They Came to Baghdad

‘And then there is another street – also going down to a bridge and it is along there on the right. You ask for Mr Betoun Evans, he is English Adviser there – very nice man. And his wife, she is very nice, too, she came here as Transport Sergeant during the war. Oh, she is very very nice.’

‘I don’t really want to go actually to the Museum,’ said Victoria. ‘I want to find a place – a society – a kind of club called the Olive Branch.’

‘If you want olives,’ said Marcus, ‘I give you beautiful olives – very fine quality. They keep them especially for me – for the Tio Hotel. You see, I send you some to your table tonight.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Victoria and escaped towards Rashid Street.

‘To the left,’ Marcus shouted after her, ‘not to the right. But it is a long way to the Museum. You had better take a taxi.’

‘Would a taxi know where the Olive Branch was?’

‘No, they do not know where anything is! You say to the driver left, right, stop, straight on – just where you want to go.’

‘In that case, I might as well walk,’ said Victoria.

She reached Rashid Street and turned to the left.

Baghdad was entirely unlike her idea of it. A crowded main thoroughfare thronged with people, cars hooting violently, people shouting, European goods for sale in the shop windows, hearty spitting all round her with prodigious throat-clearing as a preliminary. No mysterious Eastern figures, most of the people wore tattered or shabby Western clothes, old army and air force tunics, the occasional shuffling black-robed and veiled figures were almost inconspicuous amongst the hybrid European styles of dress. Whining beggars came up to her – women with dirty babies in their arms. The pavement under her feet was uneven with occasional gaping holes.

She pursued her way feeling suddenly strange and lost and far from home. Here was no glamour of travel, only confusion.

She came at last to the Feisal Bridge, passed it and went on. In spite of herself she was intrigued by the curious mixture of things in the shop windows. Here were babies’ shoes and woollies, toothpaste and cosmetics, electric torches and china cups and saucers – all shown together. Slowly a kind of fascination came over her, the fascination of assorted merchandise coming from all over the world to meet the strange and varied wants of a mixed population.

She found the Museum, but not the Olive Branch. To one accustomed to finding her way about London it seemed incredible that here was no one she could ask. She knew no Arabic. Those shopkeepers who spoke to her in English as she passed, pressing their wares, presented blank faces when she asked for direction to the Olive Branch.

If one could only ‘ask a policeman,’ but gazing at the policemen actively waving their arms, and blowing their whistles, she realized that here that would be no solution.

She went into a bookshop with English books in the window, but a mention of the Olive Branch drew only a courteous shrug and shake of the head. Regrettably they had no idea at all.

And then, as she walked along the street, a prodigious hammering and clanging came to her ears and peering down a long dim alley, she remembered that Mrs Cardew Trench had said that the Olive Branch was near the Copper Bazaar. Here, at least, was the Copper Bazaar.

Victoria plunged in, and for the next three-quarters of an hour she forgot the Olive Branch completely. The Copper Bazaar fascinated her. The blow-lamps, the melting metal, the whole business of craftsmanship came like a revelation to the little Cockney used only to finished products stacked up for sale. She wandered at random through the souk, passed out of the Copper Bazaar, came to the gay striped horse blankets, and the cotton quilted bedcovers. Here European merchandise took on a totally different guise, in the arched cool darkness it had the exotic quality of something come from overseas, something strange and rare. Bales of cheap printed cottons in gay colours made a feast for the eyes.

Occasionally with a shout of Balek, Balek, a donkey or laden mule pushed past her, or men bearing great loads balanced on their backs. Little boys rushed up to her with trays slung round their necks.

‘See, lady, elastic, good elastic, English elastic. Comb, English comb?’

The wares were thrust at her, close to her nose, with vehement urgings to buy. Victoria walked in a happy dream. This was really seeing the world. At every turn of the vast arched cool world of alleyways you came to something totally unexpected – an alley of tailors, sitting stitching, with smart pictures of European men’s tailoring; a line of watches and cheap jewellery. Bales of velvets and rich metal embroidered brocades, then a chance turn and you were walking down an alley of cheap and shoddy second-hand European clothes, quaint pathetic little faded jumpers and long straggly vests.

Then every now and then there were glimpses into vast quiet courtyards open to the sky.

She came to a vast vista of men’s trouserings, with cross-legged dignified merchants in turbans sitting in the middle of their little square recesses.

‘Balek! ’

A heavily-laden donkey coming up behind her made Victoria turn aside into a narrow alleyway open to the sky that turned and twisted through tall houses. Walking along it she came, quite by chance, to the object of her search. Through an opening she looked into a small square courtyard and at the farther side of it an open doorway with THE OLIVE BRANCH on a huge sign and a rather impossible-looking plaster bird holding an unrecognizable twig in its beak.

Joyously Victoria sped across the courtyard and in at the open door. She found herself in a dimly lit room with tables covered with books and periodicals and more books ranged round on shelves. It looked a little like a bookshop except that there were little groups of chairs arranged together here and there.

Out of the dimness a young woman came up to Victoria and said in careful English:

‘What can I do for you, yes, please?’

Victoria looked at her. She wore corduroy trousers and an orange flannel shirt and had black dank hair cut in a kind of depressed bob. So far she would have looked more suited to Bloomsbury, but her face was not Bloomsbury. It was a melancholy Levantine face with great sad dark eyes and a heavy nose.

‘This is – is this – is – is Dr Rathbone here?’

Maddening still not to know Edward’s surname! Even Mrs Cardew Trench had called him Edward Thingummy.

‘Yes. Dr Rathbone. The Olive Branch. You wish to join us? Yes? That will be very nice.’

‘Well, perhaps. I’d – can I see Dr Rathbone, please?’

The young woman smiled in a tired way.

‘We do not disturb. I have a form. I tell you all about everything. Then you sign your name. It is two dinars, please.’

‘I’m not sure yet that I want to join,’ said Victoria, alarmed at the mention of two dinars. ‘I’d like to see Dr Rathbone – or his secretary. His secretary would do.’

‘I explain. I explain to you everything. We all are friends here, friends together, friends for the future – reading very fine educational books – reciting poems each to other.’

‘Dr Rathbone’s secretary,’ said Victoria loudly and clearly. ‘He particularly told me to ask for him.’

A kind of mulish sullenness came into the young woman’s face.

‘Not today,’ she said. ‘I explain –’

‘Why not today? Isn’t he here? Isn’t Dr Rathbone here?’

‘Yais, Dr Rathbone is here. He is upstairs. We do not disturb.’

A kind of Anglo-Saxon intolerance of foreigners swept over Victoria. Regrettably, instead of the Olive Branch creating friendly international feelings, it seemed to be having the opposite effect as far as she was concerned.

‘I have just arrived from England,’ she said – and her accents were almost those of Mrs Cardew Trench herself – ‘and I have a very important message for Dr Rathbone which I must deliver to him personally. Please take me to him at once! I am sorry to disturb him, but I have got to see him.

‘At once! ’ she added, to clinch matters.

Before an imperious Briton who means to get his or her own way, barriers nearly always fall. The young woman turned at once and led the way to the back of the room and up a staircase and along a gallery overlooking