CHAPTER TWO

I cross the desert to Baghdad, and on the way encounter a strange fragment of England in the wilderness.   In Baghdad I meet the Chaldean Christians. I visit the holy city of Kadhimain, sacred to the Moslem Shias, and am taken at night to see the Shia flagellants pass through the streets of Baghdad.

§ I

Standing outside the window in the early morning was a long, experienced-looking motor-coach. It was touched everywhere with brown dust. The words "Nairn Transport Co." were written on its side. It was a heavier, longer version of those coaches which roll so swiftly through the English countryside. It had made a special stop at Palmyra to take up passengers, for its normal route is straight from Damascus to Baghdad.

I went into the hotel lounge. A few cold passengers were drinking Turkish coffee, and looking rather like mail-coach travellers in a print by Alken. Instead, however, of the buxom wenches of those prints, a sleepy Arab boy in a striped gallabia slip-slopped round with trays of native bread and plates of crushed honeycomb the colour of dark sherry.  The stove filled the room with a blinding injection of wood smoke.

A broad-shouldered man over six feet in height sat filling in official forms at the manager's table. He wore a pair of old flannel trousers and a leather golf-jacket. When he looked up I saw that he was one of those large men who seem to have a schoolboy hiding somewhere inside him. He asked for my passport, and I gathered that he was the driver of the Baghdad coach, and everybody called him Long Jack.

While we were having a cup of coffee together, he told me that he had been born in Wellington, New Zealand, and had come to Syria as a boy of eleven. The Nairn brothers, Jerry and Norman, were also New Zealanders. They had served in Palestine during the war and then started their desert transport company. They gave him a job as driver —and how many times he'd driven the coach to Baghdad and back to Damascus, he really couldn't say! A Syrian came in and whispered to him.

" My mate," he explained. " We have two drivers in each desert car. One sleeps while the other drives, and so we keep it up all night."

He stood up and called out " All aboard! "; and we trooped out into the morning sunlight.

There was a mighty roar of the seventy-five horse power engine as the coach turned gently and rolled away through the ruins of Palmyra. It was not quite eight o'clock. We should be in Baghdad on the following morning.

§ 2

The distance between Damascus and Baghdad is five hundred and twenty-seven miles, and the Naim coaches accomplish the journey in twenty-four hours, with only two official stops: one, at Rutba Fort, half-way, and the other at Ramadi, the Iraq passport station. Before cars crossed the desert, the journey was possible only by camel caravan, and these sometimes took two months. I do not know whether the two New Zealanders who have originated this extraordinary adventure in transport will make a fortune, but no one can deny that they have made history.

Long Jack had given me some printed information about the Nairn venture, which I read with interest after I had become accustomed to the car. It was the most remarkably sprung car in which I have ever travelled, for the enormous coach,  weighing twelve tons, had an almost miraculous capacity' for taking a series of holes in the road at thirty miles an hour. I became tired of looking ahead at some bad piece of track, waiting for us to feel the bump, for these disturbances were, never communicated.

I was sitting in the front seat immediately behind Long Jack, who was driving. He sat in a high seat rather like that of a steam tractor, grasping a steering-wheel twice the size of an ordinary one. The only sign that we were crossing rough country was the rhythmic undulation of his large body; over really bad ground he actually bobbed up and down.

Enormous electric fans were placed above the driver's seat, facing the passengers, and it was possible for each passenger to pull down blinds to exclude the sunlight, a reminder of the heat in which such journeys are made later in the year. The seats were of tubular steel, extravagantly padded and specially sprung, and were fitted with a device enabling you to tilt them backwards until you lie almost flat. This was designed for extra comfort during night travel.

I turned with interest to my literature, where I learned that the pioneer car journey across this desert took place in April 1923, when two Buicks and two Dodges did the journey in four days, and, I gathered, had a rough time. In the autumn of the same year the first service was started with Cadillac cars. The route had to be altered during the Druse rebellion, when one of the cars was attacked and a driver killed; but the Company was determined to run the mail service regularly, and never allowed it to lapse. It has always been necessary to pay safety money to the Bedouin tribes, who for centuries have regarded travellers in the desert as their rightful prey. Sheik Ali Basan, a Bedouin living in Damascus, at first provided the safe conduct and received as his reward a third of the mail contract, but during a reorganisation he was given shares in the company, a delightful modern touch.

In 1927 a new type of car, the result of four years' experience, was made specially for desert travel. It was built in the United States and shipped to Syria. Since then the-history of the Company has been that of mechanical improvements, of extra comfort for travellers, and cheaper fares.
 
 

Long Jack turned now and then, speaking above the roar of his engine, but conversation was not easy in the noise.. He told me that the car travelled five miles on one gallon of petrol and that it consumed one hundred and ten gallons between Damascus and Baghdad.
" Why don't you use British cars ? " I shouted.

" Because when the idea was put up to British manufacturers, they made so many difficulties that we had to go to America," he bellowed back.

The desert which lay to the sky on each side was not sand, but a gravelly plain, reddish in parts. It is firm in dry, weather, but becomes glutinous after rain. Ranges of low brown hills relieved the monotony of the flat surface, and I there were occasional outcrops of volcanic looking rock. Long wadis, or water-courses, cut the plain, generally in a north-easterly direction towards the Euphrates; but they are bone dry except immediately after a storm. The road, like that' from Resafa, was merely the wheel-marks of previous cars. When the plain became hard these tracks disappeared and Long Jack seemed to drive instinctively, but I noticed that sooner or later he always picked up the trail again on soft ground.

In the distance we saw herds of four or five hundred camels grazing on thorn bushes, all facing the same way. Whenever we saw camels or sheep we knew that a water-hole or a, well was somewhere about. How few and far between these were, we could judge by the miles of lifeless desolation. It was at a place called Helba Wells that we saw our first sign of desert life. Men and women of the Ruwalla tribe were watering their sheep and camels. Two concrete well-heads, made by the French military authorities, rose out of the stony earth, and round these were grouped Bedouin girls drawing up water. There were about two hundred camels and several hundred sheep, and the picture they made in that desert place might have come straight from the Old Testament.

Long Jack stopped the car and told us that we could have five minutes there. Walking with him to the wells, I found that he was a voluble speaker of Bedouin Arabic. He had the gift of making the Bedouin laugh, and soon these tall, brown people were all rocking with merriment like a lot of children. The Ruwalla, who are frequently mentioned by Doughty in Arabia Deserta, are among the best camel-breeders in the Syrian Desert. Some of the women, I thought, had typical Mongolian faces, with high cheek-bones. They were impeded in their actions by long garments which looked far too big for them—some had tied cords round their waists and bunched their robes so that they exposed bright yellow heelless boots. All the time we were talking to the men, the women continued to work, and showed only by an occasional smile that they had heard the jokes that were flying around.

The wells were extraordinarily deep. The women sank a leather bucket at the end of a rope that seemed to descend into a bottomless pit. When the bucket was full, three girls would take the rope, and running back for at least forty yards over the desert, would draw the dripping bucket to the wellhead. A man tipped the water into a trough, where a girl crouched, filling goat-skins, and another girl would load these on the back of a donkey.

When the goatskins were filled, Long Jack said that they would take away buckets and ropes and depart with their flocks and herds, leaving the well without any apparatus for the drawing of water. The custom that each Bedouin shall bring his own tackle means, of course, that it would be possible for a traveller to die of thirst on the parapet of a well if no-one were there with a bucket and rope.

There came to my mind the words of the Woman of Samaria when she saw Jesus sitting beside the well at Sychar. He asked her for water, obviously because she had brought with her the necessary bucket and rope. But before she lowered the bucket, Jesus spoke metaphorically of the " water of life," which she did not understand, thinking that He referred to the well-water. I thought that her words to Jesus are the first that would spring to the lips of any Bedouin girl if she came on a man sitting beside the wells of Helba without a rope and a bucket, yet promising apparently to draw water. " Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep."
 

Towards noon a heat haze trembled over the wide plain. Our eyes, seeking for variety, seized eagerly on any rock or low hill, or even the ragged line of a wadi, just as on the high seas one looks with pleasure at a passing ship. At some point, where I believe there was a post or some barbed wire, we passed into Iraq. There was no customs-house or passport office - that happens nearer Baghdad - nothing but the plain rising and falling, scattered with stones and gravel like the dry bed of an enormous lake.

We crossed a plateau swarming with gazelle. These beautiful, swift creatures, alarmed by the desert car, always galloped in herds straight across our path. It seemed as though they were hypnotised by the line of our advance and had to cross it, or perhaps we had caught them away from their natural haunts and they instinctively made for them. Sometimes we saw them far away, visible only as a moving line of dust on a dust-coloured plain, or against the sky-line as a gliding black line which became invisible as they disappeared from the horizon. Only once were we fortunate enough to see them fairly close, straight ahead of us, galloping at about fifty miles an hour, their white scuts shining through the dust of their gallop.

There came a moment when this journey to Baghdad took On the air of a school outing. Leaving the wheel to his companion, Long Jack handed round cardboard boxes which advised us to " Travel the Nairn way." Inside were meat sandwiches and cheese, an orange, and a packet of excellent Basra dates stuffed with nuts.

The afternoon wore on. The sun was behind us to the west. The shadows lengthened. We saw the swift twilight go and darkness come to the desert. It grew colder and the Stars shone. With only a pale finger of light left in the sky, we came to a gaunt square building standing in the treeless desolation: a walled fort with stone towers at the four corners. The flag of Iraq flew over the gate; a wireless mast rose from one of the towers; and two or three cars and some lorries stood on the sand, while an armed sentry in a blue uniform marched up and down. This was Rutba Fort—the half-way house to Baghdad.
 

§3

I went through the postern gate into a dark courtyard. Soldiers were lounging round the guard-house, gazing curiously, for the arrival of a desert coach is probably a great event in their lonely day. In contrast to the desert outside, this courtyard, with its bustle of life, was exciting. It also had the urgency and the drama of events that happen behind four closed walls: it was almost as if men were preparing for a siege. I could hear a dynamo throbbing, and when doors opened in the low buildings that ran round the four sides of the fort, I could see in the yellow oblongs of light dark men at desks, soldiers delivering a message, a wireless operator with ear-phones on his head.

An Arab came out and drew water from the well round which the fort is built. Two dark figures met in the centre of the courtyard. They greeted one another cheerfully in French—though I think one of them was English. They were air pilots. One spoke of a wind over Egypt; the other of rain over Mesopotamia. Then as casually as they had met, they parted with an exchange of cigarettes. This, I thought, is a wonderful, romantic place: a modern version of the Roman caravan fort.

There was still a surprise for me. While I was blundering about in the dark, wondering where I should find something to eat, for though Rutba has plenty of light for its offices, it spares none for its courtyard, a door opened and out came a little man like a brown monkey. He wore a white mess-jacket and looked like a Goanese steward from some P. and 0. ship.
" A wash and brush-up, sir ?" he asked in English. "There is hot water."

I followed him into a room where about twenty camp wash-stands were ready for travellers. Beside each was a white enamelled jug of hot water, with a spotless towel neatly folded and placed over the top. There was soap everywhere— English soap—and several clean hair-brushes. I felt pride and happiness rising in me, for this was undoubtedly English , but when I turned to ask the little man to explain it, he had gone.

On the verandah outside I saw a sign: " To the lounge." I followed it, pushed open a door, and saw a truly amazing sight. In a room dotted with little wickerwork tables, a number of men and women were sitting in basket-work chairs round a stove. Most of them were English, and some were smoking cigarettes and others drinking tea. I ventured in, and sat next to a woman in a tweed costume, who was reading a venerable copy of the Bystander.

This was the rest-house which the Nairn Company keeps at Rutba, and the people were passengers on their way east or west. Some were Britishers, some were French, a few were Iraqi, and one or two might have been Persians. It is amazing in these days to see phantom-like assemblies of this kind in out-of-the-way places. An aeroplane comes down from the sky. Men in town clothes and women in fur coats and Paris shoes walk on the desert sand, perhaps have something to eat, and vanish again into the air. The Arab accepts it all without wonder, having obviously heard of the magic carpet in his cradle. It was strange to find these people, some air travellers, some from desert cars, drawn together in the darkness in an atmosphere so strongly English that even the Iraqis, though on their native soil, appeared guest-like and faintly apprehensive.

Leading from this room was a little dining-room with tables set for dinner, all neat and clean and—English. There is a wonderful English way of setting a table which we don't notice at home because we see it so often. The cloth droops almost to the ground, decently covering the table's legs, and it generally has ironed creases in it. The knives and forks are set with precision, not with Gallic inconsequence or Latin fire, and the cruet is given a place of honour beside a bottle of sauce. Tumblers, the right size for half a pint of ale, stand to the right-hand, and inside each one is popped a little bishop's mitre - a folded table-napkin. No other nation sets a table like that, and when I saw all those tables looking so English, reminding me of country hotels in Hampshire and Yorkshire and Devonshire, of little restaurants run by tall, grey-haired gentlewomen in select seaside places, a feeling of love for this dear country of ours filled my heart, and I determined to pour Lea and Perrins Sauce over everything that night, out of sheer love for England.

Pinned to an announcements board in this fantastic room, next to an apology for the high price of bottled beer, was a notice which brought me back to reality.

NOTICE

Passengers are warned when leaving the fort always to keep the fort in sight. Cases have occurred of passengers becoming lost (through losing their bearings) when out for a stroll, owing to darkness falling suddenly and the fort not being in sight. The result of this causes danger to the passengers and trouble to the police.

By Order.

Administrative Commandant


My eye lingered lovingly over " when out for a stroll," which brought memories of Eastbourne into Mesopotamia. No-one but an Englishman could have talked about having " a stroll " at Rutba.

While I was wondering from whom all these blessings flowed, my curiosity was answered by the appearance of a short, stout man in a grey flannel suit, who passed rapidly through the dining-room, talking like a machine-gun in sudden rapping bursts of fluent Arabic. Every waiter addressed by him seemed to have suffered an electric shock. Some fled into the kitchen, some attempted to hide, and several stumbled over chairs and upset the salt in a passion of obedience. He smoked a cigarette all the time, rapping out his orders between puffs of smoke and with a glance of pale blue eyes which had the fixed expression of expecting the worst; a look which men acquire from long contact with foreign troops. I put him down as an old soldier, and from the quick way he moved and the way he held himself, as a boxer or an athlete. And in none of these things was I far wide of the mark.

He was George Bryant, commandant of the rest-house. As I sat down to dinner, we attempted to talk, but this was difficult because he was interrupted every two seconds by one of his waiters. He would spring lightly to his feet and disappear with a terrifying gleam of frosty blue eyes, to return a minute later with the air of having quelled a rebellion, During his first absence I gazed incredulously at the card which was propped against the cruet.
 

Dinner

Tomato Soup.
Fried Fish.
Tartar Sauce.
Roast Beef.
Horse-Radish Sauce.
Roast Potatoes.
Cauliflower.
Yorkshire Pudding.
Raisin Pudding, Lemon Syrup.
Fruit. Coffee.

I invite you to look at the map which is at the beginning of this book, and, having found Rutba, to believe that this very night a meal of such superb Englishness is probably being eaten in that hut behind the fortress wall. In an age of half-belief, it is inspiring to meet that mood of stern faith which will recognise in no part of the earth a place that cannot be made a little like home; that must, in fact, be made like home before it can be called good. And although we may laugh at people who go about the world taking England wherever they may be, what finer thing is there to take about the world ? For one brief hour, as we sat at the parting of the ways in this desert, some of us to travel towards the Mediterranean, others towards the Indian Ocean, we sat in peace, sharing the solid comfort of a tradition built up in generations of English families.

When George Bryant returned, I looked at him with renewed interest. No; he had no woman to help him. Pie had trained the cooks and the waiters himself. Where did he come from ? Born at Bath, played rugger for Bristol, entered the Palestine police force, stationed at Nazareth, left the force, and had been in the desert ever since. So much I got out of him in a quick-fire way between his jumpings-up and his sittings-down.

" Enjoy your dinner? Not too bad, is it? " And a frosty smile came into his eyes for a second. "Difficult? It's not too easy. You've got to keep them up to the scratch. That's the secret. You can't let one detail escape you.

Excuse me a minute . . ." He came back. " Do you like the fish?"
" I was going to ask how you get fish in the middle of the desert."
" Comes from Baghdad. Tigris. Get it when the desert mail goes West. It's a bit coarse, naturally, but it's not too bad, is it? "

It was not, because the poor Tigris fish, entering into the spirit of the thing, had consented to look and taste very like the " fried fish with sauce tartare " of more familiar places.

Long Jack came in to say the coach was ready, and I was given a pillow and two blankets. I walked across the dark courtyard with George Bryant, through the gate into the desert, enormously wide and silent under the stars. The car stood throbbing, and two beams of white light shone into the emptiness that was our way.
" Cheerio! " said George Bryant. " Look in again on your way back."
And he strode swiftly past the sentry into the fort.
 
 

There was no moon that night, and a blue wash of starlight, in which stones almost achieved shadows, lay over the desert. Our headlights sprang forward and became lost in the immensity of the space ahead. I was conscious of things moving in the light and escaping from it, for now the desert seemed to be livelier than by day. Sand-grouse rose in front of us and flashed off; a flock of desert pigeon flew in and out of our light, and all around us the night moved with strange liopping creatures, propelled, it seemed, by springs: these were jerboas, little kangaroo-like desert rats. You had to watch carefully to see them, for they were the same colour as the earth and moved with the speed of birds, hopping in every possible direction.

I tilted my seat back, wrapped myself in blankets, and enjoyed those disconnected periods of unconsciousness which are usually accompanied by vivid and unlikely dreams. I was in London at one moment and at the next I would awaken to see Long Jack's broad back undulating in front of me, and the stars snapping overhead.  Or I was in my room in Hampshire, sitting at my table in that inexplicable state of happiness which comes sometimes in dreams; and then, awakening with a sense of bereavement, I would see Long Jack lying crumpled in the spare seat, his huge body sagging as if he had been shot, and the Syrian driver at the wheel, the smoke of an Iraqi cigarette streaming back.

So the night wore on; first crouched on the left side, then on the right; asleep for ten minutes, awake for half an hour;
and always the pale wash of starlight all round; the rising and falling headlights; the roar of the engine.

I was suddenly wide awake. The coach had stopped on a sandy road with buildings on each side.   It was still dark, and looking at my watch I saw that it was only 2.30.   Long Jack was standing outside talking to a policeman, holding in his hand the passports of passengers. We were at Ramadi, the Iraqi passport station, which is about ninety miles from Baghdad. I got out, and walking a few paces along the road, became conscious of something new and pleasant in the air. It was the sound of wind in acacia trees; and I remembered that I had seen no real trees for many days.

Near the customs shed was a small building with a front garden. It was the Babylon Hotel, and there were lights in the windows. I entered a lounge where little brown waiters in white jackets, who might have been the waiters of Rutba Fort, were bustling about serving the sleepy passengers with pots of tea and trays of English biscuits. We had been offered tea and English biscuits at Rutba, and here they were again! This could not have happened in Syria. I drank four cups of strong tea, and smoked a cigarette. The hotel lounge was interesting. The walls were hung with Persian rugs so that the place looked like a carpet shop, and a picture of young King Ghazi of Iraq hung on the wall. But the waiters spoke English, and, from the way they served the tea, you could tell that whatever they knew of waiting was derived from English sources.

When I gave the waiter a ten-shilling note, he returned my change in the first Iraqi money I had handled. Since 1931 Iraq has had a currency of its own, based on the pound sterling. One dinar—which surely holds some vague memory of Chu Chin Chow—is worth an English pound, and this is divided into  thousand^. Silver coins are of twenty, fifty, or a hundred fits; nickel coins of irregular shape, rather like our new threepenny pieces, are of four and tenfils; and copper coins are of one and twofils, but my tastes are evidently so expensive that I never discovered what I could buy with them, except the fleeting gratitude of small boys.

An insistent note from the klaxon sent us running to the coach. We crossed a wooden bridge. I saw the movement of swift water. This is the point where the Euphrates, after winding through Mesopotamia as if it were going to Baghdad, suddenly makes up its mind to turn south and leave Baghdad to its companion, the Tigris.
 
 

Awakening from a sound sleep, I found that we were running through flat country over a rough road of beaten brown earth, and ahead of us a cluster of mud-coloured buildings, minarets and a few cupolas was spread out on a land as low, as wide, and as conscious of the sky, as Holland. And the sun was up.
 

§ 4

The irreproachable edition of Lane's Arabian Nights, which could be found in all Victorian libraries, probably explains why Baghdad is a magic name to most people. To me it was one of those towers of romance which experience had not yet demolished, and I approached it with some apprehension, already aware that it was going to be—well, different.

As the car approached Baghdad through the sunrise of that morning, I took with me a certain proportion of juvenile dreams, and I told myself that the line of buildings, with a golden gleam of a distant mosque, was indeed the city of the Caliphs.

We crossed the river by a wooden pontoon bridge whose sections lift gently under heavy traffic. The Tigris at Baghdad is about twenty yards wider than the Thames at London Bridge: on the west bank, white-balconied houses stand amid the green fringes of date-palms; on the east bank modern Baghdad clusters, with its one main street and its incredible chaos of lesser streets and lanes. Blue skies, warm sunlight, a long, wide main street (called, I saw with a pang, Al Rashid Street) lined with little shops and animated by the movement of two-horse open carriages—these were my first impressions of Baghdad.

I entered a hotel in this street which is named after General Maude. The servant who answered the bell called me " sahib " ; and in the breakfast-room the waiter, who gave me the best cooked bacon and eggs I have ever eaten, also called me " sahib." It was the first time that anyone had seriously referred to me in this Kiplingesque manner; and it made me think that there is a point in travel when the West fades out and the East tunes in; when the Mediterranean is a far-off, alien sea and the Indian Ocean is real and near. This point is Iraq. India is only round the corner.

I remembered that men I knew who had served as administrators in Iraq had also been Indian civil servants, and suddenly many things were made clear: the baconandeggs, the tea and petit beum biscuits at Ramadi; and goodness knows what else.
Pleased with this deduction, I went out to see Baghdad.
 
 

§ 5

For three centuries before the war, Iraq shared in the living death of the Ottoman Empire. The war released it from its torpor, and, after ten years of British mandated rule, it is now an independent Arab state ruled by Feisal's son, King Ghazi.

Baghdad, which may possess carefully concealed charms visible only to the resident and the native, is, to the visitor, a large, mud-coloured city on the banks of a mud-coloured river. With the slightest wind, powdered mud as fine as talc-powder flies through its streets. In true Babylonian tradition, the native building material is mud brick and, like the towers and temples of Biblical times, the chief architectural decoration is the glazed tile, which in modern Baghdad is sparingly applied to the cupolas of a few mosques.

The terrible poverty and inertia of the old Turkish rule are still written on the face of Baghdad. It will take more than ten years of Western influence to wipe out the memory and tradition of three hundred years of mental and material corruption. It is true that a new spirit is fighting the old ways; there are hospitals, public services, an excellent police force, schools, and a stirring feeling of national pride which may mean that the old tree, having been pruned and trained in the way it should grow, is putting out new wood. The long main street, with its ramshackle booths and shops, is still mainly Turkish in appearance, although an occasional ladies' hairdresser, or even a plumber's shop, seems to herald the dawn of a surprisingly new day.

This main street is filled with activity. From morning until night earnest little 'arabiydt drawn by two horses ply up and down. There are so many of these questing victorias, and their fares are so cheap, that there is no need to walk anywhere. In the absence of finer shades of social distinction the people in the street may be divided, like a hymn-book, into ancient and modern. The modern wear European clothes with the national head-dress, a forage cap of blue cloth rather like that worn by members of the Church Lads' Brigade; and the ancient wear anything from the green turban and robes of religious aristocracy to the squalid sacks which cover the limbs of the Khurdish porters.

In the capital of a land which resembles nothing so much as a billiard table, the presence of mountains is curiously proclaimed by fierce, ragged men who by their bearing would be recognised anywhere as highlanders. They are nomads from the mountains of Kurdistan or from the high country round Mosul. Then there are Persians, Arabs, Jews, Afghans, Indians, and negroes; a curious mixture that rides, walks, or lies in the dust of Baghdad's main street.

The reason why nothing now survives of the cultured city of the Abbasid Caliphate is to be found in history. Baghdad has been plundered and destroyed, rebuilt and flooded, time and again, so that little remains to-day to remind the visitor of" the golden prime of good Harun al-Rashid."

The bazaars are a confusing warren of twisting alleys crammed with life, with cheap Japanese cotton prints, with copper work of infinite variety, and with trivial silver and gold work; they are dark, save for dusty stabs of sunlight that fall from rents in the cloth covering overhead. I looked in vain for ancient khans such as I have seen in Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Aleppo, for Baghdad is a city with a great but invisible past, but there are no architectural relics worth speaking about.

The Museum is Baghdad's greatest attraction. Here are to be seen the astonishing objects found at Ur, and much else besides. It is strange, perhaps, that while everybody knows something about the Tut-ankh-Amun discoveries, which did not really increase the world's knowledge, the finds at Ur, which removed the dawn of history from Egypt to Babylonia and set it back another thousand years, seem to have made little impression, except on those people who happen to be interested in such matters.

It was in Baghdad's main street that I came on the only really surprising shop in the city. It is called Mackenzie's Book Shop. Although it might pass without comment in Oxford or Cambridge, it stands out from the oriental booths on each side. It is packed from floor to ceiling with new and second-hand English books, and is, of course, a relic of the British Mandate. It is, however, more significant now that the Mandate has been surrendered than ever it was when the British patronised it; for the customers are chiefly modern young Iraqis. You will always find a group of young men wandering about there, dipping into the latest books, and it will occur to you that Mackenzie of Baghdad is proof that though England and France have made little cultural impression on Palestine, Trans-Jordan, or Syria, this is not so in Iraq.

Ten years of British rule have taught* Iraq to speak our language and to read our books. And from the size of Mackenzie's shop and, still more, from the kind of books that fill it, you can confidently assume that Baghdad's literary appetite is critical and intelligent.
 
 

In the afternoon I hired a taxi and told the man to drive for a couple of hours anywhere outside Baghdad.

We bumped along a road of beaten mud with cultivated land on each side. Every passing horseman covered us in brown dust, and our wheels made a sand storm for the unfortunate people behind. The cultivation soon began to thin out, and I had some idea of the difference between the country to-day and in ancient times.

The modern habit of giving the name Mesopotamia to the lower reaches of the Tigris and the Euphrates probably originated during the war, when the Press and the Army always referred to these parts as Mespot. But the Mesopotamia of the ancient world was the country north of Baghdad—the wide, grassy plains between the two rivers— and the country south of Baghdad was known as Babylonia.

When you look at this land to-day, stretching brown and barren to the sky, a land green only on its river-banks and in irrigated areas, it is difficult to believe that such a desert could ever have been the home of great civilisations. But when Abraham lived at Ur, and when the Children of Israel were carried captive to Babylon, they saw a different country. If we can imagine the wheat-prairies of Canada varied by groves of date-palms and intersected in every direction by canals, we have some idea of the appearance of ancient Babylonia.

