Digging for Ancient Treasures: Agatha in the Middle East
It’s easy to picture Agatha Christie Agatha Christieat Greenway House, sitting in the morning room, planning a Hercule Poirot mystery while drinking tea. But there’s another side to Agatha Christie that might surprise you. This English woman spent many seasons in the deserts of the Middle East with her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. Christie writes with humor and affection about their adventures among the ancient ruins in her 1946 memoir, Come, Tell Me How You Live.
In 1928, after her divorce from Archie Christie, Agatha boarded the Orient Express and headed to Baghdad. Little did she know that this exotic trip would lead to two lifelong love stories: one with the man who would soon become her best friend and second husband, and the other with the enchanting land that would serve as the setting for several of her mysteries. The following anecdotes offer a light-hearted glimpse of life in the Middle East as Agatha Christie and Max Mallowan go about their work of writing mysteries and excavating tells, respectively.
“A most agreeable person and a pleasing prospect.”—Max Mallowan
The couple met during her second trip to the Middle East. He was an assistant to archaeologist Leonard Woolley, who was excavating near the biblical city of Ur. At the end of that season, Woolley’s wife Katharine arranged for Max to give Agatha a tour of the countryside. When their vehicle got stuck in the sand in an isolated desert spot, Agatha made the best of the situation by napping in the shade of the car until help arrived. Impressed by her willingness to accept life as it came, Max realized at that moment that he wanted Agatha to be his wife. After a short courtship, they married in Scotland on September 11, 1930.
“Once you are asleep, none of these things will worry you.”—Max Mallowan
On to Syria. Agatha describes her first night in their newly rented adobe in Amuda as an experience she would never forget. She and Max arrived to find their home still occupied by its previous residents—men, women, children, and livestock. After much heated discussion, crowds of people and animals fled from the courtyard. The house also had not been repaired as arranged. Unable to fix the situation, they decided to leave it until the next morning and settled in for a restless night.
Waking to the sound of a mouse nibbling her hair, Agatha turned on the light only to see the wall moving. Upon closer inspection, she realized that cockroaches had covered the walls. Max suggested that if she went back to sleep, she wouldn’t notice their marauding roommates. Being a good sport, Agatha followed his advice, only to be awakened by a second mouse dancing across her face. In a rare display of temperament, she threatened to return to England. Max dragged their beds out to the courtyard, and they spent the rest of the night under the stars. The next morning, Max instructed his foreman, Hamoudi, to hire an exterminator. A rented cat was brought in, and within a few hours, the house was free of pests.
“Michael murmurs that a mule will be very expensive.”—Agatha Christie
One of Agatha’s favorite staff members was their bookkeeper, Michael. He had an uncanny ability to remember accounts in his head, never making a mistake with the books. Michael was also a master negotiator; his main priority in any purchase was economy. Agatha sent him to buy a mule to carry supplies to the dig site. Michael returned with a very economical purchase—an old woman. True, she was not a mule, but she was strong, willing to work, and the price was too good to pass up.
“Your Khatun’s white powder was a worker of marvels last season!”—Abu Suleiman
The Sheikh, who owned the property where their excavation house was built near the Chagar Bazar dig site, noticed Agatha working on a crossword puzzle. He asked Max if his wife’s knowledge extended to healing women. Having been successful in dispensing headache remedies for pain and boric acid for inflamed eyes to the locals, the author gained a respected reputation as a Khatun (doctor) and a miracle worker. On one occasion, after misunderstanding Agatha’s instructions for bathing the eyes, a woman drank the boric acid mixed with water and soon afterward gave birth to twins. The woman’s husband credited Agatha with blessing him with two strong sons. The Sheikh now wanted her to work her magic with his many wives.
During the years she spent in the Middle East, Agatha Christie wrote more than two dozen mysteries. Her love of desert life is best described in Come, Tell Me How You Live. “These autumn days are some of the most perfect I have ever known,” she wrote. “Here, some five thousand years ago, was the busiest part of the world. Here were the beginnings of civilization, and here, picked by me, this broken fragment of a clay pot, handmade, with a design of dots and cross-hatching in black paint, is the forerunner of the Woolworth cup out of which this very morning I have drunk my tea.” And here in the sand, sun, and heat, Dame Christie wrote some of her best work.