PART VIII
SECOND SPRING
I
Trains have always been one of my favourite things. It is sad nowadays that one no longer has engines that seem to be onea€?s personal friends. I entered my wagon lit compartment at Calais, the journey to Dover and the tiresome sea voyage disposed of, and settled comfortably in the train of my dreams. It was then that I became acquainted, with one of the first dangers of travel. With me in the carriage was a middle-aged woman, a well-dressed, experienced traveller, with a good many suitcases and hat-boxesa€“yes, we still travelled with hat-boxes in those daysa€“and she entered into conversation with me. This was only natural, since we were to share the carriage, which, like all second-class ones, had two berths. It was in some ways much nicer to travel by second rather than first class, since it was a much bigger carriage, and enabled one to move about. Where was I goingmy companion asked. To ItalyNo, I said, further than that. Where then was I goingI said that I was going to Baghdad. Immediately she was all animation. She herself lived in Baghdad. What a coincidence. If I was staying there with friends, as she presumed, she was almost sure to know them. I said I wasna€?t going to stay with friends.
a€?But where are you going to stay, thenYou cana€?t possibly stay in a hotel in Baghdad.a€I asked why not. After all, what else are hotels forThat at least was my private thought, though not uttered aloud. Oh! the hotels were all quite impossible. a€?You cana€?t possibly do that. I tell you what you must do: you must come to us!a€I was somewhat startled.
a€?Yes, yes, I wona€?t take any denial. How long did you plan to stay there?a€a€?Oh, probably quite a short time,a€I said.
a€?Well, at any rate you must come to us to start with, and then we can pass you on to someone else.a€It was very kind, very hospitable, but I felt an immediate revolt. I began to understand what Commander Howe had meant when he advised me not to let myself be caught up in the social life of the English colony. I could see myself tied hand and foot. I tried to give a rather stammering account of what I planned to do and see, but Mrs C.a€“she had told me her name, that her husband was already in Baghdad, and that she was one of the oldest residents therea€“quickly put aside all my ideas.
a€?Oh, youa€?ll find it quite different when you get there. One has a very good life indeed. Plenty of tennis, plenty going on. I think you really will enjoy it. People always say that Baghdad is terrible, but I cana€?t agree. And one has lovely gardens, you know.a€I agreed amiably to everything. She said, a€?I suppose you are going to Trieste, and will take a boat there on to Beirut?a€I said no, I was going the whole way through by the Orient Express. She shook her head a bit over that. a€?I dona€?t think thata€?s advisable, you know. I dona€?t think you would like it. Oh well, I suppose it cana€?t be helped now. Anyway, we shall meet, I expect. Ia€?ll give you my card, and as soon as you get to Baghdad, if you just wire ahead from Beirut, when you are leaving, my husband will come down and meet you and bring you straight back to our house.a€What could I say except thank you very much and add that my plans were rather unsettledFortunately Mrs C. was not going to make the whole journey with mea€“thank God for that, I thought, as she would never have stopped talking. She was going to get out at Trieste, and take a boat to Beirut. I had prudently not mentioned my plans for staying in Damascus and Stamboul, so she would probably come to the conclusion that I had changed my mind about travelling to Baghdad. We parted on the most friendly terms the next day in Trieste, and I settled down to enjoy myself. The journey was all that I had hoped for. After Trieste we went through Yugoslavia and the Balkans, and there was all the fascination of looking out at an entirely different world: going through mountain gorges, watching ox-carts and picturesque wagons, studying groups of people on the station platforms, getting out occasionally at places like Nish and Belgrade and seeing the large engines changed and new monsters coming on with entirely different scripts and signs. Naturally I picked up a few acquaintances en route, but none of them, I am glad to say, took charge of me in the same way as my first had done. I passed the time of day agreeably with an American missionary lady, a Dutch engineer, and a couple of Turkish ladies. With the last I could not do much conversing, though we managed a little sporadic French. I found myself in what was the obviously humiliating position of having only had one child, and that a daughter. The beaming Turkish lady had had, as far as I could understand her, thirteen children, five of whom were dead, and at least three, if not four miscarriages. The sum total seemed to her quite admirable though I gathered that she was not giving up hope of continuing her splendid record of fertility. She pressed on me every possible remedy for increasing my family. The things with which I was urged to stimulate myself: tisanes of leaves, concoctions of herbs, the use of certain kinds of what I thought might be garlic, and finally the address of a doctor in Paris, who was a€?absolutely wonderfula€?. Not until you travel by yourself do you realise how much the outside world will protect and befriend youa€“not always quite to onea€?s own satisfaction. The missionary lady urged various intestinal remedies on me: she had a wonderful supply of aperient salts. The Dutch engineer took me seriously to task as to where I was going to stay in Stamboul, warning me of all the dangers in that city. a€?You have to be careful,a€he said. a€?You are well brought up lady, living in England, protected I think always by husband or relations. You must not believe what people say to you. You must not go out to places of amusement unless you know where you are being taken.a€In fact he treated me like an innocent of seventeen. I thanked him, but assured him that I would be fully on my guard. To save me from worse dangers he invited me out to dinner on the night I arrived. a€?The Tokatlian,a€he said, a€?is a very good hotel. You are quite safe there. I will call for you about 9 oa€?clock, and will take you to a very nice restaurant, very correct. It is run by Russian ladiesa€“White Russians they are, all of noble birth. They cook very well and they keep the utmost decorum in their restaurant.a€I said that would be very nice, and he was as good as his word. Next day, when he had finished his business, he called for me, showed me some of the sights in Stamboul, and arranged a guide for me. a€?You will not take the one from Cooka€?sa€“he is too expensivea€“but I assure you this one is very respectable.a€After another pleasant evening, with the Russian ladies sailing about, smiling aristocratically and patronising my engineer friend, he showed me more of the sights of Stamboul and finally delivered me once more at the Tokatlian Hotel. a€?I wonder,a€he said, as we paused on the threshold. He looked at me inquiringly. a€?I wonder nowa€“a€and the inquiry became more pronounced as he sized up my likely reaction. Then he sighed, a€?No. I think it will be wiser that I do not ask.a€?
a€?I think you are very wise,a€I said, a€?and very kind.a€He sighed again. a€?It would have been pleasant if it had been otherwise, but I can seea€“yes, this is the right way.a€He pressed my hand warmly, raised it to his lips, and departed from my life for ever. He was a nice mana€“kindness itselfa€“and I owe it to him that I saw the sights of Constantinople under pleasant auspices. Next day I was called on by Cooka€?s representatives in the most conventional fashion, and taken across the Bosphorus to Haidar Pasha, where I resumed my journey on the Orient Express. I was glad to have my guide with me, for anything more like a lunatic asylum than Haidar Pasha Station cannot be imagined. Everyone shouted, screamed, thumped, and demanded the attention of the Customs Officer. I was introduced then to the technique of Cooka€?s Dragomen. a€?You give me one pound note now,a€he said. I gave him one pound note. He immediately sprang up on the Customs benches and waved the note aloft. a€?Here, here,a€he called. a€?Here, here!a€His cries proved effective. A customs gentleman covered with gold braid hurried in our direction, put large chalk marks all over my baggage, said to me a€?I wish you good voyagea€?a€“and departed to harry those who had not as yet adopted the Cooka€?s one pound procedure. a€?And now I settle you in train,a€said Cooka€?s man. a€?And now?a€I was a little doubtful how much, but as I was looking among my Turkish moneya€“some change, in fact, which had been given me on the wagon lita€“he said with some firmness, a€?It is better that you keep that money. It may be useful. You give me another pound note.a€Rather doubtful about this but reflecting that one has to learn by experience, I yielded him another pound note, and he departed with salutation and benedictions. There was a subtle difference on passing from Europe into Asia. It was as though time had less meaning. The train ambled on its way, running by the side of the Sea of Marmara, and climbing mountainsa€“it was incredibly beautiful all along this way. The people in the train now were different tooa€“though it is difficult to describe in what the difference lay. I felt cut off, but far more interested in what I was doing and where I was going. When we stopped at the stations I enjoyed looking out, seeing the motley crowd of costumes, peasants thronging the platform, and the strange meals of cooked food that were handed up to the train. Food on skewers, wrapped in leaves, eggs painted various coloursa€“all sorts of things. The meals became more unpalatable and fuller of hot, greasy, tasteless morsels as we went further East. Then, on the second evening, we came to a halt, and people got out of the train to look at the Cilician Gates. It was a moment of incredible beauty. I have never forgotten it. I was to pass that way many times again. both going to and coming from the Near East and, as the train schedules changed, I stopped there at different times of day and night: sometimes in the early morning, which was indeed beautiful; sometimes, like this first time, in the evening at six oa€?clock; sometimes, regrettably, in the middle of the night. This first time I was lucky. I got out with the others and stood there. The sun was slowly setting, and the beauty indescribable. I was so glad then that I had comea€“so full of thankfulness and joy. I got back into the train, whistles blew, and we started down the long side of a mountain gorge, passing from one side to the other, and coming out on the river below. So we came slowly down through Turkey and into Syria at Aleppo. Before we reached Aleppo, however, I had a short spell of bad luck. I was, as I thought, badly bitten by mosquitoes, up my arms and the back of my neck, and on my ankles and knees. I was still so innocent of travel abroad that I did not recognise that what I had been bitten by was not mosquitoes but bed-bugs, and that I was going to be all my life peculiarly susceptible to such bites. They came out of the old-fashioned wooden railway carriages, and fed hungrily on the juicy travellers in the train. My temperature