Agriculture has always been impossible in this land unless the flood-waters carried down by the two rivers in the spring are retained and used to water the land during the dry season. The Chaldeans, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians were irrigation experts who harnessed the Tigris and the Euphrates, and by a complicated system of control distributed the water as it was required. The system was taken over by the Persians and by the Arabs of the Caliphate, but when the Arab Government weakened it fell into disrepair, until, with the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, the magnificent series of waterways with their intricate dams and dykes fell into utter ruin, and a legacy from the world's first civilisations was lost.

At the present moment engineers are tackling the problem of irrigation, but it is not an easy one. The river-beds have been ruined by centuries of neglect. Water has been tapped to serve individual needs in a way which makes it impossible for the rivers to scour their beds properly, and canal-cutting, which has gone on without plan, has diverted the flow of water and helped to cause floods. Thus the restoration of Babylonia to its former prosperity presents not one problem, but hundreds, and not the least important is the problem of population. Nevertheless, even a glance at the immense dry plains suggests that if Iraq, like ancient Babylonia, could once again become productive, she might influence the wheat markets of the world.
 

§ 6

Back in Baghdad, I found myself forbidden, like any Seventeenth Century " Christian Dog," to enter the Shia mosques. It was the first week in Muharram, the opening month of the Moslem year, a time when Shias flagellate themselves, cut their heads with knives, and achieve a condition of religious ecstacy which culminates in the passion play commemorating the death of Mohammed's grandson.

I stood outside the mosques and watched the lowering crowds of men passing in and out, each mosque like a hive about to swarm. An intense crowd devoid of humour is a terrible spectacle, especially when you are detached from the object of its obsession. These purposeful fanatics, urged, it seemed, by some power or instinct beyond themselves, were terrifying in their single-mindedness. They were men not humbled by grief, but made savage and revengeful. Looking at them, I realised how quickly a human sacrifice must have cleared the air in pagan times; for these Shias, whether they were aware of it or not, wanted blood.

I must explain that Islam is not an undivided faith. It is split by a schism twelve centuries old into two great sects, the Sunnis and the Shias. The majority of Moslems are Sunnis (" those of the faith ") or traditionists; a minority, centred in Persia and India, are Shias, or " dissenters," a rigid fanatical sect with its own religious hierarchy, its own mosques, its own festivals, and its own interpretation of the Koran. It is possible to travel in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor and never to realise that the Shias exist, but as soon as you enter Iraq you become conscious that you have crossed a theological frontier: you are in the holy land of the Shia. And the schism came about in this way.

When the Prophet died in 632 A.D., he left no son to succeed him, neither did he appoint a successor. There were signs that Islam would fall to pieces unless a strong hand took immediate and undivided control, and the choice fell on Mohammed's bosom friend, Abu Bekr. This election passed over a man who might have succeeded by right of blood. He was Ali, Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law. Two more caliphs were, however, chosen by election before Ali eventually succeeded to the headship of Islam; but he was a gentle and unlucky person, the last man in the world to hold together wild desert tribes, and after a reign of only five years he fell to the stroke of a poisoned sword at Kufa, in Iraq.

He left two sons, Hasan and Husein, who succeeded to a divided empire. Hasan abdicated and died at Medina in 669 A.D., some say slain by his wife; his brother Husein, inarching to establish his claim to the caliphate, was surrounded by his enemies and mercilessly slaughtered at Karbala, in Iraq. So ended the tragedy of the house of Ali.

The Shias have always held that the succession should have proceeded immediately through Ali, Hasan, and Husein. Their theory is that these men were sacred by virtue of their blood. They claim also that the three first caliphs, Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman, were usurpers, as were all the caliphs after them. Omar in particular they detest, and I have heard that Sunnis named Omar often prudently change their names to the most popular of the Shia names, Ali, when venturing into Persia. A horrible pious exercise in Persia is the repetition of this curse: " 0 God, curse Omar, then Abu Bekr and Omar, then Othman and Omar, then Omar—then Omar! "

So it is clear that as the Shias regard with horror and loathing three pillars of the Sunni faith, and all the caliphs after them, the rift is as complete as it could be.  But the Shias have also built up a whole school of mystical theology which further separates them from the Sunni. The emotional abandon with which these people worship their dead prophets seems far removed from the stem self-control of the rest of Islam.

Iraq is the holy land of the Shia because Ali and Husein are buried there. The four holy cities of Iraq, Najaf, Karbala, Kadhimain, and Samarra, are sacred to the Shia world, and it is said that about two hundred thousand Shia pilgrims go there every year, most of them from Persia, India, and Afghanistan. Each holy city has a large cemetery attached to it, for it is the desire of every Shia to be buried in ground as near as possible to the holy Ali or the equally holy Husein. Coffins strapped to a Ford car or a pack-animal are the commonest of sights on all roads that lead to these four cities. While the Sunni turns to Mecca and Medina, the Shia turns to the holy cities of Iraq.

The great festival of the Shia year falls on the first ten days of Muharram, when the faithful celebrate with all manner of morbid austerity the death of Husein at Karbala. Their grief for Husein is so deep that he might have died last week instead of twelve centuries ago. Every detail of his death is dwelt on with sorrow and love, until one feels that these people are mourning, not a man, but a god. And the story of his death moves indeed with the inevitability of great tragedy.

Husein and his family, with a small force of about seventy followers, camped at Karbala, not far from the Euphrates. They suffered terribly from thirst, as they were cut off from the river, but no one would give them a drink of water. Husein knew that he was fated to die. On the night of the tenth day his sister, who had been lying awake in her tent listening to the sound of Husein's servant burnishing his master's sword for the coming combat, slipped' weeping to his bedside.

" Sister," said Husein, " put your trust in God and know that man is born to die, and that the heavens shall not remain; everything shall pass away but the presence of God, who created all things by his power, and they shall return to him alone. My father was better than I, and my mother was better than I, and my brother was better than I; and they, and we, and all Moslems, have an example in the ‘Apostle of God.’

He called his followers and asked them to leave him to his fate and depart to their homes. But they said: " God forbid that we should ever see the day wherein we survive you." So he commanded them to cord the tents together as a barrier against the enemy cavalry, and to dig a trench behind them filled with brushwood that could be set on fire, in order to protect them from the rear. And on the following morning he prepared for battle, first washing and anointing himself with perfumes. When some of his men asked why he was doing this, he replied cheerfully: " Alas, there is nothing between us and the black-eyed girls of Paradise but that these troopers come down upon us and slay us." Mounting his camel, he first read the Koran, and then rode into battle.

He was wounded on the head and retired to his tent to rest a moment. While he sat holding his young son in his arms, the child was killed by a flying arrow. He rushed into the fight again, and, becoming thirsty, found his way to the Euphrates; but as he was stooping to drink an arrow struck him in the mouth. He charged the enemy again and again until, finally overcome by numbers, he fell transfixed by a spear. A troop of horsemen was ridden backwards and forwards over his dead body. His head was carried to the stern ruler of Basra and flung on the ground. As the governor turned it over with his staff, a voice was heard saying:
" Gently! It is the Prophet's grandson. By God! I have seen these very lips kissed by the blessed mouth of Mohammed."
 

