“And what, in your opinion, are your chief problems at the College?” I asked, making like the Bedouin’s Mike Wallace.
“Problems? Yes, yes, problems. Well—I must say, end of semester is a rather trying time.” He reached into the secrets of his robe and withdrew a handkerchief, which he pressed to his perspiring brow. “The parents,” he resumed. “When their children fail to achieve promotion, they create quite a scene, quite a scene. Especially when the father is the sheik of a tribe.”
“The sheiks get shook up?” I interposed, and he rewarded my pun with a look of mild alarm.
“Yes—yes, I supposed you might say that,” he answered. “What they will do is to invite me to visit them out on the desert where they are encamped. Strange thing—they live in tents, but they always send for me in an air-conditioned white Cadillac.”
“Rather progressive,” I said, and he gave me another anxious look. “The thing that they do,” he resumed, again mopping his brow, “the thing that they do, and which I’ve never gotten used to—well—as we approach the line of tents, all the tribesmen who are lined up to greet us commence to fire their rifles into the air, at the same time chanting in a rather threatening tone: ‘Abdul is a good student! Abdul is a good student!’ Or whatever the boy’s name happens to be. The whole thing adds up to a most alarming sort of P.T.A. meeting. How I dread the end of term. Those rifles!” he whispered, staring off vacuously.
“Yeah, I can imagine,” I commented.
“Can you?” he asked, fixing me with a look of inner dread. “Can you really?” I guess I couldn’t. “Do you have many Moslem boys in the school?” I asked, thinking it best to taxi onto another runway, and “Oh yes, yes, quite a large number, in fact,” he answered.
“Isn’t there tension between the Christian and Moslem students?”
He stared at me gravely. “Not here,” he said, “not in the school. But outside, in Baghdad…” He paused uncertainly. “Something sinister, something frightful is incubating, and there may soon be Christian martyrs in the streets of the city.” He turned and looked away. “I have a friend, a Moslem, and I asked him once whether it was true that a ‘night of the long knife’ was coming for the Christians in Iraq. He said yes, it was talked of. And when I asked him point-blank, ‘You mean your friends would kill even me?’ his answer was: ‘For you, Father, it will be quick.’”
We came to a classroom at the end of the hallway, and “It might be nice for you to listen to the boys giving their recitations,” the Dean said more cheerfully. He pushed open the classroom door a trifle, and from within we heard a voice of authority demanding: “Conjugate the present tense of the verb ‘to be’!” And a thin, falsetto voice replied: “I am be, you is be, he is be, we are…” The Dean abruptly slammed the door. “God help me!” he croaked. “The boy is the son of a powerful sheik!” I looked at my calender watch. It was almost the end of term.
Before we left, Arshak took a picture of the Dean, and we didn’t even have to tell him not to look into the camera, for he was staring out at the highway. He seemed to be watching for a big, white Cadillac.
Away we went to Kirkuk, the northern oil city of Iraq, and it was all that I’d dreamed it would be: nothing. Except for the Kurds, of course, who looked as proud and erect a people as the southern Iraqis had seemed stooped and oppressed. Theirs was a vibrant land, rolling and verdant, and locked on all sides by hills, mountains and oil derricks. The Kurds were no less vibrant, and, dressed in coats of many colors, they held their heads in a way that seemed to proclaim: “The first man on the moon will be a Kurd—or else!”
Dewey Decimal, the USIS Library Officer, met us at the train station with an apology. “We’ll have to take a droshky to the library and wait a few hours before you cut up north,” he said. “The jeep is being repaired.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked with rising foreboding.
“Clutch trouble,” said Decimal, and I sobbed piteously all the way to the library. There, we parked our luggage, and with a five-hour wait for the jeep staring us in the chops, Arshak and I went wandering about Kirkuk.
It was a small town, with a population of slightly over a hundred thousand, and there was little to do except wander through the bazaars and exchange inscrutable stares with Kurdish shopkeepers who weren’t having any of my invisibility act, for they insisted on talking—in what I considered a rather unseemly chauvinism—in Kurdish. We passed one flea-trap of a movie house, and the temptation to see Shane with Kurdish subtitles proved almost irresistible, but even Arshak was afraid to go into the place. We resigned ourselves, finally, to a return to the library, where we pawed through back issues of The Kurdish Kasaba, a farm journal edited by an Americanized Kurd named Ezra Sulaiymaniya. We did this until the arrival of the jeep.
