They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [103]
…It was November now, and the weather was beginning to change. There were no longer blistering hot sunlit days; occasionally there was even rain. I had booked my trip home, and I would be leaving Baghdad with regret—but not too much regret, because I was already forming plans for coming back again. The Woolleys had thrown out a hint that I might like to visit them next year, and perhaps travel part of the way home again with them; and there had been other invitations and encouragement.
The day came at last when I once more embarked on the six-wheeler, this time being careful to have reserved a seat near the front of the bus so that I should not again disgrace myself. We started off, and I was soon to learn some of the antics of the desert. The rain came, and, as is customary in that country, firm going at 8:30 a.m. had within hours become a morass of mud. Every time you took a step, an enormous pancake of mud weighing perhaps twenty pounds attached itself to each foot. As for the six-wheeler, it skidded unceasingly, swerved, and finally stuck. The drivers sprang out, spades were lifted, boards came down and were fixed under the wheels, and the whole business of digging out the bus began. After about forty minutes or an hour’s work a first attempt was made. The bus shuddered, lifted itself, and relapsed. In the end, with the rain increasing in violence, we had to turn back, and arrived once more in Baghdad. Our second attempt the next day was better. We still had to dig ourselves out once or twice, but finally we passed Ramadi, and when we got to the fortress of Rutbah we were out in clear desert again, and there was no more difficulty underfoot.
Agatha Christie returned to Ur in March of 1930. Here she met the young archaeologist Max Mallowan. After a courtship while crossing many exotic lands, Agatha and Max married in Edinburgh in September of 1930. Now her husband’s work would make Mrs Mallowan (for whom ‘Agatha Christie’ would essentially become a pen name) a regular commuter to and occasional resident of the Middle East. In this passage from An Autobiography she relates a Baghdad in upheaval and her first encounter with Nazism:
We departed to cries of good will: ‘God bless you!’, ‘You will come again’, ‘God is very merciful’ and so on. We then went to Baghdad, where all our finds were waiting in the Museum, and there Max…unpacked them and the division took place. It was by then May, and in Baghdad it was 108 in the shade…I was fortunate in that I was not part of the packing squad. I could stay in the house.
Times in Baghdad were gradually worsening politically and though we hoped to return next year, either to move on to another mound or to excavate Arpachiyah a little further, we were already doubtful whether it would be possible. After we left trouble arose over the shipping of the antiquities and there was great difficulty in getting our cases out. Things were smoothed over at last, but it took many months, and for that reason it was declared inadvisable for us to come out and dig the following year. For some years practically no one excavated in Iraq any longer; everyone went to Syria. And so it was that the following year we too decided to choose a suitable site in Syria.
One last thing I remember which was like a portent of things to come. We had been having tea in Dr. Jordan’s house in Baghdad. He was a good pianist, and was sitting that day playing us Beethoven. He had a fine head, and I thought,