Come, Tell Me How You Live

by Agatha Christie Mallowan

  He reflects. ‘I do not remember a war…. Ah yes, about the time you mention, many ’asker went to and fro over the railway. That, then, was the war? We did not realize it was a war. It did not touch us here.’

  Presently, after another long silence, he rises, bids us farewell politely, and is gone.

  We return by way of Tell Baindar, where what seems like thousands of black tents are pitched. It is the Beduin coming south for pasturage as the spring advances. There is water in the Wadi Wajh, and the whole scene is vibrant with life. In another two weeks, probably, it will be empty and silent once more.

  I pick up one find on the slopes of Tell Baindar. It appears to be a small shell, but on examining it I see that it is actually made of clay and has traces of paint on it. It intrigues me, and I speculate vainly on who made it and why. Did it adorn a building, or a cosmetic box, or a dish? It is a sea shell. Who thought or knew of the sea here so far inland all those thousands of years ago? What pride of imagination and craftmanship went into the making of it? I invite Max to speculate with me, but he says cautiously we have not got any data; but adds obligingly that he will look up parallels for me and see if the same type of thing has been found elsewhere. I do not even expect Mac to speculate – it is not in his constitution, and he is quite uninterested. Bumps is much more obliging, and consents willingly to play games with me on the subject. ‘Variations on the find of a pottery shell’ continue for some time, but we end by uniting all together to fall upon the Colonel, who has gone all Roman on us (terrible solecism on a dig such as ours). I relent sufficiently to agree to take special trouble to photograph a Roman fibula brooch which has been among our (despised) finds, and even to allot it a plate all to itself!

  We all arrive home in merry spirits and the Sheikh rushes out to greet Mac. ‘Ha, the Khwaja engineer!’ He embraces him warmly on both cheeks.

  Many chuckles from the Colonel, and Max warns him:

  ‘Next year you’ll be treated that way.’

  ‘Allow myself to be kissed by that disgusting old man?’

  We all lay bets on the subject, the Colonel remaining very stiff and dignified. Max, he informs us, was greeted as Brother, and submitted to a very hearty embrace; ‘but it is not going to happen to me,’ says the Colonel firmly.

  Rapturous greeting of Mac by the foremen. They pour out Arabic, and Mac, as usual, responds in English.

  ‘Ah, the Khwaja Mac!’ sighs Alawi. ‘Still will it be necessary for him to whistle for all he wants!’

  An immense dinner materializes in next to no time, and after it, tired and comfortable, with special delicacies in honour of holiday and Mac’s arrival (Turkish Delight, preserved aubergines, bars of chocolate and cigars), we sit and talk, for once, of subjects other than archaeology.

  We come to the question of religions generally – a very vexed question in this particular part of the world, for Syria is full of fiercely fanatical sects of all kinds, all willing to cut each other’s throats for the good cause! From there we fall to discussing the story of the Good Samaritan. All the Bible and New Testament stories take on a particular reality and interest out here. They are couched in the language and ideology which we hear daily all around us, and I am often struck by the way the emphasis sometimes shifts from what one has commonly accepted. As a small instance, it came to me quite suddenly that in the story of Jezebel, it is the painting of her face and the tiring of her hair that emphasizes in puritanical Protestant surroundings what exactly a ‘Jezebel’ stands for. But out here it is not the painting and tiring – for all virtuous women paint their faces (or tattoo them), and apply henna to their hair – it is the fact that Jezebel looked out of the window – a definitely immodest action!

  The New Testament comes very near when I ask Max to repeat to me the gist of long conversations that he has with the Sheikh, for their exchanges consist almost entirely of parables – to illustrate your wishes or your demands, you tell a story with a point to it, the other counters with another story which turns the tables, and so on. Nothing is ever couched in direct language.

  The Good Samaritan story has a reality here which it cannot have in an atmosphere of crowded streets, police, ambulances, hospitals, and public assistance. If a man fell by the wayside on the broad desert track from Hasetshe to Der-ez-Zor, the story could easily happen today, and it illustrates the enormous virtue compassion has in the eyes of all desert folk.

