The Baghdad Railway Club(61)

‘Not all,’ said Ahmad, and he indicated Farhan, who was now beaming at us, and holding out a wooden board on which lay sugar-dusted sweetmeats. ‘Not him. He is not clever.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean he’s simple.’

Ahmad nodded. ‘Really,’ he said.





Chapter Thirteen


That night, God willed that I did sleep – for about three hours – and I dreamed of Miss Harriet Bailey. We were riding horses in the park, galloping fast through a grove of lemon trees. In spite of the great speed, I could hear her perfectly clearly as she said, ‘Shall we make love, darling?’

I said, ‘How will we go about it?’ meaning where.

‘Oh, in the traditional manner,’ she said, and then her horse was gone, and she was sitting on the dusty ground, helpless with laughter at her own joke. I did not know what to think, and still did not when I woke up. I recollected the dream throughout the following morning as I worked – alone now – in the office I had shared with Stevens.

Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd had stepped through briefly from his own office in the morning, bringing rough drafts of two letters, outlining requirements of flat-bed wagons suitable for the carrying of shells. The letters were for a Mr Halder of Bombay and a Mr Jindal of Karachi, both of the International Office of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, Shipping Department. I was to make fair copies of the letters. I was then to make arrangements with the Deputy Chief of Staff to accommodate a Mr Singh of the same company, who would be arriving on the steamer from Basrah the day after tomorrow and staying for a week. He was a strict vegetarian and so special arrangements would have to be made there too. In addition I was given a bundle of maps, charts and tables relating to the line between Baghdad and the town of Feluja – a line that had been broken up by the Turks at certain points indicated on the charts. The question was whether it would be better to rebuild the line in the existing gauge – the broad gauge – or build a new one in the two-foot gauge, bearing in mind that a garrison of a size indicated by a further document was to be set up at Feluja. This had seemed rather a weighty responsibility, but Shepherd had assured me that I was merely expected to sketch out some initial thoughts on the matter. And so again, I wondered whether this was real work or not.

Before departing he told me that another trip to Samarrah had been fixed for the following Monday, and did I fancy it? I said I did (although I did not), and I asked the reason. This time a proper survey would be made of the line, and of the telegraphic wires alongside; a team of Royal Engineers would be riding with us. There would be an attempt to go further north, a little closer towards the enemy territory of Tikrit in search of rolling stock removed from Baghdad. After he’d quit the room I wondered about Shepherd: you’d have thought he’d want to stay out of the desert after what had just happened.

I made the fair copies of the letters‚ then turned to the bundle about the Feluja line. I started in on a document comparing the costs of the two-foot gauge with standard gauge. In rails, the saving was thirty per cent; in track ties, forty-eight per cent; in ballast, forty-four per cent. But then there were all the disadvantages of the small gauge. I decided I needed some sweet tea, and a bite to eat. I would walk down to the canteen, but first I moved across to one of the two cabinets in the room and opened the doors. This cabinet held bookshelves, and I surveyed the titles: Superheated Locomotives, Glossary of Steam Locomotive Terms, Dining Saloons of the London and North Western Railway. (Who had thought to load that on to a steamer, and send it up the Tigris to Baghdad?) There was also A Geology of Mesopotamia, The Arab and His Ways, and a book in French: Chemin de Fer Impérial Ottoman de Baghdad. I then spied a grey pamphlet: Railway Clearing House Code Book, and my heart sank even as I told myself that the book was everywhere where there were railways and railwaymen.

I first looked up the word I had sent to Manners: ‘GRUFF’. In the gloss on the railway code put forward by Manners of the War Office it had meant ‘Request identity of local agent’. I found its true meaning on the last but one page of the pamphlet: ‘Snowstorm cleared’.

Well, I very nearly laughed.

The midday call to prayer was rising from beyond the window. I took the pamphlet back to my desk, where I looked up the true meaning of ‘CRATE’, the reply I had received from Manners. It was there in the middle pages: ‘Expect circus train on Sunday’. Anyone in the telegraph office who knew the railway codes must have thought I was playing a very queer game.

I went down to the lobby, where the Baghdadis queued at the desks of the political officers, or the assistants thereof. A dozen fans whirred and rocked, yet still the sweat streamed down the faces of those officers. One (‘Agriculture’) had a white towel around his neck to keep the stuff off his shirt collar. I saw the red caps – the army coppers – still at their post, and a medical orderly was there too, bandaging the forearm of a sepoy, who was at the same time making a statement. I asked the red cap who was not taking down the statement what had happened: