They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online

softly:
    ‘The moment has come. There are preparations made for you?’
    ‘Yes, indeed my plans are set. The hour has come for me to leave.’
    ‘May God make your path straight, and may He lengthen the years of your life.’
    Carmichael gathered his striped skirts about him and went up the slippery stone steps to the wharf above.
    All about him were the usual waterside figures. Small boys, orange-sellers squatting down by their trays of merchandise. Sticky squares of cakes and sweetmeats, trays of bootlaces and cheap combs and pieces of elastic. Contemplative strollers, spitting raucously from time to time, wandering along with their beads clicking in their hands. On the opposite side of the street where the shops were and the banks, busy young effendis walked briskly in European suits of a slightly purplish tinge. There were Europeans, too, English and foreigners. And nowhere was there interest shown, or curiosity, because one amongst fifty or so Arabs had just climbed on to the wharf from a boat.
    Carmichael strolled along very quietly, his eyes taking in the scene with just the right touch of childlike pleasure in his surroundings. Every now and then he hawked and spat, not too violently, just to be in the picture. Twice he blew his nose with his fingers.
    And so, the stranger come to town, he reached the bridge at the top of the canal, and turned over it and passed into the souk.
    Here all was noise and movement. Energetic tribesmen strode along pushing others out of their way – laden donkeys made their way along, their drivers calling out raucously. Balek – balek…Children quarrelled and squealed and ran after Europeans calling hopefully, Baksheesh, madame, Baksheesh. Meskinmeskin…
    Here the produce of the West and the East were equally for sale side by side. Aluminium saucepans, cups and saucers and teapots, hammered copperware, silverwork from Amara, cheap watches, enamel mugs, embroideries and gay patterned rugs from Persia. Brass-bound chests from Kuwait, second-hand coats and trousers and children’s woolly cardigans. Local quilted bedcovers, painted glass lamps, stacks of clay water-jars and pots. All the cheap merchandise of civilization together with the native products.
    All as normal and as usual. After his long sojourn in the wilder spaces, the bustle and confusion seemed strange to Carmichael, but it was all as it should be, he could detect no jarring note, no sign of interest in his presence. And yet, with the instinct of one who has for some years known what it is to be a hunted man, he felt a growing uneasiness – a vague sense of menace. He could detect nothing amiss. No one had looked at him. No one, he was almost sure, was following him or keeping him under observation. Yet he had that indefinable certainty of danger.
    He turned up a narrow dark turning, again to the right, then to the left. Here among the small booths, he came to the opening of a khan, he stepped through the doorway into the court. Various shops were all round it. Carmichael went to one where ferwahs were hanging – the sheepskin coats of the north. He stood there handling them tentatively. The owner of the store was offering coffee to a customer, a tall bearded man of fine presence who wore green round his tar-bush showing him to be a Hajji who had been to Mecca.
    Carmichael stood there fingering the ferwah.
    ‘Besh hadha?’ he asked.
    ‘Seven dinars.’
    ‘Too much.’
    The Hajji said, ‘You will deliver the carpets at my khan?’
    ‘Without fail,’ said the merchant. ‘You start tomorrow?’
    ‘At dawn for Kerbela.’
    ‘It is my city, Kerbela,’ said Carmichael. ‘It is fifteen years now since I have seen the Tomb of the Hussein.’
    ‘It is a holy city,’ said the Hajji.
    The shopkeeper said over his shoulder to Carmichael:
    ‘There are cheaper ferwahs in the inner room.’
    ‘A white ferwah from the north is what I need.’
    ‘I have such a one in the farther room.’
    The merchant indicated the door