rose to 102 and my arms swelled. Finally, with the aid of a kindly French commercial traveller, I slit the sleeves of my blouse and coata€“my arms were so swelled inside them that there was nothing else one could do. I had fever, headache and misery, and thought to myself, a€?What a mistake I have made to come on this journey!a€However, my French friend was very helpful: he got out and purchased some grapes for mea€“the small sweet grapes which you get in that part of the world. a€?You will not want to eat,a€he said. a€?I can see that you have fever. It is better that you stick to these grapes.a€Though trained by mother and grandmothers to wash all food before eating it abroad, I no longer cared about this advice. I fed myself with grapes every quarter of an hour, and they relieved a lot of the fever. I certainly did not want to eat anything else. My kind Frenchman said goodbye to me at Aleppo, and by the next day my swelling had abated and I was feeling better. When I finally arrived at Damascus, after a long weary day in a train that never seemed to go more than five miles an hour, and constantly paused at something hardly distinguishable from the surroundings but which was called a station, I emerged into the midst of clamour, porters seizing baggage off me, screaming and yelling, and other ones seizing it from them in turn, the stronger wrestling with the weaker. I finally discerned outside the station a handsome looking motor-bus labelled Orient Palace Hotel, A grand person in livery rescued me and my baggage, and together with one or two other bewildered voyagers we piled in and were driven to the hotel, where a room had been reserved for me. It was a most magnificent hotel, with large marble glittering hallsa€“but with such poor electric light: that one could hardly see onea€?s surroundings. Having been ushered up marble steps and shown into an enormous apartment, I mooted the question of a bath with a kindly-looking female who came in answer to a bell, and who seemed to understand a few words of French.
a€?Man arrange,a€she said. She elucidated further: a€?Un hommea€“un typea€“il va arranger.a€She nodded reassuringly and disappeared. I was a little doubtful as to what a€?tin typea€was, but it seemed in the end that it was the bath attendant, the lowest of the low, dressed in a great deal of striped cotton, who finally ushered my dressing-gowned form into a kind of basement apartment. Here he turned various taps and wheels. Boiling water ran out all over the stone floor, and steam filled the air so that I was unable to see. He nodded, smiled, gestured, gave me to understand that all was well, and departed. He had turned off everything before going, and the water had all run away through the trough in the floor. I was uncertain as to what I was meant to do next. I really dared not turn on the boiling water again. There were about eight or ten small wheels and knobs round the walls, any one of which, I felt, might produce a different phenomenona€“such as a shower of boiling water on my head. In the end I took off my bedroom slippers and other garments and padded about, washing myself in steam rather than risking the dangers of actual water. For a moment I felt homesick. How long would it be before I should enter a familiar shiny-papered apartment with a solid white porcelain tub and two taps labelled hot and cold which one turned on according to onea€?s tasteAs far as I remember, I had three days in Damascus, during which I duly did my sight-seeing, shepherded by the invaluable Cooka€?s. On one occasion I made an expedition to some Crusader castle, in company with an American engineera€“engineers seemed pretty thick on the ground all through the Near Easta€“and a very aged clergyman. We met for the first time as we took our places in the car at 8.30. The aged clergyman, beneficence itself, had made up his mind that the American engineer and I were man and wife. He addressed us as such. a€?I hope you dona€?t mind,a€said the American engineer. a€?Not at all,a€I replied. a€?I am so sorry that he thinks you are my husband.a€The phrase seemed somewhat ambiguous, and we both laughed. The old clergyman treated us to a dissertation on the merits of married life, the necessity of give and take, and wished us all happiness. We gave up explaining, or trying to explaina€“he appeared so distressed when the American engineer shouted into his ear that we were not married that it seemed better to leave things as they were. a€?But you ought to get married,a€he insisted, shaking his head. a€?Living in sin, you know, it doesna€?t doa€“it really doesna€?t do.a€I went to see lovely Baalbek, I visited the bazaars, and the Street called Straight, bought many of the attractive brass plates they make there. Each plate was made by hand, and each pattern peculiar to the one family that made it. Sometimes it was a design of fish, with threads of silver and brass raised in a pattern running all over it. There is something fascinating in thinking of each family with its pattern handed down from father to son and to grandson, with no one else ever copying it and nobody mass-producing it. I imagine that if you were to go to Damascus now you would find few of the old craftsmen and their families left: there would be factories instead. Already in those days the inlaid wooden boxes and tables had become stereotyped and universally reproduceda€“still done by hand, but in conventional patterns and ways. I also bought a chest of drawersa€“a huge one, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silvera€“the sort of furniture that reminds one of fairyland. It was despised by the Dragoman who was guiding me.
