Beyond the Arab, in the crowd of the street, a man stood next to a cine camera on a tripod stand. I knew immediately what it was, even though I’d never laid eyes on one before. It resembled a thin wooden case stood on its end. The operator – he squinted into a hole at the back of it and wound a handle on the side – wore an officer’s uniform but with no badges of rank. You’d have thought he was a colonel from the way he gave orders, however.
‘Take the bottle and thank him!’
I took the bottle from the Arab, nodding briefly at him.
‘Oh God!’ said the man at the camera, who’d left off winding the thing, and was standing next to it with hands on hips, the better to let me see the great patches of sweat underneath his arms. All the Arabs at his end of the street were looking at him, and I could tell he liked that no end. ‘Look, do you know how scarce fresh water is in this town? We’re all drawing it from wells, and putting lime in it, and boiling it and doing God knows what, and here’s this chap giving you his last bottle in recognition of his liberation from the bloody Turk . . . Respond appropriately, please.’
I eyed the bloke, shading my eyes against the low sun. ‘It’s not his last bottle!’ I called back to him. ‘He’s got a bloody shopful!’
The Arab with the bottle was smiling at me, and nodding.
‘Look,’ said the cameraman, ‘can you just take the bottle again, but with a bit of enthusiasm this time?’
The Arab seemed dead set on offering the bottle again – fancied himself an actor no doubt. Had he been put up to the whole business by the cameraman?
‘Look,’ that bloke was now saying, ‘don’t bother. There’s no light anyway.’
And slinging his camera over his shoulder, he turned on his heel, and walked the other way down the street, with his little fan club of Arabs in tow.
I turned around, and another bloody camel was loping by, and giving off such a rancid smell that I was put on the edge of a swoon, what with the persistent heat, and the strangeness of it all. I took the stopper off the bottle and drank down the water. I saw Jarvis sitting on a doorstep. He was looking down at his dusty boots.
‘Jarvis,’ I said, and I could see he was in a bath of sweat. All of a sudden, a great strain seemed to have been thrown upon him. He too had got hold of a bottle of water, but his was full. As I looked on, he set it down in the gutter, and I did likewise with my empty one.
‘Drunk the water, did you‚ sir?’ he enquired, rising to his feet.
I nodded.
‘You said it was fresh,’ I said.
‘I was just trying out the word really, sir,’ he said. Suddenly, he looked all-in. And now a man leading a train of white donkeys was coming between us, trapping Jarvis against the wall.
‘Who was that bloke with the camera?’ I asked Jarvis over the top of a donkey.
‘Wallace King that is, sir,’ he said, and he seemed to know the man of old, and to be bored by the idea of him. ‘Famous back home, he is – in the music halls. I mean the picture houses – made dozens of films. He’s out here making newsreels. I should think every Tommy in the place has been filmed by him – most of the sepoys too.’
Night was dropping rapidly. The air had a green-orange sort of tint to it; the temperature seemed if anything to be climbing. I put this to Jarvis, who said, ‘It is a bit cooler at night, but it’s more humid because the moisture’s not burnt off. Directly we arrive at base, I’ll fix you up with a glass of something cold sir, how about that?’
I said, ‘The Arabs don’t drink, do they? Alcohol, I mean.’
‘Not really, sir, no. They do smoke though,’ he added, as if that made up for it. ‘Do you know what you’ll be wanting after a week or so, sir? Tea in a cup. Tea comes in glasses here, and very small ones at that, but my advice, sir . . . get used to it.’
The street widened into a square, and there was the hotel – the front of it (the rear I had already seen, overhanging the river). It had a golden dome; palm trees criss-crossed in a series of Xs in gravel beds to either side of the main entrance, two parked phaetons, two sentries looking very casual. New telegraph poles marched across the square, spoiling its appearance, and carrying wires to the top of the Hotel. Jarvis showed his identity card, muttering something about ‘Escorting Captain Stringer, seconded to Corps HQ.’ I myself was not required to show my papers. I might have been a parcel the sentries were taking delivery of.
‘. . . And raspberry jam,’ Jarvis was saying as we entered the Hotel, ‘there’s no raspberry jam in the whole of Baghdad, and once you know that, sir, you really want it. But forget about it. Forget all about it. Honey, that’s the big thing here.’