“You’re all set!” said Decimal, bursting into the bacterial silence of the reading room, and “Shhhhhh!” I replied, holding a finger to my lips as heads all around us popped up like angry morning glories. Decimal lowered his voice. “I’ve put your bags into the jeep. There’s also a map in the front seat; I’ve marked it for you. It’s just a fifty mile drive to Erbil. Sheik Omer Aga, the farmer I think you should interview, lives right at the outskirts—first farm just as you approach the city. I think he’s your best bet. He’s expecting you, and I’m sure he’ll give you a good story.”
“Thanks,” I said, as we walked out of the library and into the street. A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk and they had a strangely expectant air about them. “What’s the attraction?” I asked Decimal, pointing to the crowd.
“Oh—curious,” he said rather evasively. I looked at the jeep. Painted on its side were the large, white letters, U.S.I.S, and beside this inscription was the Great Seal of the United states. Decimal saw me staring at it. “Show the flag,” he smiled, and then laughed weakly.
“Is the clutch okay now?”
“Sure—sure, it’s okay,” he said. “It might stall out on you now and then, but that won’t be too serious.” I vaulted into the driver’s seat and Arshak piled in beside me. “Good luck,” said Decimal expressionlessly, staring up at me in a manner that was vaguely disturbing. I turned the key in the ignition, and as the engine started up, the crowd, watching from the sidewalk, burst into applause. I turned and looked down at Decimal. “What the hell are they applauding for?” I shouted a little wildly.
“Sometimes—sometimes it—doesn’t start,” said Decimal weakly, not daring to look up at me. He was looking, instead, at the Great Seal of the United States, pondering, no doubt, how all that the Kurds of Kirkuk knew of the power and majesty of the United States was that the only vehicle of its chosen emissary was a jeep that went “sometimes.” I looked skyward and saw vultures circling the carburetor, and I can tell you, that was enough for me. I geared up and accelerated the hell out of there. Brave Kurds swooned and veiled women wept as we drove through the city and out onto the yellow brick road and to Erbil, drawing scattered applause with our passing.
iii
Our ride was about as eventful as a “This Is Your Life” show featuring Lizzie Borden, largely due to some business between Arshak and the water buffalo. ’Twas brillig as we tooled through the green-hilled countryside of the north country, and all around us were tels, hills that had been formed by the accretion of the rubble of cities or villages that had been built, one atop the ruins of the other, through the ages. And in front of us, suddenly, were the water buffaloes—about thirty of them. As I pressed on the horn they moved heavily to the side of the road, and everything would have been fine except that Arshak, for no apparent reason, turned impulsively to thumb his nose at one of the brutes, shouting “Aaaaagh!” Perhaps some fortune teller had warned him that a bison would be his undoing, although I’m really not sure, but several seconds later I heard the pounding behind us, and threw a backward look. Caramba! The buffalo was charging us!
“Arshak, you idiot!” I roared and pressed my foot down on the accelerator, but our speed increase
d only slightly and this, apparently, was another jeeply eccentricity that Decimal had overlooked in his briefing. I threw another quick glance over my shoulder: “My God, it’s gaining on us!” I screamed hoarsely. I believe it was when I thought of what might happen should the jeep go into one of its frequent stalls that I shouted “Shazam!” and you can imagine my chagrin when I didn’t turn into Captain Marvel. “Arshak, do something!” I gritted, although actually my emotions were mixed, for a clause in my life insurance policy provided quadruple indemnity in the event that I was “run over by a water buffalo.” Meanwhile, Arshak “did” something. He began throwing flash bulbs into the buffalo’s path, but it only served to heighten the beastie’s fury, and the photographer, in a gesture of hopeless defiance, again thumbed his nose at it, shouting “Aaaaaagh!” Mysteriously and abruptly, the buffalo gave up the chase. It was a good thing—a minute later the jeep stalled out. Arshak, sensing correctly that this was a high point in my life, took a picture of me as I fumbled with the ignition, but I fixed him good: I stared straight into the camera!
