The Baghdad Railway Club(38)

‘This is Dead Camel Street!’ he called out. ‘It’s full of dead camels. It’s not every day you get a street full of dead camels.’ He raised the hailer to his lips for added emphasis: ‘It’s interesting! It’s a curiosity! Could you turn around and come back looking slightly less blasé about it? Just ignore the light. Go out of the street and come back in again.’

I went out of it all right, and found a different route back to Rose Court.

The place was silent. No sign of Ahmad or Jarvis. I stripped off all my sweat-soaked clothes. I lit a lamp . . . and the main room was all in perfect order – there were not even any flies. But I became aware of a steady ticking. The sound froze me. I could not detect the source of it. I picked up the lamp, and carried it about the room, listening hard. The ticking was louder near the bed. It came from underneath the bed. The lamp would not fit under the bed, so I lit a match, and moved it towards the thing. It was made of wood and brass. I shook out the match, reached in again, and pulled the device a little way towards me. After further contemplation, I pulled it again.

The answer broke in on me only when I turned it upside down. The contraption was quite involved, but in summary I held a rectangular wooden block with a spindle threaded through it. The block was smeared with grease; I swiped at it with my finger and put it to my lips – Ahmad had used the fat from whatever meat he had cooked for me three hours since. The mechanism periodically turned the block through a hundred and eighty degrees so that the flies that had been on the top were deposited into a mesh cage beneath. And the cage seethed with flies. I set the flytrap next to the light, and sat naked on the floor, contemplating the little prisoners. Why must they fret so? Wouldn’t they be better off keeping still in this incredible heat? I put the thing back under the bed but decided, two sleepless hours later, that its tick was keeping me awake. I took it out into the rose garden, where I left it. I then thoroughly soaked my bed sheet at the creaking water pump.

I lay down again under the wet sheet, but I knew sleep to be a luxury out of the question. I was concentrating now on breathing.





Chapter Eight


I climbed out of bed with the sun, and opened the door to Jarvis’s room. He was asleep, twisted up in his one sheet, with four empty bottles of Bass lined up by his bed. One more bottle, I reckoned, and I would have had to say something, not least because I knew he had some driving duties in prospect for that day. There wasn’t much else in the room, beside the bottles. He appeared to keep most of his belongings stuffed into his pack, which leant against the wall next to his rifle. There was a book open on the floor near my boot. I leant down and read the spine: The City of the Khalifs.

It was Ahmad who prepared the breakfast: yoghurt, figs, coffee. I ate them in the scullery as he glowered at me.

From the stone sink, he indicated Jarvis’s room, saying, ‘He . . . trouble.’

‘Why?’

‘Make scream,’ he said. He opened his mouth wide to reveal a jumble of black teeth, and raised his hands to his face, making a dumb show of screaming. It was worse than if he had screamed.

‘In his sleep?’ I said, and Ahmad nodded.

‘Really,’ he said.

I asked Ahmad, ‘Are there Turkish cigarettes for sale in Baghdad?’

‘Turkish,’ he said, ‘Turkish gone.’

‘But their cigarettes?’

‘Many cigarettes here. Turkish gone,’ he said again, and he smiled. ‘You boot them out. You booted.’

‘I know,’ I said.

Silence for a space.

‘Is good,’ he said, contemplating me.

‘What?’ I said, and he indicated the open door, and the rose garden beyond. ‘Beautiful weather.’

‘It’s far too hot,’ I said.

‘In London ugly weather.’

‘I am not from London,’ I said, and he folded his arms and scowled at me, repeating, ‘In London, ugly weather.’

The labyrinth baked, and I baked in it as I threaded through the alleyways towards the British Residency. I would send my message to Manners before putting in my day’s work with Shepherd. In fact, I hoped it would be only a half day, since it was Saturday.

A new sentry directed me to the telegraph office, and I crossed the quadrangle in the direction indicated, passing a pool where a fountain was supposed to come out of stone fruit, but did not. The Turks had stabled horses here, and that was the fragrance of the quadrangle, while in the interior the smell of hot carpet took over. The place was museum-like, with great oil paintings of desert scenes and fancy carvings around the door frames. On the second floor, one of these doors was marked ‘Post Room’ and as I passed by, a pock-marked and dishevelled-looking Tommy came out of it, with a bunch of keys in his hand. He did not salute, but eyed me with curiosity. He was not the sort of man who ought to have come out of that sort of door.