The lobby was dark and it took me a while to accustom myself to the gloom. A giant notice-board headed ‘PART ONE ORDERS’ had been fixed to one of the wood-panelled walls. The floor was black and white tiles, with palms in wicker baskets, wicker chairs and tables about the place. The reception desk was not in use. Before it stood a row of smaller desks, and behind each sat a political officer of the British Indian Army.
These were my fellows. I was a political officer too. We had left our own army units behind, soared above them, so to speak, in order to become a species of civil servant. But whilst our political, and supposedly peaceable purposes were indicated by the white tabs on our uniforms (I’d sewn mine on while sailing up on the Mantis), we still wore our badges of rank and most of us – including all the men at the desks – wore our guns.
White cloths were draped over the front of their desks, and Arabic and English words had been crudely painted on to these, so as to signify the business of the fellow at the desk. I read ‘Police’, ‘Transport’, ‘Agricultural’, ‘Commercial Department’, ‘Taxes’, ‘Trade (Import–Export)’, and there were queues of Arabs at the last three named, some sitting, some standing. They wore beautiful robes, and a couple held gnarled sticks. It was horribly hot in the lobby. I looked up: no ceiling fans, but at either end of the rows of desks, banks of free-standing electrical fans whirred and swayed.
Jarvis was saying, ‘Second floor, sir. The billets are all on the second floor, with the hotel rooms kept just as they were. All the other rooms are offices.’
An Arab was now carrying my bag, and so the three of us climbed the wide staircase. On every step, a strip of rubber had been placed so as to save the carpet from the dusty boots of the British Indian Army.
‘I think you’ll find your quarters to be quite cushy, sir,’ said Jarvis.
‘But it’s only for one night, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘That’s right, sir. Your place is off Park Street.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Over by the park, sir,’ he said, and we might have been talking about the streets of York. ‘I’m off there first thing in the morning with an orderly, and we’ll set it all up for you.’
On the first landing, he pointed to double doors, saying, ‘Officers’ mess, sir, for your glass of something cool in a little while. They’ve got the local chaps taking ice up there on the hour every hour.’
We pressed on up to the second floor, and Jarvis threw open a door . . . A smell of dusty carpet, a wide, low bed; wooden sun shutters, closed, with mosque-like shapes cut into them, through which the green evening light oozed.
‘It’s a bit better than the Western Front,’ I said.
‘To say the least, sir,’ said Jarvis. ‘To say the least.’
At a nod from Jarvis, the porter departed; Jarvis now began unpacking my pack, and laying the things out on my bed. He held my second tunic and trousers: ‘Take these away for pressing,’ he said, which meant he was going to go. ‘Will that be all, sir?’ he said. ‘You’ll find me two doors along if you need me in the night. I’ll be here in the morning with coffee at eight o’clock, sir.’
I looked at my watch. It had stopped.
‘What’s the time?’ I said.
‘Nearly nine, sir.’
‘Will it start to get cool soon?’
‘About October
sort of time. Even the Indian lads find it a bit . . . I don’t mind telling you, I thought I was going off me dot at first. Thing is, sir, you must wear clothes to keep it off. I’ll fix you up with a keffiyah – that’s a sort of headscarf.’
‘I’m going out tonight,’ I said.
‘You crossing the river‚ sir?’
I eyed him.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘It’s not patrolled‚ sir, or not so much as over here. Patrols are to be stepped up over the next few days. But you’ll be carrying your piece, I take it, sir?’ He nodded towards the holster of my Sam Browne belt, together with the Webley .455 that it held. I nodded back; I would be carrying the Webley.
‘What’s over there?’ I said.
‘You’ve got the ranges – the artillery spend a good deal of time over there in the daylight hours.’
‘Machine-gun ranges?’
‘Some, I think. And you’ve got the railway station – and the south gate of the wall.’
‘How’s the feeling in the town – towards the British, I mean?’
‘They prefer us to the Germans and the Turks, sir.’
‘Good.’
