The house was presided over by Ibrahim, a cheerful Sunni who had been Tom’s chief factotum ever since he had arrived in Iraq. He had learned his English from the RAF during the war, as a result of which he spoke a colourful form of the language. The people in the bazaar who, he assured Ma, were constantly overcharging him, were ‘them bloodies’. If he liked something he would say it was wizard. Best of all, to this day every time the sun comes out from behind a cloud, I say, ‘The sun he come,’ and I think of Ibrahim’s smiling face.
When Ma and JRC moved in with Tom, his wife Bea had just left to return to Rhodesia, where she had been born. I never met Bea, but according to Ma, ‘The poor woman was barking mad. They never really found out what it was. A combination of schizophrenia and depression, they said. I mean you never knew where you were with her. One minute she’d be absolutely charming and getting you a drink and the next she’d be screaming blue murder. Poor Tom didn’t know which way to look. She certainly was not capable of living a normal life and she was having a terrible effect on poor Penny.’ Penny was their daughter. She was almost exactly my age, a lovely gentle girl, who often ended up on the receiving end of Michael’s and my rough boarding-school manners.
When Michael and I arrived for the summer holidays Bea was no longer there; she was in Cape Town. Coming out to Baghdad for eight weeks away from the mean pettiness of boarding school was a dream. Baghdad was very different from Tehran. Tehran was a city of tree-lined boulevards, belle époque houses set in stately gardens, long vistas over the trees to the Elburz Mountains and the mighty Demavend, a city of majesty and ambition. Baghdad was a collection of mud huts on the Tigris. Baghdad had no grand vistas and tree-lined boulevards, but even I was aware of its history as the centre of one of the great Islamic empires, and that gave it character if not majesty.
Michael and I were delighted with the new set-up. JRC and Tom, united by a love of engines and all things mechanical, had become firm friends. They had clubbed together to buy a 1929 Rolls-Royce 20/25. The car had been in Baghdad since before the war and was in terrible condition. JRC and Tom lovingly rebuilt it. I have never been mechanical, but Tom was a brilliant teacher, perhaps why he was such a success with his Iraqi pilots. He drew diagrams to show Michael and me how the gearbox and the suspension worked. Some of the parts to rebuild the car were flown out from England but the majority were made locally to meticulous drawings done by Tom. Although Tom had a Chevrolet and JRC an Oldsmobile for office use, the Rolls-Royce was the car we used for expeditions.
It was the perfect desert car. The Chevrolet had a ground clearance of seven or eight inches, the Rolls of sixteen. It had a saloon body into which you could fit almost unlimited amounts of people and cargo. We had two dogs, a German shepherd and an English setter. Every day we would load them into the car and head out into the desert to give them a run. The heat in Baghdad in the summer is unimaginable, so we did our dog walking in the early morning, just after sunrise, or in the cool of the evening. Although the heat was immense it was an utterly dry, desert heat and less oppressive than the sweaty mugginess of Bombay.
The desert where we walked the dogs was not a flat stretch of Empty-Quarter-style sand and dunes. The Mesopotamian Arabs had learned the art of irrigation from the Persians, and although parts of the land surrounding Baghdad were dry and barren most was irrigated by a complicated system of sluiced channels feeding off canals themselves fed from the Tigris. Every few miles were groves of date-bearing palm trees. Alfalfa, cereals and cotton were grown. Sometimes after a flash storm the whole character of the desert changed, and where before had been sand as far as you could see were now shallow lakes alive with birds. There was a surprising amount of water thanks to the irrigation networks; small reed-bound lakes were common even in the driest of the summer.