§ 7

I was anxious to go to the holy city of Kadhimain, which is four miles from Baghdad. The gold cupolas and the four gold minarets of the Shia mosque are a landmark visible everywhere in that flat country.

I was told on no account to linger near the gate or to attempt to take a photograph, but as the Shias whom I had seen in Baghdad looked surly but not dangerous, I attributed this warning to the nervousness of my adviser. Still, I thought it would be sensible to take someone who had been there before. My companion was a Syrian Christian who was visiting Baghdad; he said that years ago he had entered the mosque at Kadhimain in disguise.

" I would not do it again for all the money in the world," he said. " Had I been detected, they would have killed me! "

As we drove out to Kadhimain, he told me that dead bodies are brought from immense distances in order that they may he in the sanctity of Iraqi soil, some from remote parts of India and others from the distant highlands of Afghanistan.

" It is not cheap to be buried in the holy cities," he explained. " A good grave at Najaf would cost about forty English pounds; but in less popular places, like Samarra, you can buy a grave for about seven shillings. It all depends how near the grave is to the mosque. In the old days, which I remember well, bodies were brought from India by boat to Basra, and then carried by caravan to Najaf or Karbala. But bubonic plague broke out and the Turks stopped such things."

I asked him why Kadhimain was sacred to the Shia.

" They are strange people," he replied. " For instance, it is their belief that the almost divine power of Mohammed was carried on through a number of men called Imams, or Mahdis, but the last of these, the twelfth, disappeared long ago. They believe that someday a Mahdi will come back to earth and take all the Shias up to heaven. The mosque at Kadhimain contains the tombs of two important Mahdis, the seventh, Musa-bin-Tafar, and the ninth, Mohammed-bin-Ali."

As we drew near Kadhimain the golden domes and minarets grew larger, until the building achieved a meretricious splendour; but I did not think it beautiful.
"It is real gold," said the Syrian. "Real!"
" Tell me honestly, would the Shias kill an unbeliever who entered their mosque? " I asked.

" There is no doubt," he said; " that is why it is forbidden.

They have killed unbelievers for much less. I have heard that they killed an American who took a photograph of their mosque in Teheran. They poured boiling water on his body!"

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

"You understand we must be quick?" he asked. "Just one look and then we go. At this moment the Shias are more fanatical than ever. They go without food, and their bodies are sore from much beating and cutting."

" Do they still do this at Kadhimain? "

" Not only at Kadhimain. At Baghdad. Everywhere. This very night they will be beating themselves in Baghdad, and every night until the tenth day of Muharram."

" Where can I see this? " I asked him.

" It would not be advisable," he replied with a solemn shake of his head; and at this moment the car in which we were driving pulled up in front of the main gate of the mosque.

We stepped into an atmosphere of hostility that would have penetrated a tank.  Only a nice-minded English taurist accustomed to the kindly ways of Tunbridge Wells or Harrogate might have remained unconscious of the dull, blistering animosity. The glances cast at my European clothes were like a blight. Whatever I did, or wherever I moved, those same resentful eyes followed. I began to feel personally responsible for the death of Husein, which I noticed was commemorated by immense black funeral cloths fixed to the outside wall of the mosque.

The great gateway, towering to a height of about fifty feet, is covered with glazed tiles of pink and turquoise-blue arabesque, and across each of the seven gateways hangs a chain that falls from the centre and is caught up in two graceful loops on either side.

Framed in these gates, we saw a wide open space, beautifully paved: porticoes, ablution tanks, and the sanctuary itself, with its tall doors and archways covered with tiles of pink and turquoise-blue flowers. Men were constantly passing in and out of the mosque, touching, as they did so, the chains at the door; for this, I believe, is good for the soul. Most of the pilgrims were rough, unkempt men, some of whom c®unt it a privilege to walk from Afghanistan or India to make a journey which in Shia eyes takes precedence of the Haj to Mecca. I was fascinated by the hot, vindictive eyes and the dazed, fanatical faces, like those of men awakening from some confused dream. These people seemed to live on hate. I said so to the Syrian.

" It is the time of their sorrow," he whispered back.

That I had not exaggerated the feeling of the crowd was proved by the appearance of a policeman with a rifle who earnestly invited us inside the station, saying that from the roof we could have a much better view. We followed him up a rickety stair to a roof of mud and palm wood. Telling us where it was safe to stand, he left us, and we trod like Agag until we reached the parapet, where we gazed down over the two golden mustard-pots and the four golden candlesticks of Kadhimain.

Having looked long enough on the evidence of a wound that is as fresh to-day as it was when Ali died at Kufa over one thousand three hundred years ago, we passed through shabby, dark bazaars, meeting everywhere the glance of curious eyes, and returned to the calmer atmosphere of Baghdad.

I was talking about the Shias to an Englishman staying in the hotel, a man who knew Iraq well. He told me that on the tenth of Muharram, the ancient passion play, which is acted all over India and Persia, takes place in Iraq. The death of Husein is reproduced by actors who apparently leave nothing to the imagination. The climax of the drama is reached when the body of Husein is paraded beneath a blood-spattered sheet.

In A Second Journey through Persia, James Morier gives a description of the play as it was performed at Teheran at the beginning of the last century. He says that the most extraordinary part of the performance was the appearance of the headless martyrs lying in a row on the sand. The actors who played these parts buried themselves until only the head was above ground, while others put their heads underground, leaving their bodies visible. They were arranged so that it looked as though the heads of the buried actors belonged to the apparently decapitated bodies. Members of a profession which is notoriously self-sacrificing will, however, be interested to know that the actors cast for these parts were men fulfilling a penance, and some of them entered so fully into the spirit of it that they sometimes died during the performance.

The crowd became so worked up when Morier saw the play, that the soldiers who slew Husein were stoned from the stage, and he says that so difficult was it to get actors to play these dangerous parts that Russian prisoners were forced to enact them.

I went to sleep that night wondering how I could see the flagellants.
 

§8

I rose early in the morning, and from the flat roof of the hotel watched the sunlight falling over Baghdad. The brown river was running swiftly ; a man in a small, beaked boat, piled with a cargo of thornwood, was coming down with the current;
the first passengers were crossing the Maude Bridge, whose line of mooring-buoys was tilted against the forceful waters; and four miles away, over the line of palm trees, the morning light touched the gold of Kadhimain.

In the hall downstairs, an eager little brown boy was waiting to guide me to the Chaldean Church.

"Are you a Christian? " I asked him, as we set off down Al-Rashid Street.

"Yes, sahib," he said, " and my father and mother, too, and all our relations."

We entered a network of streets, some of them too narrow even for a laden camel, and, passing beneath a gateway, he led me to the steps of a fairly large building. Although it was not yet 7 o'clock, the gaunt church was half full of men, women, and children. A priest was saying Mass before an altar raised on steps above the main level of the church. Two little acolytes, whose movements revealed bare, knobbly knees below white robes and sent my thoughts flying back to Ireland, hovered with book and thurible.

