The Baghdad Railway Club(17)

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 machine gun three feet away from me a consideration in the matter? As he retreated from my vision, the kid fell to talking to his mule. He didn’t seem to appreciate that he lived in a strange world that was almost entirely orangey-brown, what with the oranges on the trees, the faded orange of the long shirt he wore, and the great sunset going on behind him.

. . . But now, on a kind of river-beach, stood a group of Arab women in faded blue. I had been told the name of the outfit that covered almost the entire face as well as the body, but couldn’t recall it. Did they wear that rig all the time, being extreme in their faith? Or had they put it on especially, knowing that a boat-load of infidels would be coming along? From what I’d seen so far, most Arab women settled for headscarves, and lots of them. I waved at the party to see whether anything would happen. Nothing did, except that three of the women sat down on the sandy bank, and started what looked like a happy conversation.

Baghdad began to come and go, according to the curves of the river: palm trees with high domes and the pointed towers – minarets – above. The bunkers began to grow into proper brick buildings, and the river became dirty. I saw a floating plank, broken off a crate and stamped with the word ‘Leeds’. We had seemed to be approaching the one bridge that traversed the wide river – a bridge of boats, with tethered black barges supporting a walkway – but now we were turning into the bank. All about me on the Mantis, a great bustle was starting up – a clattering of boots going up and down gangways, shouted orders, and the blare of the whistle by which our captain was making our presence felt in the great city. These blasts echoed off the high buildings on the right or eastern bank. They were like so many music halls – albeit somewhat run-down-looking – with domes, arches, or castellated tops, and strange-shaped windows with balconies and verandas overhanging the river. On the western bank, the buildings were lower, and seemed overwhelmed by palm trees.

I read the words on the warehouses on the eastern side: ‘Lynch, Import Export’; a giant signboard built up over a warehouse read ‘Hanbury’s’, and then, stacked still higher above it, a kind of pyramid of smaller boards reading ‘Oranges’, ‘Onions’, ‘Coffee’, ‘Cigarettes’. Another sign read ‘British and Foreign Bible Society’, and I thought: Well, this is definitely the foreign end of the operation. I wondered whether these signs had been kept in place throughout the war (the British in Baghdad had been allowed safe passage out of the city by the Turks at the start of the show) or whether they’d recently been refixed.