Tom had two shotguns with which he taught Michael and me to shoot. One was a grown-up twelve bore and the other an elegant Holland & Holland twenty-eight bore, a lighter gun more suitable for me. We shot in the date groves. We parked the Rolls and then walked behind the English setter. She quartered the ground ahead of us, tail wagging furiously, until on an instant she froze as she scented a partridge. She stood utterly still, tail straight out behind her, one front knee raised pointing at where she scented the bird. This gave us time to catch up. When we were close enough she darted in and put the bird up. On a good day we shot three or four partridge and a few pigeons. We might stop by one of the lakes on the way back and see if we could get a duck or a snipe. Once we shot a coot. It tasted disgusting. We never shot another.
Shooting was fun but better was driving. Baghdad is where I learned to drive. Tom gave Michael and me patient lessons in how to drive the Rolls. The gear changes were difficult because, unlike a modern car, it had no synchromesh to control the speed of the cogs in the gearbox when you changed gear. Consequently you had to move the lever into neutral, wait for a carefully judged moment, and then flip the throttle for just the right amount of revs to allow you to slip it into a new gear without a terrible grinding noise coming from the gearbox.
Initially I drove with Tom by my side. I had to sit on top of two cushions so I could see over the dashboard. People a few feet away couldn’t see me so it appeared that the Rolls was careering along with no one behind the wheel. After a while Tom judged Michael and me to be competent drivers. We took it in turns to drive the Rolls around the desert paths and tracks while the others walked the dogs and potted partridges. Driving the giant car along dusty rutted roads and between date groves was a thrill. We soon learned tricks. Michael showed me how to do handbrake turns. He found a patch of muddy ground where a salt lick had almost dried up, wound the Rolls up to its top speed of 45 mph, then jerked the wheel and yanked on the handbrake at the same time to lock the rear wheels. The huge car went into a majestic spin. What the workers in the date groves made of the sight of a grey Rolls-Royce, more suited to a coronation procession than a desert track, pirouetting in a Mesopotamian mudpatch I do not know.
Michael and I were each allowed a twenty-minute turn with the Rolls when we went out dog walking. You can go a long way in that time and certainly well out of sight of dog walkers. Once I was bouncing along a road built on an embankment with a drop on either side into a ditch, when I swerved to avoid a rut and the car went over the edge. The Rolls was now in a ditch in the middle of an empty desert. I got out to have a look. I climbed back in again, restarted the engine and gunned it. The wheels spun and spat mud everywhere; the car juddered and sank deeper into the ditch. There was a smell of burning clutch.
Then, out of the empty desert, people began to appear – farm workers, date pickers, sluice men – to be greeted by a not-quite-five-foot-tall English boy in short trousers. They seemed to think this was a huge joke. I knew no Arabic, but they could see what needed to be done. By sheer manpower they levered the car out of the ditch and back on to the road. I thanked them warmly and offered them some money. They were horrified and refused even to look at it. Then I had an idea. I dug around in the back of the car and got out my cartridge belt. I distributed cartridges as a thank you. Smiles everywhere. The twenty-eight-bore cartridges would not have fitted whatever they used to shoot with, but Tom later told me that cartridges were used by the desert people as a form of currency. Size was of little importance.
JRC was often away on business for weeks at a time. One day shortly after Michael and I arrived in Baghdad for the Christmas holidays Ma came into the bathroom and perched herself on the edge of the bath. We boys usually took our bath together and often would end up fighting or accusing each other of peeing in the water. Ma looked serious.
‘Boys, I’ve got something I want to tell you. It may come as a surprise.’
‘I hope it’s not too serious,’ said Michael.
‘Yes, me too,’ echoed I.
‘Well,’ said Ma, ‘JRC and I have decided to get divorced. It’s all very friendly. And I’m going to marry Tom.’
Michael and I looked at each other and laughe
d. I was the first to speak.
‘Ma, that’s not really a surprise. We’ve been expecting this for some time. In fact we’ve talked about it and we’re surprised you didn’t do it sooner.’
Ma looked relieved. ‘Oh good. I was worried it might come as a shock to you. JRC’s been a jolly good stepfather to both of you and has helped me look after you, but we agreed it was time to move on. JRC’s travelling at the moment but he’ll be back tomorrow. He’s agreed to be best man.’
