Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  In the afternoon I called on the Kaimmakam — I must tell you about the Kaimmakam. Fattuh went down into the town early. The barber's shop is as you know the fashionable lounge and there he found the Kaimmakam, the Binbashi, the Imam the Kadi and a few more all sitting together. In the afternoon I go to the Kaimmakam; the Kaimmakam, the Binbashi, the Imam the Kadi, etc., are still all sitting together drinking coffee and smoking. An hour later comes a message to say that the Kaimmakam, the Binbashi, etc. wish to call on me. SO up they came, six of them, all in a serried row and sat in my tent and drank more coffee and smoked more cigarettes. It's my private conviction that that's all they can do, any of them, and they all do it together every day. They appear to have given their advice collectively as regards the hiring of a cart for my luggage and even the buying of candles and rice, so to-day they have been unusually busy. I've bought another horse, this time for 10 pounds, which is not dear. I like the look of him very much. The first one has turned out excellently, and I think this one is even better. Now I'm provided. In this transaction I did not seek the advice of the Kaimmakam, the Binbashi, the Imam or the Kadi.

  Tuesday, May 7th. We've had laborious travelling, but it has all ended successfully. We left Yalorach early on Sunday, 6 a.m. I had hire a cart for my luggage. I had always been told by the authorities on the subject that that was the proper way to travel in Asia Minor. Now I know it isn't. One has to learn these things for oneself. So we set out, and I was riding my new horse which was as wild as a hawk and as timid as a lizard, so I had enough to think of for the first hour or two. (He is settling down now he has got into good hands and is becoming a capital little animal, I think the best horse for travel I have ever had.) In four and a half hours we came to a dullish place called Karagash. We went to the khan and determined to wait anyhow till the cart arrived and then set out again. We waited and waited and at noon we lunched and then there came a most furious thunderstorm with sheets of rain and batterings of hail and at length came news that the cart had broken down and the man had gone back to fetch another. By this time the road was deep in water and mud, and the end of it was that the luggage arrived at 5 and there was no more thought of travel for that day. On the whole perhaps it was as well, for it rained without stopping till 7 so that we should have got very wet. So I ate some of the curious soup that Fattuh makes out of the Lord knows what and went to bed. I may mention that my room was crowded with bugs and fleas, but I had my own bed at least. There were no horses to be got at Karagash, no horses, so there was nothing for it but to hire another cart next day and again we set out at 6 o'clock full of hope. For the first hour or two the road was deep in mud but presently we came to a little pass and the ground hardened and cleared. Here Fattuh stopped to wait for the cart and I rode on with my soldier. At 10:15 I got to Kassaba, another miserable little hole, again I went to the khan and again I waited. This time after an hour and a half came a message sent by Fattuh to say that the cart had stuck in the mud and he had gone back to Karagash for another. I ordered eggs and bread and curds and lunched and did my best to be patient and at 1:30 up came Fattuh triumphantly with two carts, having pulled the first out of the mud with buffaloes and then driven it into Kassaba. But I was not going to be put off again with half a day's journey, so I left the carts and Fattuh to rest for an hour and rode on over the flat plain by Bey Sheher lake. It is not so fine as the other lakes though the mountains drop steeply into it on the W. side, but it is very typical of this country and of no other. A melancholy land, in spite of its lakes and mountains, though I like it. You leave the bright and varied coast line which was Greece, full of vitality, full of the breath of the sea and the memory of an active enterprising race, and with every step into the interior you feel Asia the real heart of Asia. Monotonous, colourless, lifeless, unsubdued by a people whose thoughts travel no further than to the next furrow, who live and die and leave no mark upon the great plains and the barren hills-such is central Asia, of which this country is a true part. And that is why the Roman roads make so deep an impression on one's mind. They impressed the country itself, they implied a great domination, they tell of a people that overcame the universal stagnation. It was very hot and still and clouds of butterflies drifted across the path and there was no other living thing except a stork or two in the marshy ground and here and there a herd of buffaloes with a shepherd boy asleep beside them. At the end of the lake a heavy thunderstorm gathered and crept along the low hills to the east and up into the middle of the sky. And so we came to the earliest record of what was probably one of the earliest trade roads in the world and the forerunner of the Roman road; and here the clouds broke upon us in thunder and lightning and hail and rain and I saw the four Hittite kings, carved in massive stone, against a background of all the fury of the storm. They are seated at the edge of a wide pool, a spring bubbling out of the hillside, from which a swift river flows away to the lake; and above them are figures with uplifted hands, as though they praised the god of Gotat waters.

  KONIA, Saturday 11th.

  ... I'm writing to Elsa about plans (I can scarcely bear the idea of not being at her wedding). Ramsay arrives in three days and I've got a hundred thousand things to do so I'll write no more now.

