MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOISON IWAS lunching yesterday with a friend who had just obtained an appointment in Iraq. He told me that he was leaving England on Saturday and would be in Baghdad by Sunday night. He pulled out his pocket-book and showed me the time- table. There it was: =Leave London L.T. 0925: arrive Baghdad L.T. 1720." I was impressed by this evidence that the great air:lines of the world should feel such confidence in the precision of their services that they can state the time of depar- ture and arrival down to the exact minute, as if they were fore- casting a train- from London to Hayward's Heath. My own experiences when air-borne have been more elastic: there was no 0925 about the start, but a long wait in an armchair while the electric clock jerked round its dial ; there was no 1720, LT. or other, about the arrival, since it remained for long tincertain whether one was to reach the end tomorrow or the morning after. I have not indulged in air-travel since the war, and it may well be that today one really does leave and arrive to the exact minute ; that is assuredly a miraculous advance, when one con- siders the varieties of tempest which the aviator has to combat or avoid. It may really turn out that my friend leaves this island on the day and at the hour and minute printed on his way-bill, and that at the exact time thereon recorded he will, in fact, descend upon the airfield at Baghdad, passing from the damp greyness of Heath Row to the green Mesopotamian strip, as it were, between a sunset and a dawn. "The last time," I said to him, "that I did that journey it took me six weeks." "How do you mean," be asked me, "that it took you six weeks ? " It was an unwise question on his part, since he might have foreseen that it would liberate a travel-story, perhaps the most boring of all monologues. But, since he had asked for it, I grasped the opportunity ; leaning back with eyes half-closed in delicious reminiscence, I proceeded to tell him how it came that I had taken six weeks to travel from Victoria. Station to Baghdad.
* * * *•- It was almost exactly at this time of year. I started by recalling how, as the train sped through Kent on its way to Dover, such leaves as remained on the beech-trees were devoid of colour. Warming to my theme, I described the Channel passage, the jerks and jars as the great train swung round the ceinture in Paris, the dining-car of the Orient Express, the early light on Lake Maggiore, the momentary glimpses of Venice, Duino and Miramar, the harbonr at Trieste. How curious it is that, when once one starts upon a narrative of reminiscence, the forgotten corners of memory flash out of the darkness as the torch travels round, revealing here a large palm in a purple pat under the staircase of a hotel, and there the expression on the face of the liner's chef as he enters, bearing a dish containing pheasants with their feathers displayed in the Veronese manner all around them, and four decapitated heads staring out from the parsley- with indignant eyes. How curious it is also that even the most unselfish person will become egoistic once- he begins to recall the memories of the past ; it is interesting to him that he should, in fact, be able to remember the exact aspect of the palm in the purple jar ; it can have no interest at all to those whom he is addressing, and who do not share with him the small triumph of so precise an evocation. Even so do people who write poems or autobiographies devote whole sections to telling us about their nursery lives, not because they suppose that such themes can be of any interest to the reader, but because it provides them with personal satisfaction to delve and paddle in their own age of innocence.
* * * * I thus continued to recount my travel-tale, indifferent to the lassitude that was already creeping over the features of my guest. There was the journey down the Adriatic ; the strange manner in which the houses and hotels upon the quay at Alexandria rise abruptly to meet one from the sea ; the happy days and nights in Cairo ; the expedition to Burg el Arab ; the splendour of Lord Lloyd. There followed the, to me, moving night journey to Jerusalem ; the line of lit windows in the dining-car waiting for us at El Kantara as under the warm December, stars we crossed in the ferry the then peaceful Canal. It occurs occa- sionally that some combination of the space-time factor induces a suspension of continuity, when an hour passed at some small station, on a hot southern night, acquires a significance that transcends the actual experience and hangs detached in the galleries of the brain. There is no reason at all why that hour of waiting at El Kantara Station should remain as some isolated phenomenon. Nothing happened I experienced no sudden con- version, such as seized upon M. Maurice Barres it Toulouse ; I had no adventure ; I just paced the platform listening to the hoots and pants of the engine as it shunted up the line, listening to the sound of frogs singing songs of passion or anger at the water's edge. A little boy of ten or eleven years pestered me with requests for money. I paid 'him off. I climbed into the train ; at dawn the next day there were the rocks of Judah swing- ing past the carriage windows in a rose-red sun. At Jerusalem my further progress was delayed. The tribes were in rebeffion, and it was considered unsafe to cross the desert by car. I hung about in the Sacred City, glad to be instructed by Sir Ronald Storrs in the problems of future town-planning, the already grow- ing tension between Jew and Arab, and the bewildering intricacies of the Holy Sepulchre. Until the night arrived, when it was decided to make a dash for it ; we swung off over the Jordan on our way to the Euphrates.
* * The driver of my car, who was an Ulsterman and spoke with the lovely accent of his home at Donaghadee, told me how, some months before, he had been "shot up" by Bedouin while travelling between Rutbah Wells and Palmyra. The brigands had shot at the tyres of the car and in so doing had killed the wife of a French archaeologist who was seated beside him as he drove. The cars had been looted, but no further personal injuries were caused. The archaeologist, who was distraught, refused to allow them to bury his wife then and there among the sands of the desert. He insisted that they should take the corpse with them to Damascus, where formal burial would be available with all the blessings of the Church. The car had been damaged by the rifle-bullets, and they were 'unable to progress at a speed of more than ten miles an hour. The other three passengers in the car were Iraqui merchants who were so relieved at having escaped with their lives that they indulged in merriment, telling each other salacious stories which evoked hysterical guffaws. The archaeologist beside them wept in agony as day succeeded day, and the 'sun blazed down upon them and only the nights were cool. My Ulster friend proceeded to give me full details of his experiences during those five days. It was about here that it happened," he said, as we dashed onwards under the moon.
The attention of the friend to whom on Thursday I told this story had not been unwavering. "And what did you all do," he asked, "when you finally got to Palmyra ? " Evidently it is a mistake to tell any travel stories except to oneself. I should not have done so had I not known that within a few hours my guesi would rise from the surface of the earth and be carried in an armchair above Sussex, Avignon, St. Tropez, Elba, Reggio, Brumana and the place where the French lady was so tragically done to death. "When did all this happen ? "he asked me. To me it seemed but yesterday, but in fact it was twenty-five years ago. The little boy On the platform of El Kantara must now be thirty-six, with a large family and passionate political convictions. And my guest, puffing plumply at his cigar, was at the time only two years old. I wished then that I had not told the story.
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