Life in Baghdad 1929

The house they were to live in was the top floor flat of a large brick-built building called The German Billet. The heat meant that at night they would sleep outside on the stone balcony. Every evening, at dusk, the two houseboys, Saduk and Jaffa, would splash the stone floor of the balcony with water to cool it down before the family and Nancie went to bed under their protective mosquito nets.

Nancie was quite healthy and managed to avoid the worst of the usual ailments such as 'Baghdad Boils' and 'Greenfly Fever', Typhus, Typhoid etc .I think she meant 'Sandfly Fever' which, like Baghdad Boils, is a form of Leishmaniasis when an insect bite introduces parasites into the blood. Serving soldiers in Iraq, today, still suffer from these.  Nancie was amazed, herself, that she didn't catch anything, after the quantity of filthy River Tigris water that she swallowed when Major Holt was teaching her to swim!

While they were out there the young red-haired wife of Dr Woodman died of Typhoid. Nancie and the girls and Mrs Holt had had tea with her only two weeks earlier. Mrs Woodman had been a friend of Nancie's cousin, Daisy Renwick, wife of Professor Renwick of Edinburgh University.

(There's that small world again.)

The Holt Family had their own personal railway carriage, since Major Alex Holt was Chief Engineer of Baghdad Railways. This could be attached to any train and contained living, sleeping and cooking/washing facilities. When they got to their destination they would be unhitched and left in a siding. Nancie didn't like to hear the jackals and other wildlife prowling around outside their 'wagons-lits'. That must have taken her back to the train trip across Canada when she was four.

On one occasion the train took them south, to Diwaniyah, to visit some friends of the Holts, called Dillon. Nancie experienced her first sandstorm while they were staying at the Dillons' house. Without any warning 'everything turned to night and in the seconds it took to close all the windows, everything indoors was covered with a film of sand'. She found it very frightening and couldn't imagine what would have happened had they been outside at the time. 

At the time of their visit a new policy was being introduced on using inmates of the prison to tend the gardens and the fields around the house where they were staying. For every five prisoners there was a guard, armed with a fierce-looking rifle. Nancie found the guards more terrifying than the prisoners!

While she was in Diwaniyah Nancie met an Iraqi lady called Mrs J. J. Raleigh and corresponded with her for many years. This lady had married a British man and had a son by him. He had then left her. Nancie thought he was English or Irish but she later wrote to Nancie back in England, asking her to buy a complete kilt outfit for her son so I suspect she'd married a Scotsman. Nancie had to decline, as highland outfits were as expensive then as they are today.   

Sometimes they went north by train. They once went to Kirkuk where the storks nested on most of the rooftops. They visited the 'Eternal Fires' at Baba Gurgur, which can be seen from Kirkuk. Nancie walked between the knee- high and waist-high flames and tried to stamp them out. (No Health and Safety nonsense in those days!). She thought the ground between them felt very brittle and hollow.  Fed by chemicals in the ground they have been burning for centuries and are reputed to be the fiery furnace into which King Nebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

Another favourite outing was to Ctesiphon, about thirty miles south of Baghdad. There stands the oldest and highest unsupported man-made arch in the world. Even today despite having been partially demolished it is still an impressive sight. Renovations are in progress as I write this in 2015 but back in 1930 it was a most stunning bit of architecture, standing alone in the desert with no other building for many miles.

The German Billet was on the east side of the river where most of the Railway officials lived. To get to the main shopping area Nancie had to cross the Maude Bridge. The main emporium was called 'Orosdibachs'. During the festival of Ramadan they were not allowed to cross the bridge 'because of the unrest amongst the native Baghdadis'. I'm not quite sure whether she means they were celebrating in the streets or what. There was a 'Railways Club' for the people who worked for the railway but the main British Club was on the Baghdad side of the river and was called " Alwiyah".  Gertrude Bell, the famous 'Arabist' who was Chief Assistant to the British High Commissioner, had founded this club a few years earlier. It had a large swimming pool and other facilities.