The Baghdad Railway Club(59)

Jarvis, I thought, didn’t quite share that opinion.

‘We started on the march, sir. Five miles – didn’t fire a shot – and we were on pretty short commons, I don’t mind telling you. A few biscuits here and there, and not nearly enough water. I was thinking about water all the time, sir, and I believe I started to get ill on that walk. Anyhow, we camped at Abu Rummanah, with the Turks dug in at Essinn, about eight miles north, and just south of Kut. And they were dug in hard, sir: trenches and redoubts . . . And they straddled the river.’

‘How?’

‘Why sir – by a bridge of boats.’

It was the Mesopotamian speciality, it seemed.

‘What was the Turkish strength?’

‘Getting on for ten thousand regulars, and about four thousand Arabs. Well, we were ten days at Abu Rummanah, waiting for a howitzer battery to come upriver, and all that time, the place was spinning – in my mind, I mean. Brown dirt on the ground, brown-dirt flat-roofed houses: a city of mud tilting and turning as I walked about the place. I was coming down with something but I couldn’t say what. When the battery came, our company was sent on another rather long walk, sir: twenty-five miles. At first, I thought: Well, this is a bit of all right. We’re going away from the Turks – out into the desert. Only . . . well, we were going round the back of them, sir, rolling up the left flank, so we came up behind the Turks firing on the section of our force that was advancing on their front.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t that mean you were under fire from your own side?’

‘You’ve put your finger on the flaw in the plan, sir. Anyway, it came to a fearful scrap in the Turkish trenches, and I was in amongst it for a bit, but I don’t mind admitting, I wandered away after a while. I was looking for water. You see, sir, all the way on the march I’d not had a single drop.’

‘What about your canteen?’

‘I drained that before we set out. I thought I’d get some more on the way, but they didn’t stop that march for anything. There was no cigarette pause, because the lights might have given us away. We were not to talk or make any sound, and there was no distribution of water because – well, it would have been too noisy. Some of the men were drinking their own urine, sir. I’ll tell you for nothing, I tried it myself – took my hat off and made water into it . . .’

I couldn’t help but eye his sun helmet.

‘It was a different one to the one I have on now, sir. I came upon some water in the end, sir, when I’d gone away from the trench fighting. It was in a kind of marsh about a quarter mile from the river, or should I say the leftovers of a marsh that was sinking back into the desert. It was black, sir, and brackish, and I believe I drank about three pints of it.’

‘I see.’

‘So I got cholera.’

I took a belt on my beer.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you would do.’

‘I was on my back in the sand for hours, sir. Couldn’t stand, and I couldn’t stop the . . . Well, you know how cholera takes a man . . . And all the time, the bloody sun roasting me. I thought I was for the big ride, sir, I really did, when this fellow came up, and he had this bloody great sub-machine gun under his arm and a belt of bullets over his shoulder. He looked down at me, and he said nothing. I was covered with the black flies at this point, sir, and I thought: well, that’s it, he’s left me for dead. But a minute later he came back, still with the gun, but with two canteens of clear water into the bargain. A few seconds after, the field ambulance came up, and I believe that was his doing as well. He went off then, and I had no idea who he was – just this Good Samaritan with a machine gun. But he took a bullet in the leg not long after and ended up in the field hospital back at Basrah, and that’s when I discovered his name. It was Captain Boyd, sir, and when I heard he was looking out for a batman, I put in for the transfer.’

*

Later that afternoon, we walked through the labyrinth with Ahmad in the lead. He led us past sellers of Persian carpets, professional cigarette-rollers, doorstep smokers of the narghile or hubble-bubble, past women veiled and unveiled. His long black robe flowed out behind him not because there was any breeze but because he walked fast. I fancied that he’d been glad to be asked to translate for us, but he wasn’t showing it.

From two paces behind him, I said, ‘Ahmad, what do you recommend for sleeping in this place? Should I lie down on the roof?’

‘You will sleep if God wills it,’ he said.

We were going by a mosque – green lamps burning in the dazzle of the day.