the table beside my bunk lay an envelope containing a cash advance of twenty pounds, a quantity of Indian rupees and Turkish lira (all or any of which could apparently be tried on the merchants of Baghdad with some hope of success), together with two copies of my letter of engagement as Assistant to Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd, who was designated a Political Officer (Railways) at the Corps HQ in Baghdad. The letter was not from Shepherd himself even though my recruitment was all his doing, but from the assistant to a Brigadier General Barnes, on behalf of Sir Percy Cox, who was the Chief Political Officer. There was a telegram on the table as well. It had been handed to me at Port Said, and came from the Deputy Chief of Staff at Corps HQ in Baghdad. It informed me that a Private Stanley Jarvis of the North Yorkshire Regiment (one of the British units of the Anglo-Indian force) had been seconded to me as batman. I would be sharing him, so to speak, for he was also one of the motor-car drivers attached to the Corps HQ. He would meet me on the quayside in Baghdad, and escort me to the HQ, which was evidently located in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, which I rather liked the sound of. All of the foregoing was, so to speak, the official side of things.
But there was a second envelope on the table, and this one bothered me. It had been brought into Manners’s room at the War Office by the boy scout and its contents struck me as nonsensical, and dangerously so. I considered looking them over again, but in the end decided it was just too bloody hot.
I put out my cigarette, tried to sleep, and gave it up after five minutes. The fan had started to rattle and shake. I stared at it, wondering . . . is it actually unscrewing itself? I could not imagine Baghdad railway station. I could not imagine myself slinking into it at close on midnight, and I could conjure no mental image of the man Boyd, witness to the treachery of Shepherd.
*
On the Mantis , I was out from under the tarpaulin, for the sun was now setting, slowly crashing down into the desert that came and went between the orange trees to which the wheat had given way. The air was hot and soft – not unbearable. We had passed Kut, the scene of Townshend’s reversal of the year before, and Maude’s recent victory. It looked the place for a reversal all right – a desert compound of blockhouses with no colour in it, but plenty of mangy dogs wandering about.
At this point, with Baghdad approaching, both banks of the river seemed to be used as pleasure grounds. An Arab, fishing with a trident spear, frowned as we went past. The wake from our boat was not helping his cause. Arab men, holding hands (I’d been warned they would do that), wandered between the trees, or lay against them and smoked. Sometimes the smokers called out to the Arabs on our boat, of which there were a dozen or so, most employed to help with the horses we were taking up. They all stuck together, and were now standing at the midships, repeatedly shouting one word that I understood:
‘Ingilhiz!’
And the Arabs on the bank and the Arabs on the boat would have a good laugh about that. They seemed very easy-going about having their country taken over by foreigners, and just as well too. I supposed they were used to it.
Reed huts were coming into view, and mud houses – long low buildings, bunker-like. I saw a mule tied to a windlass and drawing up a skin of water. A small boy, crouched on the river bank, waited for the water, but the moment he saw me, he stood, and addressed me in Arabic. He appeared to be asking a question, and one that required a quick response. I waved to him, and called out, ‘Salaam alaikum!’ which meant ‘Peace be upon you’, and at which he called out something else I didn’t understand. It was impossible to say whether he was being friendly or not. As far as he was concerned, he’d asked me a perfectly normal question that required a perfectly normal answer . . . Or was the
But there was a second envelope on the table, and this one bothered me. It had been brought into Manners’s room at the War Office by the boy scout and its contents struck me as nonsensical, and dangerously so. I considered looking them over again, but in the end decided it was just too bloody hot.
I put out my cigarette, tried to sleep, and gave it up after five minutes. The fan had started to rattle and shake. I stared at it, wondering . . . is it actually unscrewing itself? I could not imagine Baghdad railway station. I could not imagine myself slinking into it at close on midnight, and I could conjure no mental image of the man Boyd, witness to the treachery of Shepherd.
*
On the Mantis , I was out from under the tarpaulin, for the sun was now setting, slowly crashing down into the desert that came and went between the orange trees to which the wheat had given way. The air was hot and soft – not unbearable. We had passed Kut, the scene of Townshend’s reversal of the year before, and Maude’s recent victory. It looked the place for a reversal all right – a desert compound of blockhouses with no colour in it, but plenty of mangy dogs wandering about.
At this point, with Baghdad approaching, both banks of the river seemed to be used as pleasure grounds. An Arab, fishing with a trident spear, frowned as we went past. The wake from our boat was not helping his cause. Arab men, holding hands (I’d been warned they would do that), wandered between the trees, or lay against them and smoked. Sometimes the smokers called out to the Arabs on our boat, of which there were a dozen or so, most employed to help with the horses we were taking up. They all stuck together, and were now standing at the midships, repeatedly shouting one word that I understood:
‘Ingilhiz!’
And the Arabs on the bank and the Arabs on the boat would have a good laugh about that. They seemed very easy-going about having their country taken over by foreigners, and just as well too. I supposed they were used to it.
Reed huts were coming into view, and mud houses – long low buildings, bunker-like. I saw a mule tied to a windlass and drawing up a skin of water. A small boy, crouched on the river bank, waited for the water, but the moment he saw me, he stood, and addressed me in Arabic. He appeared to be asking a question, and one that required a quick response. I waved to him, and called out, ‘Salaam alaikum!’ which meant ‘Peace be upon you’, and at which he called out something else I didn’t understand. It was impossible to say whether he was being friendly or not. As far as he was concerned, he’d asked me a perfectly normal question that required a perfectly normal answer . . . Or was the
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