And so he was. After the very friendly divorce came through, the wedding was performed at the British consulate followed by a small lunchtime reception back at the house in the Railway Compound. JRC, looking very dapper in his best suit, sported a red rose in his buttonhole, as did Tom. JRC made a gracious speech for which he had saved two of his best jokes and then proposed the happy couple’s health.
After that first summer holiday in Baghdad Michael and I spent our summers in the relative cool of Jersey, where Ma and Tom had bought a little granite farmhouse. We loved Jersey. It was a paradise for a teenager as long as you liked doing things in the water. You could swim, surf, sail, snorkel or just sunbathe on the magnificent five-mile-long St Ouen’s Beach, one of the best surfing beaches in Europe. Jersey was also home to lots of people of our age and had, unlike Baghdad, a good party life. Baghdad was still however somewhere special. I used to look forward with excitement to going there for the winter and Easter holidays.
Towards the end of the summer term of 1958, by which time I had left Stubbington and was in my second year at Radley, I was summoned urgently to my housemaster’s study. Previously such a summons had always ended with him holding a cane and me bent over a chair. I searched my mind for what I might have done so I could manufacture a suitable excuse. I could not believe I was going to be flogged just two days before the end of term. I knocked on the door.
‘Come.’
‘You wanted to see me, sir?’
He rose to his feet, came over, patted me nervously on the back and waved me to a chair.
‘Sit down, Morland, sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee?’
I quickly checked his desk and was relieved to see that for once there was no cane there. He was also trying to be friendly. This made me deeply uneasy. What was going on?
‘No, thank you, sir.’
‘Um, your parents, Morland. They’re in Iraq, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, sir. Although my mother is in Jersey right now getting ready for the summer holidays.’
‘Oh, good, good. And your stepfather? It is your stepfather, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir. He’s in Baghdad. He runs the airline there. But he’ll be coming to Jersey soon to join us for the holidays.’
‘Ah. You see, I’ve just been listening to the news on the radio. There’s been a revolution in Iraq.’
I shot forward in my chair. ‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Well, the news is unclear at the moment, but someone in the army called Kassem has taken control. Early reports say that the king and most of his family have been shot. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, Morland. I’m glad your mother is not there, but I’m sure your stepfather will be all right.’
Later that day I was given the unprecedented privilege of being allowed to call Ma in Jersey. She sounded much calmer than my housemaster.
‘Don’t worry, Mileso. I’ve spoken to some people at BOAC who’ve been in touch by radio with their people there. There’s a curfew and things aren’t much fun, but Europeans are not being threatened and the new regime is keen to get things back on an even keel as soon as possible. I’m afraid there’s a nasty witch-hunt going on for people close to the royal family including several people we know well, but apparently the embassies are telling Europeans to stay at home and not to fret.’
Two weeks later Tom was safely in Jersey.
‘What was it like?’ we asked.
‘Pretty dreadful. The old life is finished. They came the second day and took both the shotguns. You’re not allowed to drive anywhere outside Baghdad. Poor old Ibrahim came to work a week ago with a lapel button showing a picture of Kassem. I’d never seen Ibrahim looking embarrassed before. I asked him why he was wearing Kassem’s picture.’
‘Oh, sir,’ Tom reported him as saying, ‘we must all wear pictures of this Kassem to show that we love him. But how can a man love another man?’
Baghdad, for us, was finished. Tom went back there towards the end of the holidays to resume his job at Iraqi Airways. The new government was keen for him to stay on and offered him almost twice the salary he had been receiving before. He declined politely and began packing up. He had to leave everything but his clothes behind. The other expatriates were in a similar position so there were few buyers for other belongings. Tom ended up giving away most of our household possessions to Iraqi friends and selling things for derisory prices to the foreigners who had decided to stay on. The Rolls went to an English oil man for a hundred dinars, a dinar being worth slightly more than a pound.
