They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [100]
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 realize 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 drivers—one of the most experienced too—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 desert—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 hours’ 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 one’s needs, and revived one’s flagging energy; and the lovely colors all over the desert—pale pink, apricots and blues—with the sharp-toned air, made a wonderful ensemble. I was entranced. This was what I longed for. This was getting away from everything—with the pure invigorating morning air, the silence, the absence even of birds, the sand that ran through one’s fingers, the rising sun, and the taste of sausages and tea. What else could one ask of life?
Then 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 Baghdad—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 the great rows of palms on either side of the road, and the 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 flowers—not so many as there would have been later in the year…And there I was—in what I sometimes thought of as Mem- Sahib Land.
They were so nice to me in Baghdad. Everyone