The Mule on the Minaret (69 page)

This was more the kind of thing that Reid had wanted to hear; or rather it was on an issue of this kind that he wanted to hear Hassun's opinion.

‘Is that why you were ready to back Rashid Ali?' he asked.

‘That is one of the reasons. Feisal and his family either did not realize that they had been fooled by you, in which case they were stupid; or admitted the fact that they had been betrayed and accepted their servitude, which was base in them. Feisal in his time and Abdul Illa now in his are lackeys of your economic policies. You in Britain want our oil, you keep your lackeys in power, with your arms and money. That is why we hate Abdul Illa. That is why we hate Nuri Said.'

‘How do you feel about the young king?'

‘He will always be his uncle's puppet. There will be no health in this country as long as it is run by the Hashimites.'

‘Do many Iraqis share your views?'

‘More and more are coming to.'

‘I can understand your dislike of the English. I do not see why you should prefer the Germans. It was because of the Germans that Turkey was involved in the First War.'

‘That was not the Germans' fault. The Turkish leaders were incompetent. They followed what they believed to be their own interests; to their own disaster and their own country's.'

‘Do you think if Germany had won the First War and the Ottoman Empire had survived, you would be better off here in Iraq now?'

‘We would not have an alien Jewish state imposed upon the Arab world.'

Now, thought Reid, now at last we're reaching something.

‘You think that the creation of Palestine was a great mistake?' he asked.

‘It was more than a mistake. It was a crime. In the Ottoman days less than ten per cent of the population there was Jewish. It was a small minority, and it lived there happily, as the small Jewish minority lived happily here in Baghdad. But when you turn a minority into a majority, when you impose on the Arabs a completely alien race with a different religion, with different standards, with a different way of living, the two cannot live together side by side. Would you like it if the Americans who in this war are saving you from the Germans decided that as part of their recompense, your county of Cornwall should be turned into an independent Jewish state as a step towards the solution of the Jewish Problem?'

Reid did not answer that. There was no answer to it. And anyhow the analogy was false.

‘Would you in the last analysis,' he asked, ‘consider that it was Hitler's anti-Semitism that made you want the Germans to win the war?'

Hassun pondered that question. Then he nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose in the last analysis I should.'

‘But you can't approve of what he is doing now—with his mass murder in the concentration camps?'

There was a pause: then suddenly there came into Hassun's face an expression that once or twice already he had noticed in Arab eyes and on Arab lips. It was a smile, curiously compounded of humour, innocence and malice: there was something furtive in it and something brazen. ‘There is an Arab proverb,' he said.' “To kill one's neighbour is a crime, but the destruction of an entire people is a thing to be considered.” '

It was three months later; Operation Wireless Set was about to be wound up. Shabibi and Captain Barroud had been cross-examined. The interrogation had produced very little. Hassun had been released. Reid had decided to devote a special summary to the case. He wanted to keep separate the various issues it had raised; there had been the rival claims of Farrar's deception programme and his own security programme. He set out the claims of each side, dispassionately, as a chairman would. He then set out the concrete results that had been obtained from Cairo's acceptance of his own point of view. He explained why Forester was satisfied with the results of the whole operation. Finally he tabulated Hassun's reasons for having accepted the German proposition. This he regarded as the most important part of the whole summary because it explained why there was so strong a feeling in Iraq against both the British and the Hashimite dynasty which British bayonets had placed and maintained in power. The summary would have a very small distribution list, but it would reach the British Embassy: it would be registered in the Chancery files. It might contain nothing of which the Embassy was not perfectly aware already. But on the other hand, it might co-ordinate a number of separate, well-known facts in a sufficiently challenging form to attract attention. It might be, if the dark days came as he was beginning to fear they might, that someone turning up this report would understand the better how they had come about and so be put on guard against their consequences. His merit as a historian lay, he knew, in his ability to arrange and co-ordinate stray
facts so that the reader could discern a pattern in the succession of seemingly irrelevant events that comprised the sum of day-to-day existence. As he read over the final proof of his report, he felt that here was his main, perhaps his only contribution if not to the war effort, at least to the confusion that would follow afterwards. This was the justification of his three years in the Middle East, and as he put his signature at the foot, he felt that his own work, as a soldier, had really ended here. What followed would be supplementary; he remembered reading an essay by a novelist on the technique of fiction, that had argued that the climax of a novel should come four-fifths of the way through its length; with the last fifth constituting a rounding off. This for him was that peak moment. The war in Europe could scarcely last another year; the Second Front was open and the Germans were in full retreat. The Russians were pouring westward. The Middle East had been a backwater for several months; there would soon be no need for Paiforce to supply aid to Russia. The Centre would concentrate on political security, protecting British economic interests. He would be working at half pressure; twice as hard as he had worked as a staff captain in the Ministry of Mines, but with nothing like the concentrated energy he had expended during his year in Beirut, and his two years here. It should be a rather pleasant time; a time for reflection, for planning out his future. In a year's time he would have to make decisions but there was nothing he could do about that now. His personal life was in as much of a backwater as the Middle East itself. It was agreeable to speculate on the various possibilities that awaited him, with the world lying all before him where to choose. So he brooded, as he sat at his desk, waiting for his report to come back from the typist's room.