  How many of us, Max asks suddenly, would really succour another human being in conditions where there were no witnesses, no force of public opinion, no knowledge or censure of a failure to extend aid?

  ‘Everyone, of course,’ says the Colonel firmly.

  ‘No, but would they?’ persists Max. ‘A man is lying dying. Death, remember, is not very important here. You are in a hurry. You have business to do. You do not want delay or bother. The man is nothing whatever to you. And nobody will ever know if you just hurry on, saying that, after all, it isn’t your business, and somebody else will come along presently,’ etc., etc.

  We all sit back and think, and we are all, I think, a little shattered…. Are we so sure, after all, of our essential humanity?

  After a long pause Bumps says slowly: ‘I think I would…. Yes, I think I would. I might go on, and then, perhaps, feel ashamed and come back.’

  The Colonel agrees.

  ‘Just so; one wouldn’t feel comfortable.’

  Max says he thinks he would, too, but he isn’t nearly so sure about himself as he would like to be, and I concur with him.

  We all sit silent for a while, and then I realize that, as usual, Mac has made no contribution.

  ‘What would you do, Mac?’

  Mac starts slightly, coming out of a pleasant abstraction.

  ‘Me?’ His tone is slightly surprised. ‘Oh, I would go on. I wouldn’t stop.’

  ‘You wouldn’t? Definitely?’

  We all look interestedly at Mac, who shakes his gentle head.

  ‘People die so much out here. One feels that a little sooner or later doesn’t matter. I really wouldn’t expect anyone to stop for me.’

  No, that is true, Mac wouldn’t.

  His gentle voice goes on.

  ‘It is much better, I think, to go straight on with what one is doing, without being continually deflected by outside people and happenings.’

  Our interested gaze persists. Suddenly an idea strikes me.

  ‘But, suppose, Mac,’ I say, ‘that it was a horse?’

  ‘Oh, a horse!’ says Mac, becoming suddenly quite human and alive and not remote at all. ‘That would be quite different! Of course, I’d do everything I possibly could for a horse.’

  We all roar with laughter and he looks surprised.

  Today has definitely been Constipation Day. Abd es Salaam’s health has been for some days the burning topic. Every kind of aperient has been administered to him. As a result he is now, he says, ‘much weakened’. ‘I should like to go into Kamichlie, Khwaja, and be pricked with a needle to restore my strength.’

  Even more parlous is the condition of one Saleh Hassan, whose inside has resisted all treatment, from a mild beginning with Eno’s to a half-bottle of castor oil.

  Max has recourse to the Kamichlie doctor’s horse medicine. An enormous dose is administered, and Max then addresses the patient, telling him that if his inside ‘moves before sunset’ a large bakshish will be given him.

  His friends and relations forthwith rally round him. The afternoon is spent by them walking him round and round the mound, uttering encouraging cries and exhortations, whilst they keep an anxious eye fixed on the declining sun.

  It is a near thing; but a quarter of an hour after Fidos we hear cheers and cries. The news goes round like wild-fire! The floodgates have opened! Surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd, the pale sufferer is escorted to the house to receive his promised reward!

  Subri, who is assuming more and more control, has taken the Brak establishment severely in hand, considering it is not nearly grand enough
! He, like everyone else, is zealous for our ‘reputation’. He persuades Michel to forswear economia and buy soup-bowls in the Bazaar at Kamichlie. They and an enormous soup tureen make their appearance every evening, and take up far too much room on the one small table, so that everything else has to be balanced precariously on the bed! Ferhid’s idea that you can help every dish and eat it with a knife has also been overruled, and a bewildering assortment of cutlery makes its appearance. Subri also gives Hiyou a bath, and combs out the knots in her hair with an immense comb (grudgingly bought by Michel), and even ties a bow of cheap pink satin round her neck. Hiyou is devoted to him!

  The waterman’s wife and three out of his ten children have arrived. (‘Your doing,’ says Max to me reproachfully.) She is a whining and rather unpleasant woman, and the children are singularly unprepossessing. Their noses are, frankly, in a disgusting condition. Why should it be only the human young whose noses run when left in a state of nature? Young kittens, puppies and donkeys do not seem to suffer from this affliction!