  To F.B.

  MADEN SHEHER, May 21, 1907.

  My donkey goes at dawn to-morrow to fetch the post and I must write you a word, though 10 hours hard riding, which is what I have been doing to-day, is not a good preparation for letter-writing. The habit of building everything on the extreme top of hills is to be deprecated. It entails so much labour for subsequent generations. It was very hot to-day. I lunched in the house of a charming Circassian, who lives in a Circassian village on the other side of the hills. He gave me coffee and some curds to add to my own lunch and we made great friends. He has invited me to come and stay. All the other Circassians sat round the while. Yesterday I had a hard day. I had found the afternoon before, a ruined site with a very perfect church on the top of a hill near my camp, and in the church was a half-buried stone which I thought was probably the altar. So I took up some of my men with picks and crowbars and had it out and it was the altar. Then I photographed and planned the whole site, a good 5 hours' work. I came back to my tents for lunch and an hour's rest and then we rode off to another further hill and there I found a church and chapel, much ruined but of an interesting plan, so I worked at them all the afternoon. I meant to draw them out to scale when I came back but I was too tired and they are still waiting to be done. The truth is there is too much work here for one person, but I am very much enjoying my solitude, and the work is mighty fun too if one could only do it a little better. As yet I haven't touched this place, thinking that Ramsay had better have the responsibility. If he doesn't come there are one or two things I must do and the rest I shall leave to someone cleverer. My Cast! oh my cast! it's more professional than words can say. I'm longing to do another when I can find time. My larder is splendidly supplied with hares and partridges which the villagers bring me. It's as well, for they won't sell their lambs as nearly all their sheep died in the cold winter they have had. Fattuh rode out to a village 5 hours away and brought back a lamb across his saddle bow. We kept it against accidents, such as the Ramsay family appearing unexpectedly, and it browses round my tents in a charming fashion.

  To F.B.

  MADEN SHEHER, Saturday, May 25, 1907.

  I really must begin a diary to you. The Ramsays arrived yesterday. I was in the middle of digging up a church when suddenly 2 carts hove into sight and there they were. It was about 3 in the afternoon. They instantly got out, refused to think of going to the tents, Lady R. made tea (for they were starving) in the open and R. oblivious of all other considerations was at once lost in the problems the church presented. It was too delightful to have someone as much excited about it as I was! ... They have brought their son Louis with them who is deeply learned on birds and beasts and has a commission from the British Museum to collect the small mammalia of these parts.

 
Now I must tell you something very very striking. The church on the extreme point of the Kara D., at which I worked for 2 days before R. came, has near it some great rocks and on the rocks I found a very queer inscription. The more I looked at it the queerer it became and the less I thought It could be Christian or anything that I knew, so I took it down with great care, curious rabbit-headed things and winged sort of crosses and arms and circles, and with some trembling I showed it to R. The moment he looked at it he said, "It's a Hittite inscription. This is the very thing I hoped most to find here." I think I've never been so elated. We now think nothing but Hittites all the time.

  Now this is the manner of Asia Minor: there is never a shrine of Christian or Moslem but if you look long enough you will find it has been a holy place from the beginning of history and every church on the top of the hill stands on a site where the Hittites worshipped. We began to find queer things, a tower of a very ancient sort of fortification, and then we found cuttings in the rocks which puzzled us for a long time till I, who had seen the same before in Syria, discovered that they were winepresses, and the long and the short of it is that we think we have a Hittite settlement at Maden Sheher and that this was the entrance fort. of course we may get no more evidence and the thing will have to remain as a supposition, but the inscription on the top of the Kara D. is a fixed point.

  [Then followed excited days of visiting churches, planning, deciphering, guessing.]

  ... ..I haven't told you half enough what gorgeous fun it's being! You should see me directing the labours of 20 Turks and 4 Kurds! We are going to get something out of it, you'll see.

  To F.B.

  MADEN SHEHER, May 29, 1907.

  I got a long letter from you today dated May 19, enclosing some photographs from Hugo (for which I am deeply obliged) and describing the plans for Elsa's wedding. I fear I have definitely given up all hope of coming back for it. I am in for this business and I must carry it through. I get up at 5 and breakfast before the Ramsay family have appeared and go off before 6 to wherever we are digging, and stay there till 12 superintending and measuring as we uncover. Then I come back to the tents for an hour, for the men have an hour off in the middle of the day and after lunch I go back to the diggings and stay there till 5 or later. R. generally appears on the scene about 7 or 8 in the morning and about 3 in the afternoon Then he has inscriptions to find and read and the map to make and he can't physically do more. I shall have all the measuring and planning to do and I'm at it some 12 hours a day on and Off. Nor can it be otherwise for that's the part that I have undertaken. of course it's great great fun, but it's also very hard work, you understand. And there is no one to do it but me. Therefore I can't leave and that's an end.

