Beyond Alexanderplatz

ALFRED DÖBLIN

BABYLONIAN EXILE,

OR, PRIDE GOES BEFORE A FALL

Part Three: Baghdad

Translated by C.D. Godwin

Babylonische Wandrung, oder Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall

first published 1934, when Döblin was in exile,

by Querido Verlag, Amsterdam.

Illustrations by P.L. Urban

https://beyond-alexanderplatz.com

CONTENTS

Part Three: Baghdad

On the way to Baghdad

Methodological observation: a traffic obstruction and its consequences

2nd methodological observation: impractical means for overcoming the mishap

The interconnectedness of earthly things, and finally an end to the waiting

Off they go! Heil us!

Conrad the reluctant penitent’s first greeting to Baghdad! A hymn to human

existence

First little stroll

Encounter with Jews

Of a hotel, and bedbugs, of which Baghdad has none

Surprise! A third Babylonian!

Two servants with differing views of their master

Babylonian superiority is to be buttressed by tuition, a difficult manoeuvre. The first

lesson

A shock! They don’t understand his Babylonian, and amuse themselves with tales of

their Persian homeland

2nd Babylonian lesson. The old man brings out the big guns, the pupils come off

badly

A new teacher is sought. We present: Nadji the tippler

First session with the new tutor. A run-up, anyway

Nadji expresses astonishment in a variety of ways at the foreigners’ intention to

learn Babylonian, of all things

Nadji’s stream of wisdom is stopped by a tremendous revelation from the foreigners:

they seek buried treasure

Hopeful progress of preparations for tuition. An excavation contract is drafted

The tutorial takes place, but the world proves yet again to be a lamentable place

Minor postlude and Conrad’s proud decision: straight back to Babylon!

The camel, its origins, its uses and its opinions

Conrad asks the oracle about himself

How Conrad responds to the oracle, and how he nevertheless mounts her hump and

rides off to Babylon

It’s all up with the heroic plans. Tears well up, the Earth has me again

Criminal activities of Waldemar, the old softy.

The dead grey nag drives them out of Baghdad

57

PART THREE

BAGHDAD

The Babylonian party, soon grown to three – they can only be described

as a pack of rogues – slogs through with thievery, deception and

begging, first in Baghdad, a city located today in Iraq with 150,000

inhabitants of whom 90,000 are Muslims, 50,000 Jews and 10,000

Christians.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

58

On the way to Baghdad

The lorry drove fast. It banged about terribly, motors can be well or badly sprung,

highways can be smooth or potholed, and the holes can be of varying depths, they may

be abyssally deep, they may go down to the very centre of the Earth and only good

fortune can bring you back into the light.

A canvas sheet was stretched over them as shelter from the rain. The passengers

were constantly flung against it. Those sitting at the back also breathed exhaust fumes,

which told them this was no simple cart but one whose motive force was provided by

an engine; like a living being it sucked in petrol at the front and emitted a stink behind,

and in between acted like a lunatic. The whole thing was comprehensible from the

point of view of Nature, but for humans scarcely to be borne.

During a pause in the endless jolting Conrad tried to start some small talk with

George: “”How is it,” he asked, “that we are travelling here in this manner? We’ve been

going a considerable time and I can predict what is to come. Even now I believe I can

understand – oh, this road! – how life on Earth plays out in these new times. I confess

to being totally uninterested in the matter. Come, let us wind up the business.”

“How?”

“What we want, George, instead of travelling like this and enduring all this which I

never had to endure before, motoring in this land of Mesopotamia, is to fly back up to

where we came from.”

“Ah my good man. Heaven preserve your innocence. Here you are complaining of a

little jolting. You’ll be facing other things soon enough. You can’t work off a curse so

easily. And how do you envisage making the trip? I at any rate never made it all the

way back, as you know, your people had to come looking for me, I’d already put my

feet up.”

But it was only a casual remark from Conrad, he didn’t really mean it, on the

contrary he was frightfully curious about what was to come, he was enjoying the

business despite all the impediments strewn in their path. He began to talk again,

three dreadful jolts behind him, half a heavenly journey, again that horrible jouncing

and bouncing. He cursed the road and how it would have been better under his

regime, ideal compared with this one. Once again he was the incorrigible loudmouth.

With an almost empty belly, hardly a week of firm ground beneath his feet, and

already crowing across the landscape as if he knew what was what and had only to

issue the command.

This fellow, thought George in astonished outrage, really will have to be chopped

to little pieces and made into blood sausage. How will he fare then? But he was wrong.

Conrad would not fare along the lines George feared and hoped. For on Earth

impudence is nothing hazardous, but a weapon.

“Travelling conditions,” Conrad declared, “were incomparably better in earlier

times. It can’t be done over long stretches. We have here a situation not at all thought

Babylonian Exile Part Three

59

through. I realised this among the stars, in the Milky Way and near the planets.

There’s a lack of planning and oversight. Now they have great distances, city after city,

but they can’t cope with it. It’s all left to itself. More collapses must come – more

countries, more cities, more heaps of stars. George, you can’t possibly deny that I used

to know a thing or two about world government.”

Of course George wouldn’t dream of it; but all things had to pass. “Pass,” Conrad

laughed, “what a wonderful phrase: all things must pass. That’s what I always preached

to you lot when you went hungry. I told you: one gets used to it.”

“And so we did. You know how.”

This pleased Conrad enormously: “The New One should have it no better. He too

shall pass! This I promise.” George heard the incorrigible loudmouth in outraged

astonishment.

And really all things did pass, even the boneshaking rattling motor journey on the

highway from Al Hillah to Baghdad. And there came a place where this highway ended,

and in a manner none had expected.