Although Tom was never threatened directly, he knew he was under surveillance. The revolutionaries had been brutal to the top people of the old regime. Some of our Iraqi friends had been tortured and killed. The king and nearly all his family were shot at the palace. Nuri es-Said, the long-standing prime minister and the pillar on which US and UK Middle East policy had rested for over twenty-five years, attempted to flee disguised in a woman’s chador. His shoes gave him away. He was caught.
‘They half-killed him and then dragged him through the streets of Baghdad behind a jeep to finish him off,’ Tom said.
That was the end of my Middle East childhood.
Part II
The Door Closes
13
Locked Up in Berkshire
The English boarding school system is brilliant. Few things have served their purpose better. In 1857 Britain suddenly found itself with an empire as a result of the Indian Mutiny, or First War of Indian Independence, depending on your viewpoint. Up to then the foreign possessions of Queen Victoria were either populated by more-or-less self-governing whites who had killed off, inebriated and enslaved the locals in places like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, or by non-whites whom the British had little desire to rule but every desire to trade with. Their exploitation and administration was entrusted to chartered companies of which the East India Company was the biggest and grandest. The chartered companies may have been grand but they and the people who worked for them had the morals of pickpockets.
Following the Indian Mutiny it was decided that the pickpockets should no longer be left in charge. The East India Company lost its mandate to rule India, which along with most of Britain’s other foreign possessions was brought under the direct rule of the Crown. Rule by swashbucklers, buccaneers and pickpockets was to be replaced by that of men of probity brought up to serve the empire rather than themselves. The problem was where to find them.
When there was a demand for something, no one was quicker and more adept than the Victorians at supplying it. Just as factories had sprung up to produce textiles and metal goods, they set up factories to produce people to go out and govern the empire: Wellington, Marlborough, Cheltenham, Bradfield, Clifton, Haileybury, Monkton Combe, Malvern, St Edward’s Oxford and Radley were all founded within a few years of each other to meet this need. What Stephenson was to the steam engine, Dr Arnold was to the English boarding school. Thomas Arnold invented the Victorian public school. He had become headmaster of an older school, Rugby, in 1828, and changed the model. It was this model that was copied by the new foundations.
Wikipedia sums it up well.
His force of character and religious zeal enabled him to turn it into a model followed by the other public schools, exercising an unprecedented influence on the educational system of the country. Though he introduced history, mathematics and modern languages, he based his teaching on the classic languages. ‘I assume it as the foundation of all my view of the case, that boys at a public school
never will learn to speak or pronounce French well, under any circumstances,’ so it would be enough if they could ‘learn it grammatically as a dead language’. Science was not taught, since in Arnold’s view ‘it must either take the chief place in the school curriculum, or it must be left out altogether’. He developed the Prefect system in which order was kept in the school by the top, sixth, form who were given powers over every part of the school. The novel, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, portrays a generation of boys ‘who feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven or earth; who thought more of our sets in the School than of the Church of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of boys in our daily life above the laws of God’.
What is missing from this description is the deification of team games. The older public schools had pursued sports like hare-coursing, bare-knuckle boxing and steeple-chasing. Those were not going to train empire builders. Organised team games lay at the heart of a Victorian public-school education: cricket, football, rowing and of course rugby – invented at Arnold’s school – were the core sports.
The new schools trained you to be a district commissioner in some far-off part of Asia or Africa, a single white man surrounded by half a million darkies for whose administration, order and justice you had sole responsibility. You had to be self-reliant but not independent in mind or behaviour; your first loyalty was to the team, in this case Team Victoria; you could never show emotion in public; you had to be tough enough to shrug off primitive conditions; you could never ever rat on another member of the team; and you had to follow an arcane and arbitrary set of rules laid down by someone who had never been within 1,000 miles of where you were posted.
Cobra in the Bath: Adventures in Less Travelled Lands Page 9