The church was cracked with the heat of Baghdad summers. The blades of electric fans, so large that they looked like aeroplane propellers, hung overhead among the candelabra. Like all Christian churches in the East, the building had collected within its walls a varied and puzzling assembly, not one member of which was distinguished in appearance from his Moslem fellow-townsman in the streets outside. There were Iraqis in European suits, men wearing the Bedouin keffieh, numbers of rough porters—whom I should have put down as Khurds if I had seen them anywhere else—women of all ages, who wore black or purple veils over their heads, and a whole school of boys with satchels on their backs.

The Mass bore a resemblance to the Roman Catholic Mass, though not a word of Latin was spoken. The language was Chaldean, an Aramaic language, dead except for the Chaldean liturgy. It is possibly a survivor of the ancient language of Babylonia, the tongue in which Chaldean astrologers answered Nebuchadnezzar, as described in chapter two of the Book of Daniel. How strange it was to hear those guttural accents, born of a dead world, which may once have been spolen on the smoking summits of the ziggurats of Baal, and uttered now in the mystery of the Christian Mass.

There was a beautiful moment when the " kiss of peace," which has long since been discontinued in its literal form in the West, was given by the priest to the two acolytes. With hands fresh from the chalice, he touched the hands of the boys, who came running down the altar steps to touch the hands that were everywhere stretched out towards them. I was at the end of a pew, and one of the boys cupped my hand between his palms and passed on quickly. My neighbour, a big, rough man clothed mostly in rags, a man whom I should have avoided in any dark lane, turned to me with his hands ready to accept the " kiss," then noticing that I was a foreigner, he did not know what to do, and faltered, dropping his arms. I offered my hands to him with the " kiss of peace " still fresh on them; and the man, with a smile of gratitude which was a beautiful thing to see on that hard face, touched my hands with his and passed the blessing along the line.

I sat there while the candles were put out, with the knowledge that this Chaldean church, in which I had not understood one word of the service, was yet the only place in Iraq where I was at home, at ease and off my guard. It was Christian, and it belonged to the civilisation which had created the world I knew. Nothing was really strange to me in this place, or alien or unfriendly. I may not have known the language of the sacrifice, but I knew the sacrifice. I may not. have known the names of the Eastern saints whose pictures hung on the walls, but I knew of other saints like them.

Seeing me sitting there, the priest came down and hesitantly spoke to me in English. I was a stranger in Baghdad ? Would I care to go with him to the patriarchate behind the church and drink a cup of coffee? I followed him gladly, pearer to him in spirit and in friendship than I could ever be to a Moslem, no matter how long or how well I might know him.

We entered a long, simply furnished room, whose only decoration was a picture of the Chaldean Patriarch in his crown and vestments. A huge pectoral cross was almost lost among the white hairs of his beard. The priest went out and returned with another, a dark, bearded man, who spoke excellent English.

" I know England," he said, " I have not long been back from your country."
" What part do you know ? " I asked.
" Farnham, in Surrey," he replied. " I have been there at a monastery of Benedictine monks."

It was strange to sit in this room in Baghdad, talking about Farnham with two swarthy priests whose faces were like those of Assyrian kings. Did he ever hear anyone in Farnham speak of Cobbett. No, he replied gravely. Was he a bishop ? No, I said, with equal gravity, Gobbett was not a bishop.

Then we talked of Baghdad and the Chaldean Church, and the unhappy Nestorian Church, of which it was once a part. The Nestorian Church is now called, most confusingly, the Assyrian Church. The Chaldean Church broke away from the Nestorians in the sixteenth century, and became united with the Church of Rome. For three centuries, with the exception of lapses now and then, their church has been in communion with Rome.

We spoke with sorrow of the terrible misfortunes of the Nestorian (Assyrian) Church and of the splendour of its early days, when its missionaries carried the Christian Faith into China.

" It is like an army," he said, " worn out and scattered after many great battles."

We talked of the Chaldean Patriarch, whose splendid title is "Patriarch of Babylon"

Promising to revisit them, I said good-bye, but they insisted on leading me through the tangle of lanes: three men in black, with melon-shaped turbans of black satin on their heads; and the faces beneath, the long, straight noses, the pallid sallowness, and the ebony-black beards, reminded me of the copper head of an Assyrian king in the museum at Baghdad. Although this king lived two centuries before Christ and dressed his beard in a thousand little separate scented curls, his face has come down unchanged through twenty-one centuries to the Chaldean priests of Baghdad.
 

§9

I was fortunate enough to meet many members of the Chaldean Church, who kindly invited me to their homes. They showed me the flat roofs on which they sleep in summer, and the cool cellars—serdabs—some fitted with punkas, in which they live, lizard-like, during the heat of August.

To all these people I confided my desire to see the Shia flagellants, and at last one man said that he had a friend from whose house we might see them pass at night from one mosque to another. He promised to call for me at eight o'clock that evening, and take me there.

It was dark when we set out, but crowds filled the main street, for Baghdad has contracted the Western habit of aimless night sauntering, the result, probably, of electricity and of a new clerkly class unwearied by physical labour. The small cinema was offering a drama of European life, and as I watched the kind of people who were going to the cheaper seats, some of whom had probably seen no more of the world than the country round Baghdad, I wondered what they would make of it, and if it would do them much harm. Perhaps the bad influence of the cinema at home is exaggerated, because it seems to me that the great virtue of the film is the ease with which it is forgotten by intelligent people. But in the East, and before an adult audience most of whom have never learnt to read, the film is accepted, not as a narcotic or a fairy-tale for grown-ups, but as a literal interpretation of life in Europe; hence its power for good or evil, a power which is not always realised by those responsible for showing films to Eastern audiences.

It was easy, too, to feel ashamed of this poor Western return for The Thousand and One Nights. That we should send these shoddy dreams to Baghdad is one of Time's bitter ironies; yet the cheaper attractions of our civilisation are so infectious that the young men of Baghdad obviously prefer the film to Harun al-Rashid.

Leaving the main street, we walked through narrow lanes in which our steps were hushed. Some alleys were like the Shambles in York. The houses leaned together, thrusting forward their top storeys until only a knife-cut of sky lay overhead; and the lanes meandered so confusingly that they might have been designed by a flock of crazy sheep. After dark something of the mystery of old Baghdad returns to haunt the sleeping alleys of the old city. For the first time I felt that it would be possible to see the Caliph passing on some night adventure, or, glancing up, to see the dwarf, so dear to Eastern story, peeping from behind a lattice.

The men encountered in these lanes were not the capped and collared effendis of the main street: they were silent men who passed with a bat-like scrape of heelless slippers, giving a sidelong glance, as they went by, from the shelter of their head-coverings. Sometimes a long, yearning wail of Turkish gramophone music would sound from beyond a blank wall, and I went on with knowledge of life packed away there, of people sitting together as if in ambush.

My guide halted before one of the blank walls and knocked on a door. We heard the sound of feet descending a flight of stairs, and a voice on the other side asked who it was. The door was opened at once, to reveal not the eunuch, which the street suggested, or the merchant in turban and silk caftan, but a young man in a black coat, a pair of striped trousers, and black patent-leather shoes.

Speaking good English, he led the way up a flight of stone stairs to a room leading off a galleried courtyard. Two divans, upholstered in Persian fabrics and fitted with white antimacassars, faced each other under the unshaded electric bulbs. A few Chinese pictures hung on the walls, and a number of knick-knacks were dotted about on bamboo tables. The most spectacular was a stuffed cobra strangling a mongoose; it stood on a side-table, very realistic and horrible, providing that link with India which I was beginning to look for everywhere in Baghdad.

A smiling, dark girl of about eighteen, wearing a poppy-red dress, rose from the divan where she had been sitting in an attitude of formal expectancy, and shyly shook hands. She was our hostess. Although she had not left school for long, she was too timid to exercise her knowledge of English; but now and then she would contribute the words " yes " or " no " to the conversation, which we greeted with polite applause until she cast down her eyes and turned as red as her dress.

A servant brought in a tray of tea, English biscuits, oranges and sweet limes.

We sat talking of the Shias whom they, as Christians, deplored as dangerous and fanatical persons, and they told me of the physical mortification endured by the sect every year during Muharram. The body-beaters, which we should see passing down the street that night, were the commonest of the flagellants. Every night for ten nights they would march from one mosque to another, beating themselves. There were others who scourged themselves on the back with chains. The most savage mortification was the head-cutting which takes place on the morning of the tenth day of Muharram.

My host had seen this at Najaf and also in Baghdad. He told me that all kinds of people took part in it, but the Turcomans were the most violent performers, sometimes slashing too hard and killing themselves. There were several men in the Government office in which he worked who occasionally got a day's leave to join the head-cutting procession.

I asked my host to tell me how the head-cutting is done. He said that a band of men, who for days have been dwelling on the gory emotionalism they are about to enjoy, would gather at the mosque.

" In Karbala or Najaf," he said, " you can see these men for days whispering to the swords which they carry about in their arms, polishing and sharpening them."

Arriving at the mosque, they form a circle and revolve round a leader, working themselves into a state of emotional excitement by uttering the names of Ali, Hasan, and Husein, until, suddenly, the leader gives a great cry and brings down his sword on his head. As soon as the others see the blood they go mad. With cries and shouts of " Husein! ", " Ali! ", " Hasan! ", they cut their heads until their white robes are stained everywhere with blood.

They then go off together in twos and parade the town, cutting and slashing until the blood falls in the gutter and spurts on the walls of the houses. Spectators, hearing the cries and the sound of the swords on skulls, and seeing the streaming blood, begin to cry and give the mourning wail, and sometimes people who have nothing to do with the orgy lose all control, and pulling out penknives or scissors begin to stab at then-arms and wrists until the blood flows.

While he was describing this, we heard, far off, a dull, rhythmic sound.

"They are coming!" said my host. "We must go up." He led the way up a flight of stairs to a little bedroom overlooking the street. Someone switched on the light, but he turned it off at once, asking if I minded sitting in the dark. It was better, he said, not to attract attention to ourselves. As the room protruded for a yard or so into the lane, sitting in the window was rather like being in a box at a theatre. I could have touched with a cane the head of anyone passing below. The buildings rose dark and mysterious, and the , lane twisted away out of sight, merging itself into another as dark, as narrow, probably as serpentine. The only light came from a booth let into the opposite wall, where an old man sat cross-legged among a chaotic assembly of cigarettes and tobacco. I was aware of something pleasantly adventurous and exciting in sitting concealed in the dark, watching the shrouded figures in the lane below, the customers suddenly appearing in the glow of the booth and going off again into the darkness. At intervals, growing gradually nearer, came a queer sound, as if a thousand nurses, taking their time from the matron, were delivering in rhythmic chastisement a thousand resounding smacks on the posteriors of a thousand children. But as it came nearer, we heard the fierce, grief-stricken background of this sound—the sound of men groaning, dying, and shouting. The noise then became horrible. There came into view, swaying down the lane, the strangest procession I have ever seen. Boys and young men came first, holding banners which, with true Eastern inconsequence, slanted this way and that. Behind them were men bearing on their shoulders the poles of palanquins on which rested boat-shaped clusters of lights. The dark lane now blazed with the moving orange glow of paraffin flares. Behind these lights, eight abreast, came rank after rank of men naked to the waist, the sweat of their austerities clammy on their faces and shining on their brown bodies.   They were like a regiment of half-naked soldiers marching as captives to their doom. Each company was preceded by a leader, and above each company one of the strange, barbaric boats swayed in the smoke and yellow light. The companies halted every few yards and the leaders faced them, crying out: " Husein!" A deep, agonised wail immediately rose from hundreds of voices. " Hasan! "  Another wail.  Then, in a rhythmic Arabic chant, the whole company would shout:

" Welcome, 0 Husein,
When you enter Karbala."

At the beat of each word the men lifted their arms in unison and brought them smack against their naked chests. Some chests were bleeding, a revolting sight; others were swollen with weals which would soon become wounds; and as they beat themselves, their eyes gazed fixedly ahead from faces pale and terrible in the torchlight, like the faces of martyrs on their way to the stake.

Their soldierly bearing, the perfect rhythm of their arms, the timed responses, their implicit obedience to their leaders, were a contrast to the disorder of the dipping banners and swaying boats. These breast-beaters were like men transfigured in some sorrowful dream, and in their fanatical eyes was something of the anguish of Husein, parched and wounded on the plain of Karbala.

As I looked at these hundreds effaces, men old and young, men with hairy chests of bulls, men smooth and slender, men with beards, and others with the clean-shaven faces of boys, I wondered why human beings behave like this for the good of their souls, and from what dark jungle of antiquity had such spectacles their beginning.

Surely this beating of the body, and the cutting with knives, was the sight that Elijah saw on Carmel, when the priests of Baal " cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them." A writer of one of the books of the Old Testament might have called this strange, savage sorrow for the death of Husein one of the last sins of Babylon. As I looked at the faces and wounded bodies, and the sailing tabernacles of light, I felt that I was watching something which had happened long ago in this country, when the altars of Baal and Ashtoreth were smoking on the ziggurats.

About a thousand men passed by, and the sight of their reddened torsos and the sound of their chant became monotonous, for each group was in every way like its predecessor. Now and again an added vigour was given to the breast-beating when women standing in the street or gazing from behind latticed windows would set up the twittering funeral cry, and at the sound men would beat themselves with renewed frenzy.

The last group disappeared down the lane, and I felt that never in my life should I forget the " lil-hala, lil-hala " of their wailing chant, which had sung itself into my brain. I rose to go. My host switched on the light and said that it would not be wise to venture into the streets until the Shias had reached their mosque.
Those kind people produced more tea, more biscuits and sweet limes; and with the clock nearly at midnight, I went through the now silent lanes back to my bed.