Page 59 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition

Obviously wc had dealt with two different offices in the same
Ministry. Wc had to disentangle this problem.
‘If you build your house now,’ I replied, ‘I cannot build my ship
here afterwards. But if I build my ship now we will sail away and
you can begin building your rooms two months from now.
For a moment the little engineer looked at me in despair, then he
pointed to the top of the palm tree above our heads: ‘Do you see that
date palm? You will find me hanging with a rope around my neck
just up there if I go back before I have done my job!’
We all began to laugh as he capitulated, and as Mr Ramsey had
come with all his luggage I agreed that he could stay in the resthouse
where the easy-going manager gave him a spare bed in his room.
Thus, in a sense, an engineer I had not asked for had half-joined the
expedition as a local consultant whom we should discover we really
needed.
About this time another extremely friendly and polite middle-
aged man turned up, also with his suitcase. Mr Shaker al Turkey,
appointed by the Museum authorities to be my local guide and
liaison officer. This was just when the second shipment of food had
gone astray, so, happy suddenly to have two interpreters, I sent
Shaker to Basra, his own home town, to search for the lost
consignment. No sooner had he left before Baghdad managed to
get through on the phone: the Ministry had learnt that I now had
two interpreters, so Kais was immediately ordered back to the
capital.
Kais hated what he had termed the wilderness and left that same
night. Thus I was left with no interpreter at all when an army of
Arabic-speaking truck drivers and marshmen knocked at my door
next morning. Not even Ali or Mohammed was around. The Arabs
showed me that the road outside was lined with lorries laden sky
high with dry golden berdi. Here they all were, all waiting for me to
explain what to do. I ran and opened the iron gate to the Garden of
Eden where the trench was dug. The lorries could barely pass
between the brick pillars flanking the entrance. I have never seen so
many trucks, trailers and bulldozers as in Iraq; the government
!
imported them by thousands at a time, and when the Mayor of
Quma got orders from Baghdad to help me fetch the berdi from the
banks of the marshes near Al Gassar, he sent a battalion of trucks so
as to have the job done in one day. As they all began their shuttle
operation, I had up to nine lorries at a time around me inside the
narrow fence, trying to get rid of their loads, all blocking the
passage for each other, and in a struggle to get in and out driving

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