‘But that’s not saying much. See, they’re trying to figure us out. It’s all in the balance between us and them. That’s why I’ve taken a bit of trouble to learn a few words of the language, sir. That’s why I go in the water place – hoping to build a few bridges, so to speak.’
I noticed that he’d stopped calling it fresh water. How did I feel? All right, considering, but when Jarvis offered to fetch me a glass of cold beer before departing, I turned him down. I couldn’t face beer.
‘I’ll just take a sluice-down,’ I said, which was Jarvis’s cue to quit the room.
Ten minutes later, feeling better in some ways but worse in others, I looked into the officers’ mess on my way out of the Hotel.
It was a luxurious room of many sofas and many carpets, but not enough electrical fans – only two of them doing their strange bowing dance. All the men in there were staff officers or political officers. The individual battalions and regiments that made up the corps would have their own quarters and their own messes around Baghdad. I couldn’t see Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd in the room. I heard one man saying, ‘Ought we to retribute?’ as though he wasn’t much bothered either way. Another was saying, ‘Well, it’s a kind of an opera.’ I knew I was out of my league, and was about to quit the room when a man came up and introduced himself.
I told him I had come out to work for the Political Officer (Railways). ‘That’s Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd,’ I added, and the fellow looked blank for a minute before leading me over to a notice-board, where he indicated, next to something about a smoking concert, and beneath something about a cricket match, a paper headed: TALKS ON RAILWAY TOPICS.
The fellow returned to the conversation from which he’d broken off a minute before, leaving me to read:
The Baghdad Railway Club. Meetings every Saturday, 7.30 p.m. prompt at The Restaurant, Quiet Square (behind The Church of the Saviour’s Mother). Good food and drink supplied. For further particulars contact Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd, Room 226 Corps HQ.
As I quit the mess, I heard a voice saying, ‘We have more railway people than would seem to be justified.’
Chapter Four
I went down to the river by a different crowded lane. A new boat was on the quay where the Mantis had lately been: a cranky-looking old packet, laden with boxes marked ‘Bully Beef’, and quite unattended. It bumped and scraped against the quay, and I saw a man in a much smaller boat – a blue wooden canoe of sorts, but with decorative mouldings – who floated just beyond the stern of the bigger one, bumping and swaying in rhythm with it, occasionally extending an arm to keep himself from clashing against it. He was grinning up at me.
‘You sail!’ he said.
I was looking along to my right – towards the pontoon bridge at about a quarter of a mile’s distance. I counted the number of black barges that made it up: twenty exactly.
‘Ingilhiz!’ he shouted, and it wasn’t a question. ‘Ingilhiz, go over. Cross river. You sail.’
He was paddling towards an iron ladder that went down into the water amid floating rubbish. I climbed down the ladder, and into his boat. It was like one of the swinging boats of a fairground detached from its chains.
‘What’s on the other side?’ I said, just for something to say.
‘Same town,’ he said, smiling but paddling hard against the current.
A white launch was bearing down on us, a group of uniformed and un-uniformed white men standing on the prow.
As it went by, and we bounced on its backwash, my companion nodded at me, saying, ‘Kokus,’ and then, trying again, ‘. . . Coxus.’
I frowned at him.
‘Coxus,’ he repeated, grinning. ‘Your friend! Coxus!’
It broke in on me that he was referring to the Chief Political Officer.
‘You mean Cox?’ I said. ‘Sir Percy Cox?’
He nodded briefly, having already lost interest in the matter. He was fighting the current, the sound of which was now loud in my ears. Gas lights of a pale blue glimmered on the bank we’d left behind, whereas the bank we were making towards was half enclosed in darkness. I could not tell whether its buildings were newly made and barely finished, or so old that they were crumbling away. Having passed the middle of the river, my pilot was now resting, letting the current carry us, and smiling as it did so. But a minute later, he was all action again, using his oar to steer as we ran up fast on to the opposite bank. We were on a narrow beach, lying beyond the main run of buildings. There were palm trees, two long wicker benches with shades built over.
‘Baksheesh,’ said my pilot.