Next morning's mail brought him an airgraph from his lawyer, Jenkins.

‘You may not have heard, I myself only heard last week, that Rachel's American has been killed in action. I also learnt that he had left a trust fund for her children. I suspect it will be quite a substantial sum; two-thirds of his estate; the remainder to be divided between his fraternity in Harvard and something in New York called the Century Association, whatever that may be. Rachel, with her own money and the use of the children's money till they come of age, will be very comfortably off. So no new responsibilities will devolve on you. Rather chivalrous of that American, don't you think? Your decree absolute, by the way, is due next month.

‘I suppose that you will be coming home quite soon. You are well out of London at this moment. Every month it becomes a more Scudderish war. These V.I bombs have ceased to be amusing. Did you ever meet Sir Francis Faversham; an old friend of mine? He was in the Savoy Chapel when it was hit. Oddly enough the last time I saw him was the morning when Rachel's American came round to see me.

‘Well, see you soon. Make the most of your flesh pots. There's precious little to eat here and not much to drink. The Athenaeum has taken its champagne off the wine list and is keeping it for the victory dinner to Eisenhower. You may cash in on that. Good luck.'

Rather chivalrous of that American. It was more than chivalrous, it was highly sensitive. He was thinking of Rachel imaginatively. If he were killed and she remarried, her husband might have had qualms about enjoying money left to her by a lover, but he would have no qualms about being spared the support of another man's children. Rachel's American must have been a pretty decent fellow. ‘Poor Rachel,' he thought, ‘poor, poor Rachel.' He had no doubt whatever of what he had to do. He wrote out two cables:

One to Jenkins: CANCEL APPLICATION DECREE ABSOLUTE.

The other to Rachel: DEEPEST SYMPATHY YOUR GRIEF. I EXPECT TO RETURN NEXT SUMMER. LET US START AGAIN WHERE WE LEFT OFF IN SEPTEMBER 1941.

‘M.E.F. Men England Forgot.' Stallard was to prove a good prophet during the long slow passing autumn of 1944 and the winter of 1945. The war was not ending as suddenly as it had begun. The check at Arnheim was followed by the Battle of the Bulge. In Europe it was a cold bleak winter; the patience of the English had reached breaking point. Another winter of the blackout, of food shortages, of restrictions. They had been so certain it would end that summer. The men in the Middle East, well fed and warm and sex-starved, felt the mounting irritation in the airgraphs that now poured through in such a steady flow; no one was bothering about
them,
they thought; they were all restless and discontented, except those who had achieved a kind of bland ‘sand-happiness.' There were quite a few of these in Paiforce. They admitted they were ‘round the bend.' They diagnosed their complaint as ‘Paiforcitis.' While the Americans in the south, working on Aid to Russia, in their own Persian Gulf Command, said that P.G.C. stood for People Going Crazy. Reid knew that his main job now was maintenance of morale among his staff: of keeping spirits high; of convincing his officers and men that their work was of value.

In August, when the strain of the long summer was at its keenest, when autumn was still a long way off and tempers right through the Command were getting frayed, he assembled the entire Centre in the cool of the evening, on the terrace of the mess. ‘There are meetings like this,' he said, ‘going on all over Paiforce. Your friends will have told you of them. We are all of us getting
homesick; we have been here, most of us, a long time. We are asking why we are still kept on here, when the war in the area is over. We are all “browned off” and commanding officers have been instructed to explain to their units why their presence here continues to be important. You've heard about those meetings; so have I. The men have listened respectfully, as good soldiers should, but they have gone away grumbling: “That's all bull,” they've said. “We aren't doing any good here. We're only here because there aren't any spare ships to take us back and everyone's forgotten all about us.” I can understand how they can feel that, in a regiment, let us say, that was withdrawn from the Western Desert two years ago to meet a drive through the Caucasus, and ever since, while their friends have been charging across Africa and then sweeping over Europe, have done nothing but change billets and go on manoeuvres that seem pointless because they aren't in training for a battle. Who can be surprised if they are “browned off”?

‘But we luckily aren't in that position. We are not soldiers in the line; we are chairborne warriors and our work is every bit as important now as it was a year ago. We are still responsible for the security of Iraq. That security is of great importance to Great Britain. The scale of prosperity that we enjoy in Britain is going to depend after the war on the money that is brought to us from abroad. We are a small country that cannot of itself support a high standard of living. That high standard can only be maintained by our investments overseas. We have a very heavy investment in Iraq. That investment is no longer threatened by the Germans, but it is threatened by a number of subversive elements here in this country and on our frontiers. We have to watch those elements and the system of files that we are building up today will be of great value to the guardians of this country's freedom long after you and I have returned to our civilian employments.'

He hoped he had made his point. He had anyhow spoken with conviction. He had believed what he had said, and the conviction in one's voice was more important than the arguments one used.

In the New Year, his name appeared in the Honours List with an O.B.E. Once again he assembled the Centre. ‘This pretty piece of colour on my tunic is due entirely to you,' he said. ‘It is a recognition of the Centre's work. It is given not to me but to the Centre. And I consider it marks an occasion for the Centre to take a holiday. There will be no work on Wednesday after lunch. The
office will be closed except for the duty officer and duty corporal.'

As far as he could see, the Centre was working hard and working happily. Himself, he had a good deal of spare time on his hands. He did not make work for himself, the Centre could function smoothly, scarcely noticing his absence. It was a period of tidying up and rounding off. He went over some of the back files, destroying a number of entries that might be misunderstood by or confuse his successors; conjectures that led into blind alleys, ‘notional characters' that a future staff might endeavour to identify, causing unjust injury to individuals.

He did a certain amount of private reading. He found one of his own books in the British Council Library. He read it with detached curiosity. It dealt with Britain's colonial trade during the Commonwealth. It had been highly praised, and it had involved him in a great deal of research; he had spent many hours in the Record Office. He had consulted every available source of information and it would be, he believed, of value to any serious student of the period. It was a standard authority and it was very dull. Was it necessary, he now asked himself, to concentrate upon a short period, following every side path? Would it not have been more interesting to have worked on a broad canvas with large strokes, taking a philosophical view of history, showing the interdependence of events? A comprehensive account, for instance, of British trade in the eighteenth century showing how the claims of the East India Company dovetailed with and were on occasions in conflict with the demands of the West Indian sugar planters. He wondered whether for that kind of book, for someone like himself, so much preliminary research was needed. Why not write straight ahead out of his memory, out of the reference books that lay immediately to hand, and when he had finished his first draft, check up on doubtful points and fill in gaps? It was a possible solution. He remembered how he had compared Nigel Farrar's summaries with his own. He must get more life into his histories. So he brooded as the German forces broke and the Russians swept into Austria.