  The grateful parents instruct their young to kiss the sleeves of their benefactors on every possible occasion, which they dutifully do, evading all efforts on our part to escape the ceremony! Their noses look much better afterwards, and I see Max looking down at his sleeve with a definite lack of confidence!

  We hand out a fair amount of aspirin for headaches these days. It is very hot now and thundery. The men take advantage of both Eastern and Western science. Having swallowed our aspirins, they hurry off to the Sheikh, who obligingly places discs of red-hot metal on their foreheads ‘to drive out the evil spirit’. I don’t know who gets the credit of the cure! A snake is discovered in our bedroom this morning by Mansur when he comes in to do his ‘service’. It is coiled up in the basket under the washstand. Great excitement. All run and join in the kill. For the next three nights I listen apprehensively to rustlings before going to sleep. After that I forget.

  I ask Mac at breakfast one morning if he would like a softer pillow, glancing at Bumps as I do so.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Mac, looking rather surprised. ‘Is anything wrong with mine?’

  I throw Bumps a glance of triumph and he grins.

  ‘I didn’t believe you,’ he confesses afterwards. ‘I thought you were just making up a story about Mac, but he is incredible. Nothing he has or wears ever seems to get dirty or torn or untidy. And as you say, he’s nothing in his room except his rug and his diary, not even a book. I don’t know how he manages it.’

  I look round Bump’s half of the room he shares with the Colonel, which is strewn with the signs of his exuberant and overflowing personality. Only strenuous effort on the part of the Colonel avoids an overlap on to his side.

  Michel suddenly begins hitting Mary with a large hammer just outside the window, and Bumps flies out like a rocket to tell him to stop!

  Max and Bumps present a great contrast in costume now that the heat has come. Bumps has taken off everything that he can take off. Max, following Arab custom, has put on everything available. He is heavily dressed, with a very thick tweed coat pulled up round his neck, and does not seem to notice the sun at all.

  Mac, we observe, is not even sunburnt!

  The burning moment of ‘The Division’ is now drawing very near. At the close of the season the Director of the Services des Antiquités comes up or sends a representative to divide all the season’s finds.

  In Iraq this used to be done object by object, and used to take several days.

  In Syria, however, the system is much simpler. It is left to Max to arrange everything found in two parts exactly as he pleases. The Syrian representative then comes, examines the two collections, and selects which of them he will have for Syria. The other is then packed up for dispatch to the British Museum. Any particularly interesting objects, or anything unique, that may be in the Syrian half, is usually loaned by them, so that it can be studied, exhibited, photographed, etc., in London.

  The real agony lies in making the two collections. You are bound to lose certain things you want desperately. Very well, then you must balance them on the other side. We all get called in to help Max as he deals with each class of object in turn. Two lots of celts, two lots of amulets, and so on. Pots, beads, bone objects, obsidian. Then, one by one, the rest of us are called in.

  ‘Now, which lot of these two would you take? A or B.’

  Pause whilst I study the two.

  ‘I’d take B.’

  ‘You would? All right. Send in Bumps.’

  ‘Bumps, A or B?’

  ‘B.’

  ‘Colonel?’

  ‘A, definitely.’

  ‘Mac?’

  ‘I think B.’

  ‘Hm,’ says Max, ‘B’s evidently too strong.’

  He removes a delightful little stone amulet of a horse’s head from B to A, replaces it with a rather shapeless sheep, and makes a few more alterations.

  We re-enter. This time we all plump for A.

  Max tears his hair.

  In the end we lose all sense of value and appearance.

  Meanwhile all is feverish activity. Bumps and Mac are drawing like mad, and dashing to the mound to plan houses and buildings. The Colonel sits up into the night classifying and labelling those objects not yet done. I come and assist, and we disagree violently over nomenclature.

  ‘Horse’s head – steatite, 3 cms.’

  Me: ‘It’s a ram.’

  ‘No, no, look at the bridle.’

  ‘That’s the horn.’

  ‘Hi, Mac, what’s this?’

  Mac: ‘It’s a gazelle.’

  Col.: ‘Bumps – what would you call this?’

  Me: ‘A ram.’

  Bumps: ‘Looks like a camel.’

  Max: ‘There weren’t any camels. Camels are quite modern animals.’

  Col.: ‘Well, what do you say it is?’

  Max: ‘Stylized bukranium!’

  So it goes on, passing through various puzzling small amulets representing kidneys, and various obscure and ambiguous ones which are labelled discreetly by the convenient name of ‘cult object’.

  I am developing and printing and trying to keep the water cool. I do most of it early, about six a.m. It is very hot now in the middle of the day.

  Our workmen trickle away day after day.

  ‘It is harvest now, Khwaja. We must go.’

  The flowers have long since disappeared, eaten by the pasturing cattle. All is now an even dim yellow on the mound. Round it, on the plain, are the corn and the barley. The crops this year are good.

  At last the fateful day arrives. M. Dunand and his wife are arriving this evening. They are old friends of ours, whom we saw at Byblos when we were at Beyrout.

  Evening comes; a superb (or what we think is superb) dinner is ready. Hiyou has been washed. Max is taking one last agonized look at the two shares spread out for display on long tables.

  ‘I think that balances up. If we lose that lovely little horse’s head amulet and that very uncommon cylinder seal (jolly interesting!), well, we shall get the best Chagar Mother Goddess and the double axe amulet, and that very fine incised pot…. But, of course, there’s that early painted pot on the other side. Oh, hell, it will have to do now! Which would you choose!’

  In common humanity we refuse to play further. We say we simply couldn’t decide. Max murmurs sadly that Dunand is a very shrewd judge. ‘He’ll have the better half all right.’

  We lead him away firmly.

  The hours go on. Night falls. No sign of the Dunands.

  ‘I wonder what can have happened to them,’ Max muses. ‘Of course, like everyone else out here, they drive at about ninety miles an hour. Hope there hasn’t been an accident.’

  Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock. No Dunands.

  Max queries whether they can possibly have gone to Brak instead of Chagar.

  ‘No, surely not. They know we’re living here.’

  At midnight we give it up and go to bed. People do not mot
or much after dark in this part of the world.

  Two hours later sounds of a car are heard. The boys run out and call us excitedly. We tumble out of bed, slip on something, and come out into the living-room.

  It is the Dunands, and they have gone to Brak by an error. On leaving Hasetshe, they asked for a direction to ‘the digging of antiquities’, and a man who had himself always worked at Brak directed them there. They lost their way, and were some time finding it. Once there, a guide came with them across country to show them the way to Chagar.

  They have been motoring all day, but are quite cheerful and unruffled.

  ‘You must have something to eat,’ says Max.

  Madame Dunand says politely there is no need. A glass of wine and a biscuit – it will be quite sufficient.

  At that moment Mansur enters, followed by Subri, and a whole four-course dinner makes its appearance! How the servants out here do that sort of thing I don’t know. It seems a kind of miracle. We discover the Dunands have had nothing to eat and are really very hungry. We eat and drink far into the night, with Mansur and Subri standing beaming by.

  As we are going to sleep Max says dreamily that he’d rather like to take Subri and Mansur to England. ‘They’re so useful.’ I say I, too, would like to have Subri.

  In the pause that follows I envisage the impact of Subri upon an English domestic household – his large knife, his oil-stained pullover and unshaven chin, his big echoing laugh. The fantastic uses to which he puts glasscloths!

  Servants in the East are rather like Jinns. They appear from nowhere, and are there waiting for you when you arrive.

  We never send word to tell of our coming, but sure enough, when we arrive, there is Dimitri. He has come all the way from the coast to be ready for us.

  ‘How did you know we were coming?’

  ‘It is known that there is to be digging again this year.’

  He adds gently: ‘It is very welcome. I have now the family of two of my brothers to support; there are eight children in one and ten in the other. They eat much. It is good to earn money. “See,” I said to my brother’s wife, “God is good. We shall not starve this year – we are saved – the Khwajas are coming to dig!’”