a€?Not good work that,a€he said. a€?Quite olda€“fifty years old, sixty years old, more perhaps. Old-fashioned, you understand. Very old-fashioned. Not new.a€I said I could see that it wasna€?t new and that there werena€?t many of them. Perhaps there would never be another one made.
a€?No. Nobody make that now. You come and look at this box. SeeVery good. And this here. Here is a chest of drawers here. You seeIt has many woods in it. You see how many different woods it hasEighty-five different woods.a€The net result, I thought, was hideous. I wanted my mother-of-pearl, ivory and silver chest. The only thing that worried me was how I was ever going to get it home to Englanda€“but that apparently held no difficulties. I was passed on through Cooka€?s to somebody else, to the hotel, to a firm of shippers, and finally made various arrangements and calculations, with the result that nine or ten months later an almost forgotten mother-of-pearl and silver chest turned up in South Devon. That was not the end of the story. Though it was a glorious thing to look at, and capacious inside, it produced in the middle of the night a strange noise, as if large teeth were champing something. Some creature was eating my beautiful chest. I took the drawers out and examined them. There seemed no sign of tooth-marks or holes. Yet night after night, after the witching hour of midnight, I could hear a€?Crump, crump, crumpa€?. At last I took one of the drawers out and carried it to a firm in London which was said to specialize in tropical wood-pests. They agreed immediately that something sinister was at work in the recesses of the wood. The only thing would be to remove the wood entirely and re-line it. This, I may say, was going to add heavily to the expensea€“in fact it would probably cost three times as much as the chest itself had done and twice as much as its fare to England. Still, I could no longer bear that ghostly munching and gnawing. About three weeks later I was rung up and an excited voice said a€?Madam, can you come down to the shop here. I should really like you to see what I have got.a€I was in London at the time, so I hurried round immediatelya€“and was shown with pride a repulsive cross between a worm and a slug. It was large and white and obscene, and had clearly enjoyed its diet of wood so much as to make it obese beyond belief. It had eaten nearly all the surrounding wood in two of the drawers. After a few more weeks my chest was returned to me, and thereafter the night hours held only silence.
After intensive sightseeing that only increased my determination to return to Damascus and explore much more there, the day came when I was to undertake my journey across the desert to Baghdad. At this time the service was done by a big fleet of six-wheeler cars or buses which were operated by the Nairn Line. Two brothers, Gerry and Norman Nairn, ran this. They were Australians, and the most friendly of men. I became acquainted with them on the night before my trip, when they were both busy in an amateurish way making up cardboard boxes of lunch, and invited me to help them.
The bus started at dawn. Two hefty young drivers were on the job, and when I came out following my baggage they were busy stowing a couple of rifles into the car, carelessly throwing an armful of rugs over them.
a€?Cana€?t advertise that wea€?ve got these, but I wouldna€?t care to cross the desert without them,a€said one.
a€?Hear wea€?ve got the Duchess of Alwiyah on this run,a€said the other. a€?God Almighty,a€said the first. a€?Wea€?ll have trouble there, I expect. What does she want this time, do you think?a€Everything upside down and down side up,a€said the other. At that moment a procession arrived down the steps of the hotel. To my surprise, and I am afraid not to my pleasure, the leading figure was none other than Mrs C., from whom I had parted at Trieste. I had imagined that by now she would have already got to Baghdad, since I had lingered to see the sights.