I had dreaded this moment. I fished in my pocket and handed over a single rupee, which my pilot began examining closely. Say it was worth 9d. That would be a decent, if irregular, sum to tip a station porter in London or York. But this fellow was not a station porter, and we were not in London or York. On the contrary, I was on a ghostly river-beach of black and orange sand, in rapidly fading light but with the heat still like a weight upon me. My companion was now looking at me slightly sidelong. He had found the coin acceptable, and secreted it somewhere in his robe. I was free to go.
I put my boot into two inches of brown water, as the fellow began again his struggle with the current of the Tigris.
. . . Low buildings, including some low domes with green and gold-coloured tiles that would have been beautiful were it not for the dirt . . . One shuttered place had a wooden board across the front: an Arabic word and ‘Koffe’. Was this the place Boyd was supposed to recommend to me, the Salon de Thé of Baghdad station being closed? A man sat smoking in front of it. He was surrounded by a sort of display of the circular boats. He had passed the long, hot day in putting pitch on them judging by the black spatterings on his long shirt. I nodded at him, and he tipped his head back, blowing smoke rather haughtily in my direction. The broken buildings extended back not more than three or four streets, and there was very little life in them. At one junction of alleyways, I saw a knife-grinder, his grindstone on a barrow. He pedalled the stone, sharpening a long blade, and a kid sat on the broken pavement at his feet. He might have been a customer, the owner of the blade. But he looked more like the knife-grinder’s disciple.
‘Salaam alaikum!’ I called to the pair, and they looked at me as if I was mad.
I was now at the limit of the buildings, and had begun walking over a waste of dust and rubble littered with old bricks and tiles. I made out a low sign in the fading light: ‘Ranges’. I contemplated it for a while, hearing still the creak of the knife-grinder’s wheel.
Instead of a shooting range, the sign seemed to indicate a sort of warehouse that had partly exploded, for there were piles of its own bricks all around it: one of the buildings blown up by the Turks before they quit town, perhaps. I’d been told there were plenty of those. Beyond the roadway was a plantation. I w
alked under the trees. The dates had not been picked. Presently the trees thinned out, and I saw a railway line.
I stood on the rail, and wondered which way to follow it. To left and right it went into more date palms and low, rocky embankments. Again, I had the swooning feeling. I was still sweating like a bull, the stuff coming off me faster than it had been before if anything. I’d been a fool to drink that water. I turned left and walked the line until the trees cleared again, and I came to a railway territory. There was the station; also an engine shed, some tracks meandering between the two with blockhouses and coal bunkers at intervals, a half-smashed hand-cranked turntable, and sidings going off, most out of commission, being buckled and broken. Had they been shelled? In the silence, I stood waiting for the flare of a Very light, the shriek of a five-nine or a whizz-bang, but that was the Western Front, and I was in the East. A different sort of death awaited here.
It was ten o’clock; I was an hour early for Boyd. I contemplated the tracks.
As far as I could judge, the one I’d followed here had been the one that ran up north to Samarrah and Tikrit – up towards where the Turks were. Another drifted off south-westerly, leading, as I believed, to the town of Feluja. A third – a narrow-gauge line – looked badly broken up, but I believed it led almost due south to Babylon, where the ruins were. Each would have to cut through the city walls, parts of which I could make out in the distance.
I approached first the engine shed. Double doors stood open at front and back, revealing two tracks and one crocked engine. It was a big beast: a 2-8-0 of German manufacture, and it had a name: Elefant. But the thing couldn’t travel; its side rods were missing. In between the tracks, some bushes grew. What were they? Jasmine? Basil? I thought: the smell of them is very loud, and I considered – slowly – that ‘loud’ was the wrong word. There were also rough wooden tables, a quantity of tools and papers piled upon them. The papers were smeared with oil and written in German – they related to the engine. Beyond the shed, a hundred yards off, was a water tower made of stone with a metal tank on the top of it, and as I looked on, a giant bird of some sort came and landed on the top of this tank. I hadn’t bargained on any of this. The colour of the evening was now a dark green, and it was unnatural that such darkness could go with such heat. I turned about, and stumbled on the rocky ground, where I saw cartridge casings, left over from the fight for the city. As I began walking towards the companion building of the shed, namely the station, I thought back again to the water I’d drunk. I should not have had it. It had not been fresh. Had the fellow who’d given it me known that?
The Baghdad Railway Club Page 6