iv
Omer Aga, the farmer I was to interview, was John Carradine in sheik’s clothing. A tall, gaunt man, he stared out at you from under a black turban with piercing blue eyes that brooked no rebuttal. Although he was a Kurd, he wore no Joseph’s coat, and was black-gowned right down to his pointed samboosiks, but I certainly wasn’t going to make an issue of it. Instead I said, “Greetings from the President!” and while he paused to sort that one out, I examined our surroundings. The jeep was parked in front of a rather small adobe dwelling, and behind us, to the west, was a tree-lined stream swarming with geese. On all sides of us were peach and almond orchards, and far in the distance, rising up from the green flatlands like an island in the sky, was the mound city of Erbil. It was built upon a tel.
“Tell the sheik,” I said to Arshak, for Omer Aga spoke only Kurdish, “that I’d like to stroll around the orchards and ask him a few questions.” Arshak sullenly complied, for he was still upset about the buffalo incident, and we began our tour of the farm.
“Uga buga oola,” said Sheik Aga, or at least something like that, and “These are his almond trees,” translated Arshak, inserting a wide-angle lens into his camera.
“Ask him how much his yield has increased since he started getting Point Four advice and assistance.” Arshak translated, and “Pooka marimba casaba,” said the sheik. Arshak looked at me. “He says he gets half as much more now from each acre.”
“Half?” I said loudly in an amazed voice, and the sheik, putting his hand to his head as though he had made a mistake, said, “Pasta kostelanetz,” and, “He meant three times as much,” translated Arshak. The sheik, examining an almond blossom, peered sidewise at me slyly. It was clear that he wanted to do his part for Point Four and the News Review.
“Well,” I said, about fifty sheikly exaggerations later, “let’s move, Arshak, before the buffalo find out where we are. You can drive me to Erbil and take the jeep back yourself. I’ll take a taxi to Mosul and grab the train back to Baghdad Airport and home.”
Arshak fed this information to the sheik, who said, “Cascara manongaheela koo biki, cha-cha-cha.”
“He says he is preparing a lunch for you,” said Arshak.
In Beirut, we boiled our water and washed our vegetables in Tide, and I wasn’t having any exotic goodies a thousand miles from nowhere. “Tell him I’m sorry but I’ve got to make a train,” I smiled. Arshak translated. The sheik spoke again. Arshak turned pale. “You cannot refuse,” he said quietly. “He has slaughtered a sheep in your honor.” Now I turned pale, for I would have to eat the sheep’s eye! Have you ever eaten a sheep’s eye? Hah?… I thought as much!
But this is no time for maudlin self-pity, I thought, clutching my throat with both hands in a gesture that probably bewildered my host. In my pocket was a slender vial of enteroviaform tablets, a potent safeguard against dysentery. But in cases of extreme peril, it was necessary to swallow the pills before eating.
I reached into the pocket of my raincoat, and working at the cap of the tube, managed to unscrew it and shake out two tablets. The problem now was how to get them into my mouth without letting my sheiky host observe the maneuver, for if he guessed what I was up to, he’d probably have me stoned by the village elders, and how would Ness explain that to the Ambassador! I clutched the two tablets and looked Sheik Aga in the eye. He looked back and smiled—and wouldn’t look away. For a while I toyed with the reliable old ploy of pointing to the sky and shouting, “Looka the submarine!” but knowing what kiss meant in Arabic, I wasn’t taking any chances on what “submarine” might mean in Kurdish. I looked at the sheik. He was still looking at me. So what did I try? Of course, dollink—another of my famed desperation gambits: I feigned an elaborate yawn, and courteously holding my hand over my mouth, popped in the pills. “Remember the Maine,” I smiled apologetically, looking Omer Aga in the eye. But the old boy wasn’t smiling, and I had a horrible fear, suddenly, that he knew all all all! “Magoola leiani lipschitz lapaz,” he scowled darkly at Arshak, and “Very bad, sah,” Arshak translated. “You make yawn, you insult sheik. He make now bad punishment.”
“Bad?” I quavered, getting that feeling that you do when you’re eight thousand miles from a New York cop. “Bad,” said Arshak. “Special guest always receive great honor, eye of sheep for eat. Now sheik say you no get eye. Too bad.”