  To F. B.

  MADEN SHEHER, May 29th, 1907.

  One of the difficulties of the commissariat here is the water. I have to send 2 hours up the hill for it daily and I find I can't supply the needs of the whole camp with one donkey load and the poor donkey can't go more than once a day. So Fattuh is going to Karaman to morrow to buy another donkey and more water tins. Housekeeping in the wilderness takes a great deal of thinking about! But I must say the difficulties are considerably alleviated when all your guests are as amenable as mine are.

  Friday, May 30th. We've had a very long day clearing out a round church which is a difficult architectural problem, and oh! Horrible to measure. I'm tired now and I shan't write any more.

  To F. B.

  MADEN SHEHER, June 4, 1907.

  I haven't kept to my good resolutions in the matter of a diary letter but the fact is I'm so very busy.

  I've been working all today from dawn on the big apse on which I first began. It still remains a complete puzzle and one I fear will not be elucidated. I shall give it a day off so as to think about it and then do another day's work on it. The walls we have uncovered seem to have no meaning and they are such bad work that it's a stretch of the imagination to suppose that there is any consecutive idea in them. Anyway it's not a church, of so much we are certain; and the guesses of all our Predecessors have been wrong, but what to guess ourselves is the problem. The learned world is agog about my Hittite inscription. We shall have to go up and do some more work there. It's all very, very nice-I'm enjoying it thoroughly.

  To F.B.

  DAILE, June 8, 1907.

  Today we have had the greatest exodus known since the days of the Jews. We have moved all our camp up to the yaila, the summer quarters. It took 11 camels and 4 donkeys to transport us. Now this is the place that I first came to two years ago. It is on a shoulder of the Kara Dagh, 1000 ft. above Maden Sheher and it is entirely composed of churches, chapels and monastic foundations. A few Turkish hovels are' accommodated in the ruins-in one of them I stayed two years ago. The people are overjoyed at my return and gave me a most cordial welcome. They sent down to me while I was at Maden Sheher to say they hoped I was coming up and I hired from them all the camels for the transport. One of the most interesting parts of our job has been the tracing of the first settlement of the mountain. It began with my Hittite High Place; there we found several vestiges of an ancient town at Maden Sheher and today Sir W. has seen 3 Hittite inscriptions on an outlying spur of the mountain-he went there while we were moving camp. of these and of the High Place we are going to take casts so as to have absolutely perfect impressions of them. Isn't it a good thing I learnt to take casts, by the way! Without that we could not have got perfect impressions of these things for the stone is so rough that it is extremely difficult to get anything like a good rubbing. We are getting so much material that it will certainly make a book. Our plan is that Sir W. shall write the historic and epigraphic part and I the architectural. I think it will be well worth doing, for this is the first time that an accurate study has been made of any one district in these parts, hitherto people have only travelled through and seen what they could see and gone On. We shall certainly be able to contribute a great deal to the knowledge of such settlements as this must have been. I look forward to a delightful winter at home drawing my plans and writing my part of the book. I should have been helpless here without Sir W. and the more I work with him the more I like him and respect his knowledge. In fact, it's being a magnificent success, quite everything I hoped it would be.

  It will be a very dull book, you understand, but I intend it to be magnificently illustrated. I wonder if Heinemann will do it for me!

  It will be very pleasant to have the Barneses at Mt. Grace-I hope they will come.

  To her Brother.

  DAILE, June 14, 1907.

  I must answer at once your delightful letter with the descriptions of Penrhos all so characteristic! His Lordship! I can see him with the Times Atlas listening to my letter! You would be surprised to see the scene in the middle of which I am writing. Thirty-one Turks are busy with picks and spades clearing out a church and monastery. At intervals they call out to me " Effendim, effendim! is this enough?" or "Come and see this-this is good!" or something. They are perfectly charming people up here and I have got the pick of my men from Maden Sheher and we are all on the most friendly terms. It is about 7 a.m. and I have been at work for an hour. If you find some earth in my letter it's the dust of Byzantines which flies round me.

  To H. B.

  DAILE, June 14, 1907.

  I'm charmed to hear the rock garden looks nice. I'm glad we have an addition to the stable. I hope the foal will turn out well. I am horribly bored at not being at E.'s wedding. I shall always regret not having seen her married, but I think I am right in deciding to stay and finish this job. I hope You think so. I really haven't a moment to think of anything but my work and it accumulates with an almost malignant rapidity. I tremble to think of the amount of drawing I have before me now.

  To F. B.

  KARADAGH, June 17, 1907.