Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth Read Free Book Online

London.
    Palmer raised his hands, made a gap between them, widened it slightly. “When it comes to empires,” he said, “a few centuries one way or another makes precious little difference. Anyone who excavates in this part of the world is likely to dig down through half a dozen, going back five thousand years at least.”
    “And they all thought they’d last forever,” Patricia said, with an air of stoutly making her point.
    “Only the most optimistic of my fellow countrymen would nurse such a belief at present.” Fahir smiled as he spoke but there was no intention of humor in his words. “We have too many friends, and they all want a piece of us,” he said. “Britain, France, Russia. The sick man of Europe, you call us. A term of contempt. But it also brings contempt on those who use it. What do you do with a man who is sick? Do you help him to get well or do you merely prop him up for long enough to go through his pockets, meanwhile uttering hypocritical expressions of goodwill? Only Germany is a true friend to us, and she has shown this in various ways, one of them the building of this railway.”
    “Another is the training of your army,” the major said.
    “So it is.” Fahir had been a cavalry officer, and he made no secret of the fact that he had completed his training in Germany, where he had also acquired the scar. “Now there is no need for our junior officers to go to Berlin,” he said. “The German instructors are here among us.”
    The major tightened his mouth in a way more protracted than usual. “Britain is a friend to Turkey,” he said. “We are doing everything in our power to safeguard Turkey’s territorial integrity. You only have to look at the settlement signed by our governments last October, scarcely five months ago, when agreement was reached on a whole range of matters, the Baghdad Railway among them.”
    “This whole range of matters were mainly concessions Turkey was obliged to make. As for the railway, you got what you wanted, the right to control the construction from Baghdad to Basra and the right of veto for any extension of the line to the Persian Gulf.”
    “A triumph of diplomacy,” the major said.
    “Some might find other terms for it. Diplomacy works best for those who have the strong cards. You British speak often of the sacrifices you are making for the sake of Turkey. What sacrifice have you made in order to obtain these rights in the railway? You have declared yourselves willing to increase by four percent the duties on goods entering the Ottoman possessions. Such staggering generosity. What other imperial power is obliged to permit foreign nations to determine her customs dues? Major Manning, we Turks do not deceive ourselves. We know we need foreign capital and foreign technical assistance. We know that we have to pay a price for these, that we risk losing control of our possessions in the Near East. We see that the British have designs on Mesopotamia as far as Basra, the French have their eyes on Syria, the Russians are seeking to absorb Armenia. He would be a great fool who did not know these things.”
    A sudden anger had come into his voice with these last words, and Palmer, perhaps feeling himself to blame for having started this dispute, now made an attempt to shift the focus of the conversation. “Of course,” he said, “for an archaeologist only dead empires are interesting, and the longer dead the better.”
    It was not the most tactful of interventions, and it came too late in any case. Somerville was beginning to say something when Manning cut across him. He was looking at Fahir with unconcealed hostility. “That is a gross misrepresentation of my government’s policies,” he said.
    Fahir’s hostility was no less evident, but it came with a slight smile and a pretense of ironic detachment. “Your government’s policies are the same as those of any other government, to protect your interests and extend them where possible by any means