“Yeah, too bad,” I said, and as I fainted from sheer joy, spilled my chai all over the table. The meal was an anticlimax.
Arshak dropped me off at a taxi terminal in Erbil, and he reached for his camera, but I said, “No pictures, please!” and kicking the jeep affectionately in the tail pipe, I watched it carry the photographer off into the sunset, a poignant scene marred only when the jeep stalled a block away. But I could stall no longer. In Mosul, to the east, a train would be waiting for me, but first I wanted to sneak in a quick visit to the excavations of Nineveh, upon whom the “Assyrians had come down like a wolf on the fold.” I poured myself into a cab and said, “Nineveh, please, and hurry,” to the toothless young man behind the wheel. He gave me a puzzled look and pointed to his mouth, and I tried again in Arabic. He shrugged. “Nineveh,” I said carefully, looking him in the eye, and then fairly shouted, “NIN-EV-EH!”
“Ah, Nineweh!” he grinned, and gunning his motor, delivered me, at last, to a strange looking ruin at the outskirts of Mosul. “Nineveh?” I said, getting out of the cab. “Nineweh!” he said emphatically. It was a square, white-stone building with two levels, and finding no one around, I walked quickly up a spiral staircase to an open portico, and came upon a strange-looking man who walked back and forth, reading from a book. He wore a white gown, something like a priest’s, and a square skull-cap sat on his head. I approached him.
“Nine-weh?” I said, raising an eyebrow at him. He raised an eyebrow back. “Nineveh?” he said in clipped English accents. “No, my dear fellow, this is the Tomb of Jonah.” I leaned over the wall and looked at the cabby, appreciating, now, why the Lord had once destroyed this city and its inhabitants. I thanked the man in the strange cap and returned to the cab. “Nineweh?” grinned the toothless one, and “Blow it out your barracks bag!” I smiled, happy that he could not understand me, for he had all the earmarks of a merry slasher of throats. I got into the back seat. “Train!” I said. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. “Choo-choo!” I shouted. He grinned vacuously. I thereupon began a wild, raving game of charades, hunching myself up in the back seat, imitating a locomotive. Churning my legs, I made noises like “Chuffa-chuffa-chuffa!” and at one point I even emitted an eerie whistle. I wasn’t able to observe the driver’s reaction during this farrago, but suddenly he put the cab into gear and we sailed along merrily, only to stop, abruptly, five minutes later. “Choo-choo?” I said, looking around me, for it certainly didn’t look like a train station, and “Where are we this time?” I added, “Kurdish Marineland?” But the driver leaped quickly out of the cab, and ran i
nto a building that had two large green lanterns hanging on either side of it. He came hustling out again with two men in uniforms. It was the police!
“Get out, please,” one of them said in English. I got out.
“What’s the problem?” I said.
“What is your name, and where are you from?”
“I’m Bill Blatty, U.S. Information Agency, Beirut. What’s wrong?” The policeman studied me quietly for a moment, then turned and cuffed my toothless cabby sharply across the cheek, barking at him severely. Then he turned back to me: “Nothing is wrong,” he said. “A mistake. This miserable camel,” and here he slapped the driver again for emphasis, “said that you were a madman. We apologize. Where are you going?”
“To the train station,” I said in my sanest possible voice. The policeman turned to the cabby and snarling at him in Kurdish, cuffed him twice more. Then he said to me: “The driver will deliver you.”
“Deliver me where,” I snapped weakly, “into the belly of a whale?”
“Why, to the train station,” said the policeman.
“I doubt it,” I said. The policeman looked at the cabby again. “Yes, I see … I will go with you.” He went with me. They got me to the Mosul train station, and bundled me onto the Orient Express, bound for Baghdad where I would make plane connections to Beirut. I watched out the window as the policeman waved a smiling good-bye, and then, as the train pulled out, turned to slap the cabby again.
Pleasant custom, I thought, and settled down to a Graham Green spy story about the Orient Express. I spent the entire trip looking over my shoulder for Sidney Greenstreet.
21. The Magruder Correspondence
IN THE city of Amman, Jordan, just 140 miles south of Beirut, there lived an American who could have given Pavlov’s dog a run for his money, for he would salivate at the mention of the word privy. He oozed fresh crisis into my life via diplomatic pouch: