken more energy than I possessed just then, and in any case I couldn’t be sure. He moved rapidly towards me, and leant over me, so as to emphasise his hawkish features.

  ‘Effendi Jarvis . . .’ and he flashed a look towards the scullery. He knew Jarvis was in there. ‘. . . he is crack-ing?’

  He had made a question of it; but he shook his head furiously, as though to erase the word he had spoken. He leant into me again. ‘He is crack-ers.’ This time he nodded in satisfaction, pleased at having found the right expression, but I considered that either would serve, as it happened. Speaking very slowly and carefully, Ahmad said, ‘What do you want to do about it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I want to sleep.’

  He was unwrapping the parcel – a new flytrap. He walked around to the other side of the bed, and picked up the old one. ‘This’, he said, holding it up, ‘bust.’ He put the new one down, and wound it up. He leant over to me again (as the representative of the imperial power, I really ought to have been the one standing up), saying in an under-breath, ‘In night . . . he . . . really big racket. He . . .’

  And with his mouth six inches from my ear, he let out a fearful scream.

  ‘Out!’ I said, badly shaken up. ‘Get out! I’m going to sleep.’

  And presently – if only for a very short while – I actually did.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Jarvis,’ I said, ‘you’ve a bowl of meat on the floor in your room.’

  ‘Yes‚ sir, it shouldn’t be there. It’s for the dogs.’

  ‘What dogs?’

  ‘The pi-dogs that are all over town sir. It’s short for pariah, which is an Indian word meaning “outsider”.’

  ‘And you feed them?’

  ‘We’re British‚ sir; we can’t just let all the dogs die.’

  Giving that rum observation the go-by, I said, ‘Now . . . You were in the show at Kut . . .’

  ‘The battle, sir – the first one. Not the siege, when the Turks came back at us. I was out of it by then.’

  He took a pull on his beer. I was in for the whole story, I knew. It was four o’clock on the day after my return from Samarrah, and Jarvis and I sat under the palms in the rose garden. I had decided to get on terms with the man, so I’d asked what had been agitating him, and he had told me, ‘This place, sir. Also what happened to Captain Boyd – I can’t stand not knowing. Apart from that, it’s memories, sir – and not of the best.’

  As to Boyd, we had resolved to visit his former quarters and speak to his Arab servant in company with Ahmad, who would translate. Meanwhile, I was in for the memories.

  ‘September 1915, sir,’ said Jarvis, ‘and we were steaming up the Tigris. General Townshend’s Regatta, it was called. Barges lashed port and starboard of the steamers. I was on a barge, sir, and I knew it was a bad look-out. Every morning when the sun was full up, the captain of the steamer would call out the temperature – a hundred and seventeen degrees . . . a hundred and eighteen degrees. I didn’t care for that man at all, sir. It was just as though he was in league with the sun. There’d be Arabs on the bank sir, fishing from smashed-up jetties, and dressed in rags, but they were laughing at us. Well, they could see the field ambulances driving up the bank alongside us, so they knew we were for it.

  ‘We came up to the camp at a spot called Ah Gharbi. Eleven thousand men – only there were tents for twice that number.’

  I was meant to ask why, so I did.

  ‘Put the wind up Johnny Turk, sir. That was General Townshend for you. He had the reputation for being tactically brilliant.’

  Jarvis, I thought, didn’t quite share that opinion.

  ‘We started on the march, sir. Five miles – didn’t fire a shot – and we were on pretty short commons, I don’t mind telling you. A few biscuits here and there, and not nearly enough water. I was thinking about water all the time, sir, and I believe I started to get ill on that walk. Anyhow, we camped at Abu Rummanah, with the Turks dug in at Essinn, about eight miles north, and just south of Kut. And they were dug in hard, sir: trenches and redoubts . . . And they straddled the river.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Why sir – by a bridge of boats.’

  It was the Mesopotamian speciality, it seemed.

  ‘What was the Turkish strength?’

  ‘Getting on for ten thousand regulars, and about four thousand Arabs. Well, we were ten days at Abu Rummanah, waiting for a howitzer battery to come upriver, and all that time, the place was spinning – in my mind, I mean. Brown dirt on the ground, brown-dirt flat-roofed houses: a city of mud tilting and turning as I walked about the place. I was coming down with something but I couldn’t say what. When the battery came, our company was sent on another rather long walk, sir: twenty-five miles. At first, I thought: Well, this is a bit of all right. We’re going away from the Turks – out into the desert. Only . . . well, we were going round the back of them, sir, rolling up the left flank, so we came up behind the Turks firing on the section of our force that was advancing on their front.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t that mean you were under fire from your own side?’

  ‘You’ve put your finger on the flaw in the plan, sir. Anyway, it came to a fearful scrap in the Turkish trenches, and I was in amongst it for a bit, but I don’t mind admitting, I wandered away after a while. I was looking for water. You see, sir, all the way on the march I’d not had a single drop.’

  ‘What about your canteen?’

  ‘I drained that before we set out. I thought I’d get some more on the way, but they didn’t stop that march for anything. There was no cigarette pause, because the lights might have given us away. We were not to talk or make any sound, and there was no distribution of water because – well, it would have been too noisy. Some of the men were drinking their own urine, sir. I’ll tell you for nothing, I tried it myself – took my hat off and made water into it . . .’

  I couldn’t help but eye his sun helmet.

  ‘It was a different one to the one I have on now, sir. I came upon some water in the end, sir, when I’d gone away from the trench fighting. It was in a kind of marsh about a quarter mile from the river, or should I say the leftovers of a marsh that was sinking back into the desert. It was black, sir, and brackish, and I believe I drank about three pints of it.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So I got cholera.’

  I took a belt on my beer.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you would do.’

  ‘I was on my back in the sand for hours, sir. Couldn’t stand, and I couldn’t stop the . . . Well, you know how cholera takes a man . . . And all the time, the bloody sun roasting me. I thought I was for the big ride, sir, I really did, when this fellow came up, and he had this bloody great sub-machine gun under his arm and a belt of bullets over his shoulder. He looked down at me, and he said nothing. I was covered with the black flies at this point, sir, and I thought: well, that’s it, he’s left me for dead. But a minute later he came back, still with the gun, but with two canteens of clear water into the bargain. A few seconds after, the field ambulance came up, and I believe that was his doing as well. He went off then, and I had no idea who he was – just this Good Samaritan with a machine gun. But he took a bullet in the leg not long after and ended up in the field hospital back at Basrah, and that’s when I discovered his name. It was Captain Boyd, sir, and when I heard he was looking out for a batman, I put in for the transfer.’

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  Later that afternoon, we walked through the labyrinth with Ahmad in the lead. He led us past sellers of Persian carpets, professional cigarette-rollers, doorstep smokers of the narghile or hubble-bubble, past women veiled and unveiled. His long black robe flowed out behind him not because there was any breeze but because he walked fast. I fancied that he’d been glad to be asked to translate for us, but he wasn’t showing it.

  From two paces behind him, I said, ‘Ahmad, what do you recommend for sleeping in this place? Should I lie down on the roof?’

  ‘You will sleep if God wills it,’ he said.

  We were going by a mosque – green lamps burning in the dazzle of the day.

  ‘There are a hundred mosques in Baghdad, I believe,’ I said.

  ‘More,’ said Ahmad, striding on.

  ‘A hundred and twenty?’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘More.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ After an interval he turned and gave me a half smile, saying very carefully, ‘The more the merrier.’

  Jarvis looked at me and gave something approaching a grin. He was a little better, I thought, for having spoken of his experience at Kut. I had asked him if he would like to come along to the next meeting of the Baghdad Railway Club. He might help the Arab who served us there. There’d be some decent grub on the go, and he’d see a film show into the bargain. Well, he’d leapt at the idea.

  We now came to the square that Jarvis had driven me to in his Ford van. This time there was no market and no sentry either. Instead, a collection of Arabs kicked their heels at the gates of the compound. It was dustier than our own, and bleached of colour. Half the flowers were dead; there was a single palm tree, like a star on a stick. An oil-daubed corporal who was playing about with a petrol generator directed us to what had been the apartment of Captain Boyd. ‘You’ll find his servant there,’ he said, and so it proved. The servant’s name was Farhan, and he occupied a wide, dusty, dark room. He had apparently been doing absolutely nothing when we arrived; he was, perhaps, bored to tears. Anyhow, he seemed very glad of some company, and brought through from another room a spirit stove and assorted tea things. After the formalities had been completed, with much laughter on the part of Farhan – who almost sang as he spoke – and none at all from our man, Ahmad, the interrogation could begin.

  I said to Ahmad, ‘Ask him about Captain Boyd’s movements around the city. Where did he like to go? Who did he visit?’

  Ahmad spoke to the man, who seemed nervous but anxious to please. Presently Ahmad reported, ‘He went often to the home of the British.’

  ‘The home of the British is Britain‚’ said Jarvis‚ sounding like a man coming out of a dream.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘Does he mean the British Residency?’

  So Ahmad tried that on the fellow, but apparently there was no advance on ‘the home of the British’.

  I said, ‘Ask him whether Captain Boyd had any visitors in his last days.’

  After an interval of Arab conversation, or what looked a lot like Arab argument, Ahmad reported, ‘A man came the day before the last day of Boy Captain.’ (Which was what Farhan called Boyd.)

  ‘What was his name?’

  The question was put; Ahmad turned back. ‘He doesn’t know. He has not a notion.’

  This was not the time for Ahmad to be trying out his English phrases. I said, ‘Then what did he look like? He was a soldier I suppose. What sort? Tommy? Sepoy? Officer?’

  The argument was renewed; it ended with Farhan smiling and gesturing to his chest.

  Ahmad faced me again. ‘The man was a British soldier, a man who truly has religion here – in his heart.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked Ahmad, and I thought, since it was the kind of poetic thing an Arab would be likely to say, that he would know. But he didn’t. He shook his head.

  Jarvis was frowning. ‘What religion?’ he said. ‘Christian?’

  The question was put.

  ‘Christian religion,’ confirmed Ahmad.

  ‘We all have the Christian religion in our hearts,’ I said. ‘Well, we don’t . . . But we’re all supposed to. Ninety per cent of the Tommies would call themselves Christian.’

  Farhan was now distributing glasses of tea, talking ten to the dozen, and very politely as I believed, but unfortunately in Arabic. After nodding and smiling at him for a while, I tried a different line of questioning via Ahmad, asking whether there were any evidences of Boyd left about in the place, but the empty room was not promising, and Ahmad got from Farhan the information that the room had been cleared out by ‘the many men who came’.

  I asked, ‘Was the man with religion in his heart one of those?’ and it seemed that he was not. He had come before the ‘many’ who, I was pretty sure – after further talk – had been a body of men no more sinister than the investigating red caps, the military police team based at the Hotel.

  ‘He makes nice tea,’ Jarvis said at length, and it was true, the syrupy stuff was delicious. I said to Ahmad, ‘Can you tell him the tea tastes excellent?’

  But Ahmad had no intention of doing any such thing.

  ‘Arabian people clever,’ he said, scowling at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wondering what the hell he was driving at, ‘you’re all very clever.’

  ‘Not all,’ said Ahmad, and he indicated Farhan, who was now beaming at us, and holding out a wooden board on which lay sugar-dusted sweetmeats. ‘Not him. He is not clever.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean he’s simple.’

  Ahmad nodded. ‘Really,’ he said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  That night, God willed that I did sleep – for about three hours – and I dreamed of Miss Harriet Bailey. We were riding horses in the park, galloping fast through a grove of lemon trees. In spite of the great speed, I could hear her perfectly clearly as she said, ‘Shall we make love, darling?’

