Page 56 - The Tigris Expedition

In the Garden of Eden
shade. It was 45°C (113°F) outside the trailer and 70°C inside,
according to the shattered envoy. The three of them were almost
dead by the third day in the customs yard; even the big bamboo
they brought for me had started to burst from the heat and it was
like sitting on a cargo of firecrackers. Then a friendly soul who
spoke English had helped them telephone to the Ministry in
Baghdad, and this had ended the confusion and cleared them and
their cargo from their prison.
As he spoke we were startled several times by violent explosions
around us: the thick bamboo was still drying up and cracking with
the sound of gun-shots^
No wonder the two truck-drivers had hurried home and left the
special envoy to clear the rest of the mess, which he did by dumping
all our comestibles into the great river. The cheese had gone first:
40kg of select Norwegian Cheddar, 24kg Edam, and a variety of
other types estimated to resist modest heat. Leaking cans of liquid
soap and melted butter followed, and assorted smoked meats. He
had barely had time to liquidate 20kg of specially prepared polony
salami when we arrived.
HP sat with a knife shaving the fresh beard of mould off the polony
he had saved, and savoured a piece with delight. In one leap he was
back into the river. Nothing more to be found. We were never to taste
another one like it. But with the one he saved, throughout the
building period, we and all our guests at the resthouse had the best
sandwiches of the sort any of us had ever tasted.
The cans, however, scared even us. They were no longer cylin­
drical, but round like cannon-balls, normally a sure sign of poison­
ous contents. I filled a sack with one can of each kind and sent them
with the envoy by air from Baghdad to Hamburg for a laboratory
test before we would consent to discard all this costly expedition
food. A few days later our entire collection of cannon-balls had
resumed the shape of normal cans; they had merely swollen in the
immense heat. Those poor chaps from Hamburg had been sitting
on top of them while they expanded!
We had to replace all the lost supplies, and shortage of time now
forced me to order shipment by air. The shippers promised this
time to send it to the airport in Baghdad, and inform the
Ministry of the waybill number and hour of arrival, for the Minis­
try had offered to forward it direct to the Garden of Eden by road.
The day of arrival came, the heat was still with us, and the shipment
disappeared. Hamburg confirmed that the food had been sent,
Baghdad airport reported that it had never arrived. After a week of
45