Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie (1936)

 

Murder in Mesopotamia is another book that came out of Christie's first-hand experience of working on archaeological sites with her husband. The setting of this book is the excavation a large Assyrian city about a day and a half’s journey from Baghdad. The book is narrated by Miss Amy Leatheran, a thirty-two-year-old nurse who had lately been employed by Dr. Leidner, the leader of the expedition.

Dr. Leidner had been worried for some time about his wife, Louise’s, health. She was suffering from ‘fancies’ as well as recurring nervous terrors and as a result the atmosphere at the dig was very tense. Nurse Leatheran was to keep an eye on Louise and help her to feel ‘safe.’
By the time Leatheran had been at the dig for about a week she had an uneasy sense that something really was wrong and that the sense of strain and constraint among the expedition team was genuine.
Hercule Poirot comes on the scene after a murder occurs. It looks like it must have been committed by a member of the expedition team and Poirot expects the murderer will strike again.
We find out much about the various characters’ backgrounds and their relationships with each other as Poirot conducts his investigations. A red herring is thrown in to confuse everything but eventually Poirot brings his investigation to a surprise conclusion.
Apart from the archaeological setting, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as some of her others, e.g. They Came to Baghdad. Nurse Leatheran was a pain, not to mention a lousy nurse - patronising and full of herself, with a bustling attitude of 'Come, come, that's enough of that.' Followed up by a slap on the face. That didn't endear me to her.
As usual, Christie included a nice little twist to reveal the suspect.

Even though this book is not one of my favourites, it held my interest throughout.

A good website for all things Agatha is https://www.agathachristie.com & if you haven't yet read any of her books here are some suggestions: Nine Christie Novels for Newcomers. I'm reading through her books that have a Middle East/Archaeological setting.

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie (1951)

 

‘Outside in Bank Street it was sunny and full of swirling dust and the noises were terrific and varied. There was the persistent honking of motor horns, the cries of vendors of various wares. There were hot disputes between small groups of people who seemed ready to murder each other but were really fast friends; boys and children were selling every type of tree, sweetmeats, oranges and bananas, bath towels, combs, razor blades and other assorted merchandise carried rapidly through the streets on trays. There was also a perpetual and ever renewed sound of throat clearing and spitting, and above it the thin melancholy wail of men conducting donkeys and horses amongst the stream of motors and pedestrians shouting, “Balek — Balek!”

It was eleven o’clock in the morning in the city of Baghdad.’

It is 1950 and everyone is coming to Baghdad.
Mr. Dakin, the undercover head of British Intelligence in Baghdad, is awaiting Henry Carmichael who is returning to Iraq with evidence to back up his fantastic story of an international plot involving a deadly weapon.

‘In substance, it is exactly like the Fifth Column activities at the beginning of the last war, only this time it is on a world-wide scale.’

Dakin’s best and most reliable man has either gone mad or his story is true. Four men with similar features to Carmichael have already been murdered in Persia and Iraq. He didn’t get away unsuspected and the enemy are on his trail. When he enters Baghdad the danger will be even greater.
World leaders hoping to promote peace are coming to Baghdad for a secret summit and Dakin is desperate to have Carmichael’s evidence to present to them.

Meanwhile in London, Victoria Jones, a young Cockney typist just fired from her job, is sitting in a park eating her lunch when Edward, a handsome young man, strikes up a conversation. Victoria, who considers herself an excellent judge of character, is immediately smitten, so much so that when she hears that he is heading to Baghdad the next day to work for a Dr. Rathbone, she decides that somehow, she would get herself to Baghdad.

They Came to Baghdad is one of the few Christie novels that is a spy/political thriller rather than her typical detective novel.
I think her detective novels are better than her spy thrillers but this book was a fun read with a complicated plot full of people who are not what they seem.
It took me a while to figure out that Victoria Jones was the main character. She didn’t seem very promising at first with her tendency to tell elaborate creative lies to make her life more interesting. Her sudden decision that she was in love with a man she’d barely talked to gave all the appearance of an airhead; but she was also generous, courageous and thoroughly optimistic, and she grew on me.

‘She, Victoria Jones, a little London typist, had arrived in Baghdad, had seen a man murdered almost before her eyes, had become a secret agent or something equally melodramatic, and had finally met the man she loved in a tropical garden with palms waving overhead, and in all probability not far from the spot where the original garden of Eden was said to be situated.’

Victoria’s quick wits and inventive qualities are given plenty of scope in Baghdad where she is caught up in a kidnapping and a murder and manages to talk her way into working at an archaeological dig by posing as an anthropologist. Through it all she matures and learns some truths about human nature while keeping her inherent optimism and revealing her true mettle.

‘Surely those were the things that mattered — the little every day things, the family to be cooked for, the four walls that enclosed the home, the one or two cherished possessions…
Humility is what keeps you sane and a human being…’

They Came to Baghdad was a good Christie book to follow on from her autobiographical, Come, Tell Me How You Live, where she recounts her time working and travelling with her archaeologist husband, Max Mallowan, in Syria and other parts of the Middle East.
It also captures a very different Baghdad to that of today, just over 70 years later.

Interesting links:

Mysteries and the Middle East

Agatha Christie in Egypt & the Near East

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (2019) #20 Books Of Summer

Aleppo was a beautiful city before the civil war brought unrest and violence to Syria. The Beekeeper of Aleppo provides a glimpse of this beauty before the civil war swept Syria with violence and destruction.

Nuri was a beekeeper and his wife an artist whose paintings of rural and urban areas of the country won her many awards. They had a three year old son, Sami. Nuri’s cousin, Mustafa, had introduced him to beekeeping and together they ran a profitable business. It was Mustafa who first realised that trouble was brewing and made plans to send his wife and daughter to England while he stayed behind with his teenaged son to see to the bees. 

‘I just can’t abandon the bees, Nuri,’ he said one night, his large hand coming down over his face and his beard, as if he was trying to wipe off the sombre expression he always wore now. ‘The bees are family to us.’

One night vandals destroyed the hives and with all the bees dead, Mustafa was ready to leave Aleppo along with Nuri and his family. But before he could left tragedy struck both families.

Mustafa managed to get out of Syria in time but Afra refused to leave. Trauma had blinded her, physically and mentally, and it took a threat on her husband’s life to awaken her to their danger. 

The political scene had deteriorated so much that men and boys were forced into fighting and leaving the country was fraught with danger.

The story follows Nuri and Afra as they escape via Turkey to Greece and the perils they encounter on the way. They planned to join Mustafa in England but everything was so uncertain and the smugglers they depended upon untrustworthy. Even in Athens there were dangers and it seemed as if they’d never find a safe resting place. Trauma had laid its hand on both man and wife and changed them both. Now they had to learn to know each other again.

Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees and spent time working at a refugee centre in Athens. The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a work of fiction but it grew out of what she saw, heard and felt on the streets and camps in Athens. A letter from the author at the end of the book describes how the idea for the story came to her and the impact her work with refugees made upon her.

Lefteri doesn’t shy away from the reality of civil war, the trauma suffered by refugees and especially the danger to unaccompanied minors in refugee camps, but she doesn’t dwell on it either. I thought this was handled well, giving the reader enough details but not too explicitly. It is a compassionate look at the plight of people caught up in messes not of their own making and the choices made by individuals to either to help or prey upon those who have nowhere else to turn. 

One thing I wasn’t enamoured with was the shifting timeline of the story. This seems to be a common device of modern authors but it doesn’t always work. I thought it was confusing in this case.

A plus - two nice full page maps showing Syria and Nuri and Afra’s journey. If I were a publisher this would be mandatory for any book involving a journey.

In The Steps of the Master by H.V. Morton (1934)

H.V. Morton’s In the Steps of the Master is a wonderful mix of travelogue, history, archaeology, and adventure. He wrote the book in an attempt to express the thoughts and the encounters that a traveller through Palestine ‘with the New Testament in his hands’ would have experienced.

At the time the book was written in 1934, Palestine and the neighbouring territory of Trans-Jordan was administered by Great Britain after they had been taken from the Turks in WWI. The country was divided into provinces headed by Commissioners and under them were the village headmen. A British Inspector General of Police commanded a highly respected police force that was made up of British, Jews and Arabs. 

The country and its way of life had remained remarkably unchanged over the centuries and even the law of the land was a modified form of Ottoman Law. In the time of Christ three official languages were recognised - Latin, Greek and Hebrew. In 1934 the Mandate for Palestine stated that the official languages of Palestine were English, Arabic and Hebrew.

The book begins with the author boarding a boat on the Suez Canal in Egypt. From there he crossed to El Kantara where the railway that was constructed by Allenby’s troops during the War followed an ancient route through Gaza, Lydda, Jaffa, and into the mountains of Judea. 

‘As the train climbs and winds into the hills towards the mountain capital of Jerusalem, you are aware of something fierce and cruel in the air. You have the same feeling in Spain when the train crosses the Sierra de Guadarrama towards the mountain capital of Madrid. But Judea is fiercer than anything in Europe. It us a striped, tigerish country, crouched in the sun, tense with a terrific vitality and sullen and dispassionate with age.’

Morton visited many different places mentioned in the New Testament such as Galilee, the Mount of Olives, Golgotha, Samaria, Bethany, the Dead Sea, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem:

‘My first thought was amazement that Jerusalem should ever have been built. A more unlikely place for a famous city cannot be imagined...There is a splendid defiance about the situation of Jerusalem, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that no people who did not believe themselves to be in the special care of God would have dared to have built a city in defiance of all the laws of prudence.’

Everywhere he went he saw around him people unconsciously illustrating the Bible and he often delved into aspects of the Bible that a person who had never been to Palestine would overlook. From his travelling experiences he was able to make interesting connections and comparisons. For example, having seen the ruins of Ypres after WWI he likened them to what the Christians would have faced upon their return to Jerusalem after the siege of Titus in 70 A.D. 

Herod the Great, Saladin, the Emperor Julian, Pontius Pilate, Tiberias, and the Crusades, besides many other lesser known people and events, were vividly described. Lady Hester Stanhope was one of these. She makes an appearance in Alexander Kinglake’s Eothen and Morton gives us a sympathetic cameo of her life and her tragic end.

The artist William Holman Hunt also gets a mention. He painted one of his best known paintings, The Scapegoat, while living in Palestine.

These cultural insights and the exploration of history and archaeology are extremely helpful in understanding the background of the New Testament.

‘The Gospel accounts...are always meticulously accurate.’

‘The hideous instability of mind which the Passover mob shared with all mobs in history is clearly seen in the Gospels when the people one say cried, “Hosanna!” And the next “Crucify Him!”

We are using In the Steps of the Master this year for Geography (Ambleside Online Year 11) but it covers so much more than geography. It is beautifully written and captures Palestine very much like it would have been when at the time of Christ.

The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott (1825)

 

‘All Scott’s work is marked by three characteristics: a genius for enriching the past; a love of Nature; a sturdy humanity. He loved the pomp and pageantry of a bygone age. His imagination lived naturally in the stirring tales of yore. He was a historical novelist by temperament rather than by profession... There have been historical romancers more accurate than Scott in the details of the story, but none so true to the inmost spirit of the age depicted.’ - from the Introduction by Robert Harding 

The Talisman is set in the Levant (the historical name for the region of the Eastern Mediterranean) towards the end of the Third Crusade. In 1187 A.D. Jerusalem was captured by Saladin and the Third Crusade was launched in 1189 to retake the city. The book, a work of historical fiction, focusses on Richard I, the ‘Lionheart,’ Saladin, and a fictitious knight by the name of Sir Kenneth. 

The Crusaders were encamped in the Holy Land and in disarray. The Lionheart was very ill with a fever and partisan politics were threatening the progress of the Crusade. Meanwhile, in the desert of Syria, Sir Kenneth meets a Saracen and after fighting and neither winning, they acknowledge each other’s prowess and continue on their travels together. The Saracen leads Sir Kenneth to the hermit he had been seeking and they then go their own ways. 

There are twists and turns, double identities, misunderstood prophecies and plenty of adventure as the story continues. 

'...the unfortunate Knight of the Leopard, bestowed upon the Arabian physician by King Richard rather as a slave than in any other capacity, was exiled from the camp of the Crusaders, in whose ranks he had so often and so brilliantly distinguished himself. He followed his new master...to the Moorish tents which contained his retinue and his property, with the stupid feelings of one who, fallen from the summit of a precipice and escaping unexpectedly with life, is just able to drag himself from the fatal spot, but without the power of estimating the extent of the damage which he has sustained.'

Scott gets a little theatrical and the chivalry is over the top at times, as you might expect of the writing from this time, but he really brings Richard and Saladin to life. Their characters are realistically portrayed and Edith, one of his main female characters and a relative of the King, is interesting, intelligent and plucky. 

Scott doesn’t glorify the Crusades in any way and Saladin is treated very positively. It was interesting to read Scott’s description of him as I had just finished a chapter in another book, In the Steps of the Master by H.V. Morton, where the author stated that Saladin was ‘...the one enemy of Christendom whose name runs through all the history books as that of a brave and chivalrous foe.’

I have to say that I used the dictionary fairly regularly when I was reading The Talisman! There are quite a few obscure words and although a glossary is provided at the beginning, it looks like it's the original from 1825 and doesn’t include all the words that have gone out of circulation since. 

The Talisman is scheduled as a free read for the Ambleside Online Year 7 curriculum and is a book all my children have enjoyed at some point. A great book to add to your Charlotte Mason high school.

If you enjoyed this post you may subscribe here to receive new content when it is posted.

Come, Tell me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan (1946)

Come, Tell me How You Live, which Christie describes as 'a meandering chronicle' of life on an archaeological dig, is just delightful! I came across this book accidentally when I was looking for some of her crime novels with an archaeological setting.

Agatha Christie met the distinguished young archaeologist, Max Mallowan, in 1930 when she visited Leonard and Katherine Woolley in Baghdad. Her first marriage had come to an end a few years previously and she and Mallowan were married about six months after they met and enjoyed forty-six years together until her death in 1976. During the pre-war years, Agatha accompanied Mallowan on all his digs and took an active part in the photography, recording and preservation of the finds. Come, Tell me How You Live was written to answer a question that was asked of her very often:

'So you dig in Syria, do you? Do tell me all about it. How do you live? In a tent?...'

The book was begun before the war but was put aside for four years while she was engaged in volunteer work in war-time London and Max was serving overseas. In 1944 she picked it up again and said that it was a joy and refreshment to her to live those days again.

'Writing this simple record has been not a task, but a labour of love. Not an escape to something that was, but the bringing into the had work and sorrow of today of something imperishable that one not only had but still has.'

Come, Tell Me How You Live revealed a side of Agatha Christie that I would never have guessed existed. Her warmth, humour and honesty shone through the writing and I felt I got to know her as a person and not a detached narrator. It was such a pleasure to read about her relationship with Mallowan. They obviously were very secure and comfortable with each other. I had to laugh when she describes an 'archaeological packing,' which consists mainly of books. (I can relate to that!) Mallowan asks if she has room in her suitcases and promptly rams two immense tomes on top of her smugly packed clothes and forces down the lid. The next morning...

'At nine a.m. I am, called in as the heavy-weight to sit on Max's bulging suitcases.

'If you can't make them shut,' Max says ungallantly, 'nobody can!'

Max saw everything through an archaeological lens. Seeing a folded printed linen dress in one of Agatha's suitcases he asked what it was and when told commented that it had 'fertility motifs all down the front.' Another time he suggested she wear 'the greenish buff with the Tell Halaf running lozenge pattern.' He described everything in pottery terms - 'pinkish buff,' and was obsessed with Tells.

Agatha continued her crime writing while on the field and found much inspiration for her books in her Middle Eastern travels. One day, one of the expedition team who had newly arrived and was very sociable, interrupted her while she was getting down to the gory details of a murder. He asked if he could join her in the office while he labelled some objects, but she had to be firm:

'I explain clearly that it is quite impossible for me to get on with my dead body if a live body is moving, breathing, and in all probability talking, in the near vicinity.'

Mice, fleas, mechanical breakdowns, fighting workers, eccentric personalities, post office dramas, conniving sheiks, are all a part of life and are described vividly.

'Anointing beds with carbolic merely stimulates the fleas to even greater displays of athletics. It is not, I explain to Mac (a young archaeological assistant), so much the bites of the fleas. It is their tireless energy, their never ending hopping races round and round one's middle that wears one out. Impossible to drop off to sleep when fleas are holding the nightly sports round and round the waist.'

I've shared in a previous post the Archaeological Studies I'd put together for my daughter in which I included some fiction as an added interest and also because she's always hunting for books to read. After reading Christie's memories of her and Mallowan's archaeological expeditions in the Middle East and enjoying it so much, I decided I'd add this to her reading in Year 11.

252 pages.

Linking to the 2020 NonFiction Reading Challenge at Book'd Out: Memoir

Nothing Else Matters by Patricia St John (1919-1993)

Patricia St John has been called 'a poet of forgiveness,' and you don't have to  look any further than the wonderful stories she wrote for young children to understand why. Tanglewood's Secret (1948), Treasures of the Snow (1950), Star of Light (1953) and Rainbow Garden (1960), are just a few of the powerful, engrossing and redemptive books she wrote for children.
I came across them a couple of years after we were married and were visiting my husband's grandparents in New Zealand. I found a few of the author's books in the home library they kept for children's ministry and sat up until the wee hours of quite a few mornings, often in tears, in order to finish them. Patricia St John's books were often based on her own experiences; she knew what redemption was and had the gift to be able to express God's love and forgiveness creatively.
In 1982, the author moved into a more mature readership with the publication of Nothing Else Matters (also published under the title, If You Love Me: A Story of Forgiveness).

This story is set in Lebanon in the mid 1970's during the civil war. After the State of Israel was established, refugee camps were set up by the United Nations as the conflict with the Palestinians spilled over the border into Lebanon. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation grew out of these camps and this resulted in the establishment of military training centres.
There was a brief civil war in 1958, and then in 1975, war broke out again between the Maronite Christians (a strong 'right wing' political party) and the Muslim militia and Palestinians, or 'left wing.'
Nothing Else Matters is the story of a Lebanese Maronite family; Elias, Rosa and their children: 16 year old twins Amin and Lamia; eleven-year old Sami and eight year old Huda. Rosa has a simple and sincere faith but the rest of the family are only nominal Christians. As the life they know disintegrates around them, and hatred rises up in its place, Lamia's struggles with the horrors of the war bring her to a place where she begins to grasp that forgiveness and love are the most important things. Nothing else matters, ultimately.
The story is written in the author's usual simple but powerful style so the reading level isn't difficult,  but the themes are. I know every family feels differently about age appropriateness so here are a few samples from the book that may help you judge whether it's suitable for your situation:

Lamia finds a dead Palestinian woman with her infant lying unhurt beside her underneath her cloak. Taking the child, Moomi, home, Rosa immediately accepts him, but when Elias comes home he is enraged:

'The child of our enemies, and your brother not three weeks dead. I tell you, I will not have this brat in our house.'
'Father, we have lost one brother; let us keep this one.'
His taut nerves gave way and his anger blazed out.
'So! this little bastard can take he place of our brother, can it? You have forgotten him already...be silent, you fool of a girl, or I'll throw him out now, thus minute!'
The church stood like a grey rock jutting from the mountainside, but she did not go in. She had never been in since Amin died, because the pale Christ on the cross, and his mournful faced mother with her eyes uplifted had not answered her prayer any more than any of her bits of wood and plaster. 'I think I'm an atheist now,' she thought rather vaguely, and her deep sense of loneliness increased because it was so terrible to believe that there was no one there at all.

So many of the children had run out of their homes to play and had never come home again.

After an all night bombardment, Elias realised there was no hope for their survival if they stayed in their home. He said to Rosa,

'If there's a lull, we might still get away, unless the car has been stolen or smashed. It was well hidden.'
'Yes, if there is a lull I think we should try and get away in the dark. It's Lamia I worry about the most. She is so beautiful, and they do terrible things to girls.'
'It's not only the girls; you, too, are beautiful. But don't worry. If they come to rape you or Lamia, I shall shoot you both with my own gun, before they shoot me.'
And Lamia, woken by the strangeness of a five minute silence, heard what her father said, and lay marvelling. He would shoot her himself, rather than see her raped or mutilated, and die content, with her. Her silent father had always cared for her and provided for her, but now she knew, for the first time, how deeply he loved her. For love is a strange plant. It may grow unnoticed and unrecognised on the sunny slopes and only break into flower in the valley of the shadow of death.

Writing about an attack by the Palestinians which became known as the 'Battle of the Hotels,' the author wrote:

When it was over, the victors posed for photographs round the headless body of one of their victims, while other bodies were hitched to jeeps and dragged through the streets to celebrate the victory.

In 1978, Patricia St John travelled to Beirut to visit her sister, Hazel, a missionary and teacher who had survived the first three years of the civil war. Hazel had broken her femur in a fall and Patricia spent five weeks with her during her convalescence. Once back home in England, Patricia wrote Nothing Else Matters which was based on the true experiences of a Lebanese family who lived with Hazel after losing their home and belongings in the war.
(See 'Patricia St. John Tells Her Own Story,' 1995).