a€?I thought you would be on this run,a€she said, greeting me with pleasure. a€?Everything is fixed up, and I am carrying you back with me to Alwiyah. It would have been quite impossible for you to have stayed in any hotel in Baghdad.a€What could I sayI was captured. I had never been to Baghdad, and never seen the hotels there. They might, for all I knew, be one seething mass of fleas, bed-bugs, lice, snakes, and the kind of pale cockroach that I particularly abhor. So I had to stammer some thanks. We ensconced ourselves, and I realised that a€?The Duchess of Alwiyaha€was none other than my friend Mrs C. She refused at once the seat she had been given as too near the rear of the bus, where she was always sick. She must have the front seat behind the driver. But that had been reserved by an Arab lady weeks ago. The Duchess of Alwiyah merely waved a hand. Nobody counted, apparently, but Mrs C. She gave the impression that she was the first European woman ever to set foot in the city of Baghdad, before whose whims all else must fall down. The Arab lady arrived and defended her seat. Her husband took her part, and a splendid free-for-all ensued. A French lady also made claim, and a German general, too, made himself difficult. I dona€?t know what arguments were urged, but, as usual on this earth, four of the meek were dispossessed of the better seats and more or less thrown into the back of the car. The German general, the French lady, the Arab lady, shrouded in veils, and Mrs C. were left with the honours of war. I have never been a good fighter and did not stand a chance, though actually my seat number would have entitled me to one of these desirable positions. In due course we rumbled off. Having been fascinated by rolling across the yellow sandy desert, with its undulating sand-dunes and rocks, I finally became more or less hypnotised by the sameness of the surroundings, and opened a book. I had never been car-sick in my life but the action of the six-wheeler, if you were sitting towards the back of it, was much the same motion as a ship, and what with that and reading I was severely sick before I knew what had happened to me. I felt deeply disgraced, but Mrs C. was very kind to me, and said it often took people unawares. Next time she would see to it that I had one of the front seats. The forty-eight hour trip across the desert was fascinating and rather sinister. It gave one the curious feeling of being enclosed rather than surrounded by a void. One of the first things I was to realise was that at noon it was impossible to tell whether you were going north, south, east or west, and I learnt that it was at this time of day when the big six-wheeled cars most often went off the track. On one of my later journeys across the desert this did actually happen. One of the driversa€“one of the most experienced tooa€“discovered himself, after two or three hours, driving across the desert in the direction of Damascus, with his back turned to Baghdad. It happened at the point where the tracks divided. There was a maze of tracks all over the surface. On that occasion a car appeared in the distance, shooting off a rifle, and the driver took an even wider loop than usual. He thought he had got back on to the track, but actually he was driving in the opposite direction. Between Damascus and Baghdad there is nothing but a great stretch of deserta€“no landmarks, and only one halt in the whole place: the big fort of Rutbah. We reached there, I think, about midnight. Suddenly, out of the darkness, there loomed a flickering light. We had arrived. The great gates of the fortress were unbarred. Beside the door, on the alert, their rifles raised, were the Guards of the Camel Corps, prepared for bandits masquerading as bona fide travellers. Their wild dark faces were rather frightening. We were scrutinised and allowed to pass in, and the gates were shut behind us. There were a few rooms there with bedsteads, and we had three hoursa€rest, five or six women to a room. Then we went on again. About five or six in the morning, when dawn came, we had breakfast in the desert. Nowhere in the world is there such a good breakfast as tinned sausages cooked on a primus stove in the desert in the early morning. That and strong black tea fulfilled all onea€?s needs, and revived onea€?s flagging energy; and the lovely colours all over the deserta€“pale pinks, apricots and bluesa€“with the sharp-toned air, made a wonderful ensemble. I was entranced. This was what I longed for. This was getting away from everythinga€“with the pure invigorating morning air, the silence, the absence even of birds, the sand that ran through onea€?s fingers, the rising sun, and the taste of sausages and tea. What else could one ask of lifeThen we moved on, and came at last to Felujah on the Euphrates, went over the bridge of boats, past the air station at Habbaniyah, and on again, until we began to see palm-groves and a raised road. In the distance, on the left, we saw the golden domes of Kadhimain, then on and over another bridge of boats, over the river Tigris, and so into Baghdada€“along a street full of rickety buildings, with a beautiful mosque with turquoise domes standing, it seemed to me, in the middle of the street. I never had a chance even to look at a hotel. I was transferred by Mrs C. and her husband Eric, to a comfortable car, and driven along the one main street that is Baghdad, past the statue of General Maude and out from the city, with great rows of palms on either side of the road, and herds of black beautiful buffaloes watering in pools of water. It was like nothing I had seen before. Then we came to houses and gardens full of flowersa€“not so many as there would have been later in the yeara€|And there I wasa€“in what I sometimes thought of as Mem-Sahib Land.