  I said, ‘How will we go about it?’ meaning where.

  ‘Oh, in the traditional manner,’ she said, and then her horse was gone, and she was sitting on the dusty ground, helpless with laughter at her own joke. I did not know what to think, and still did not when I woke up. I recollected the dream throughout the following morning as I worked – alone now – in the office I had shared with Stevens.

  Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd had stepped through briefly from his own office in the morning, bringing rough drafts of two letters, outlining requirements of flat-bed wagons suitable for the carrying of shells. The letters were for a Mr Halder of Bombay and a Mr Jindal of Karachi, both of the International Office of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, Shipping Department. I was to make fair copies of the letters. I was then to make arrangements with the Deputy Chief of Staff to accommodate a Mr Singh of the same company, who would be arriving on the steamer from Basrah the day after tomorrow and staying for a week. He was a strict vegetarian and so special arrangements would have to be made there too. In addition I was given a bundle of maps, charts and tables relating to the line between Baghdad and the town of Feluja – a line that had been broken up by the Turks at certain points indicated on the charts. The question was whether it would be better to rebuild the line in the existing gauge – the broad gauge – or build a new one in the two-foot gauge, bearing in mind that a garrison of a size indicated by a further document was to be set up at Feluja. This had seemed rather a weighty responsibility, but Shepherd had assured me that I was merely expected to sketch out some initial thoughts on the matter. And so again, I wondered whether this was real work or not.

  Before departing he told me that another trip to Samarrah had been fixed for the following Monday, and did I fancy it? I said I did (although I did not), and I asked the reason. This time a proper survey would be made of the line, and of the telegraphic wires alongside; a team of Royal Engineers would be riding with us. There would be an attempt to go further north, a little closer towards the enemy territory of Tikrit in search of rolling stock removed from
Baghdad. After he’d quit the room I wondered about Shepherd: you’d have thought he’d want to stay out of the desert after what had just happened.

  I made the fair copies of the letters‚ then turned to the bundle about the Feluja line. I started in on a document comparing the costs of the two-foot gauge with standard gauge. In rails, the saving was thirty per cent; in track ties, forty-eight per cent; in ballast, forty-four per cent. But then there were all the disadvantages of the small gauge. I decided I needed some sweet tea, and a bite to eat. I would walk down to the canteen, but first I moved across to one of the two cabinets in the room and opened the doors. This cabinet held bookshelves, and I surveyed the titles: Superheated Locomotives, Glossary of Steam Locomotive Terms, Dining Saloons of the London and North Western Railway. (Who had thought to load that on to a steamer, and send it up the Tigris to Baghdad?) There was also A Geology of Mesopotamia, The Arab and His Ways, and a book in French: Chemin de Fer Impérial Ottoman de Baghdad. I then spied a grey pamphlet: Railway Clearing House Code Book, and my heart sank even as I told myself that the book was everywhere where there were railways and railwaymen.

  I first looked up the word I had sent to Manners: ‘GRUFF’. In the gloss on the railway code put forward by Manners of the War Office it had meant ‘Request identity of local agent’. I found its true meaning on the last but one page of the pamphlet: ‘Snowstorm cleared’.

  Well, I very nearly laughed.

  The midday call to prayer was rising from beyond the window. I took the pamphlet back to my desk, where I looked up the true meaning of ‘CRATE’, the reply I had received from Manners. It was there in the middle pages: ‘Expect circus train on Sunday’. Anyone in the telegraph office who knew the railway codes must have thought I was playing a very queer game.

  I went down to the lobby, where the Baghdadis queued at the desks of the political officers, or the assistants thereof. A dozen fans whirred and rocked, yet still the sweat streamed down the faces of those officers. One (‘Agriculture’) had a white towel around his neck to keep the stuff off his shirt collar. I saw the red caps – the army coppers – still at their post, and a medical orderly was there too, bandaging the forearm of a sepoy, who was at the same time making a statement. I asked the red cap who was not taking down the statement what had happened: