Agatha Christie's Goose

 

I am a great fan of Agatha Christie

and have read all her books including her autobiography more than once. The repeats were more enjoyable than the initial ones.

It is difficult to say which I loved better, her whodunit fictions or social stories (Written under the name ' Mary Westmacott) or the two autobiographical books, one an actual autobiography and the second, a short part of her life when she went to Syria with her second husband, a renowned archeologist Sir Max Mallowan.

This book was called - COME TELL ME HOW YOU LIVE.

He was not knighted at that time  and was just starting his own career in archeology.

He had spent the years prior to that as an apprentice under Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur in Iraq which was thought to be the capital of the Mesopotamian civilization.

Agatha Christie was already famous as the Queen of Mystery, all her crime thrillers having become best sellers, exceeding the sales of The Bible.

They met each other at Ur where Max was working as a man of all jobs and was assigned to show Agatha around the place.

They got married in 1930.

The fact that she was 14 years older than him did not deter Max, though Agatha was apprehensive about it initially.

Thia book was a short account of her life at the archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria where Max worked, digging the mounds or Tells as they were called.

The first digging expedition was in Iraq at a place called Arpachiyah in 1933.

A change in the 'Iraq Antiquities Law', ceased the sharing of the recovered antiquities between Iraq and the museums that sponsored the excavation and so they had to leave Iraq.

They moved to Syria and worked there from 1935 to 1937 maybe with a few breaks in between, at Chagar Bazar, Tell Brak and Balik valley, which were somewhere in  north eastern Syria.

The results of these studies could not be published at once because of World War 2.

After the war Max was appointed Director of the British School of Archeology in Iraq, and they were able to  resume work in Iraq in 1947.

The book was not about archeology or the historical details.

It was more about the daily  happenings in the camp and the lives of the men and women who worked in the Tell.

The workers were from the surrounding native villages.

They worked in the Tell, and some of them were employed in the house, for cooking and house keeping.

I remember with clarity some of her observations.

Men and women came to work from places as far as twenty miles from the site.

They arrived at sunrise and left at sunset, by foot.

One day Max and his team conducted a competition of sorts in sports, for the workers, and it comprised mostly of track events like running races.

At the end of the day when everything was over and the prizes distributed... the workers  as cheerfully and briskly ran back the twenty miles with no sign of tiredness or a sense of overwhelm.

Agatha had admired the simplicity of the whole thing ..and I admire it too.

Finish your work and run back home... how cool can that be!

And imagine the physical fitness!

The camp had a moderate sized mud brick house built for the crew members, containing a kitchen, a few bedrooms and a courtyard.

They had their own livestock, so to say ...maybe a few chickens and geese, which were used up regularly for meat....

One goose had developed a habit of coming into the house and peeping into everyone's room as if to say Hello!

She used to peep into Agatha's bath now and then and soon became a routine in the house hold.

One day she did not turn up, and on enquiry, it came to be known that she had been killed for dinner. 

'It was a shock to the crew and no one felt like eating that day'... was what Agatha had written.

The mood that night was sober and sad.

I am wondering why she and the crew felt that way ... was it because the goose had formed a friendship?

Hsd it become a person - like....?

Looks like it.

All of them were regular meat eaters with no second thoughts about the bird's right to live and yet they felt the act to be gruesome.

 Generally people, other than the occasional philosophers and thinkers, had no thoughts or awareness about the sentience and rights of animals those days.

I dare say Agatha was a thinker herself but her thoughts were on different lines.

So what was it that made them feel that the act of killing the goose was not the done thing?

The goose was same as all others except that it had developed a friendship with the people.

IMO it shows the personality of the goose as an individual, which had impressed itself on them, and that was the reason for the crews' shock and sadness.

I may add on my own that all the other geese there would have had a personality each, which they might have understood had they observed them a little on a daily basis.