Methodological observation: a traffic obstruction and its consequences

What misfortune might a man encounter who sets out to sea in possession of an

immaculate sailing boat, a propeller-driven steamship, a modern diesel-engined vessel?

– The sudden appearance in the ocean of a solid mass that cannot be avoided, e.g.

icebergs, coral reefs.

And what misfortunes might be encountered by a man travelling along a highway?

Maybe a broken wheel, a defective engine, a barricade, a gang of robbers. But any one

of these can be overcome: by repairing the broken wheel, the defective engine –

provided that, as is to be hoped, the traveller possesses the knowledge, experience and

appropriate tools, including, at night, a torch; a barricade of fallen trees could with the

help of travelling companions be shoved aside and sawn to pieces. Of course it would

be harder if the traveller was alone and powerless and perhaps it was winter and he

settled wearily down to sleep against the barricade, he might freeze to death before

another vehicle appeared in the morning on the other side of the barrier and in it a

dozen fresh fellows ready for action who leap down from the truck and set to, heave

ho, they shoved, pushed, displaced the tree and cleared the way for every kind of

vehicle, caravan, group of people, individual of either sex and any race whatsoever.

Whoever meets misfortune in the form of a robber gang will not, on most roads in

Mesopotamia, have neglected to take precautions. Whether alone or in groups,

travelling companies either ad hoc or put purposely together, he would be armed with

pistols, rifles, daggers, knives, Crimean spyglass, would have spotted the robber gang

with his spyglass a long way ahead, and instead of falling into their trap would set a

trap for them by turning onto a convenient side track before the robbers could catch

Babylonian Exile Part Three

60

sight of the vehicle, and now it suddenly swoops down like a thunderstorm on the rear

of the lurking horde, loosing salvo after salvo into them as it races past. Two of the

wretches, more or less severely wounded, would be draped across the suddenly so

tragically altered site of a road barrier, which the vehicle had so swiftly and by good

luck evaded.

Much more serious however is an accident, and in a majority of cases not to be

overcome by a man so equipped, travelling the high road when the hazard assumes

the form of natural catastrophes, whirlwinds, earthquakes causing transverse rifts,

explosions of nearby gasholders, or even flooding from cloudbursts, dam bursts,

overflowing rivers. Let us not dwell on natural catastrophes, whirlwinds, earthquakes

with longitudinal, latitudinal and transverse rifts, whereby in addition there could be

folding, mountain-building, in short complete alterations of the geography. It’s

obvious how cluelessly and (according to character) with what resignation or

desperation (but it is better to accept what cannot be changed) a traveller by wheeled

vehicle would react in such a situation.

What then, of all those listed, is the severest misfortune of a man, or two, or a

group of people come together whether by chance or by design, who travel by wheeled

vehicle? We have to select squishy water, because the whole construction of such a

vehicle, its wheels that turn only on firm ground, its span of oxen, or its internal

combustion engine in the case of an automobile, are alien to the specific nature of

water, and represent for water only sinkable solids, wood, flesh, iron. When a mode of

transport so expressly fitted out for dry land – even an entire railway train, an elegant

luxury express – comes into contact with squishy water by driving into a river or a lake,

its whole paltry nature will become apparent and it will be revealed as light, heavier or

really heavy according to whether it sinks quickly, more quickly, or quicker than

anything, but it will, at all events, sink.

Because all savvy humans know this, so did the occupants of the truck we have

been telling of, in which sat Conrad the Babylonian and his assistant George with the

intention of reaching Baghdad, erstwhile city of Haroun al Rashid. Grimly they

encountered an accident, the worst accident a traveller by wheeled vehicle can meet

with, and saw all their hopes dashed. For before their eyes there spread a wide filthy

mass of foaming, gurgling, muddy water, and what’s more it was water that had no

business being there!

When someone in his own home encounters a living being – a person, a cat, a dog,

insects – his response will be matched to the zoological character and the resistance to

be expected. In the case of a human the police can be called if he won’t leave

voluntarily, or if no amicable agreement can be reached. In the case of cats or dogs

one uses the feet, or wooden articles. Throwing out a rabid dog would be beside the

point. Insects can be fumigated. In the case of flies, a copious hanging of flypapers is

helpful. But all such measures more or less fall away out in the open, where we

humans forfeit much of the freedom we enjoy only in our own homes. How can an

individual or even an entire motorised group of peaceable people clear away a mass of

Babylonian Exile Part Three

61

water extending across a patch of land undoubtedly formed to be a highway? He will

see himself as incapable of it. He, or better the whole group, will stand at the edge of

the sudden wanton watery intrusion, and make observations.

We shall not be amiss, even in our present case, if we say that the observations will

proceed from the implicit and explicit intention of the travellers to continue their

journey, and from the external impediment to the execution of that intention. The

delayed traveller will curse his intention to travel and give vent to the opinion that the

journey could have been made on some other day when no such obstacle would have

arisen, and he will blame all possible others for allowing him to set off today of all days.

This will serve to relieve the inner situation and enable a calmer contemplation of the

water. In addition the travellers, having collectively cast blame on absent parties,

mostly on friends, neighbours, spouses, will at once enter into a relationship of

confidence with one another.

Characteristics of water will be discovered that obviously belong to water, and

there’ll be grousing about these characteristics, for example that it’s liquid, thereby

downplaying the fact that this makes possible ocean voyages elsewhere in the world,

and in fact in more places than one would think possible, given that water covers two-

thirds of our planet’s surface! The understandable but nevertheless severe prejudice

against water will – even if not expressed – attain an enormous scope as they stand

around, leading them totally to forget that all life emerged from water. Take

wanderers in the desert: where would they be without water? They’d go thirsty, lack of

water means death.

All such facts are cast to the wind by our travellers, because they kitted themselves

out with nothing more than a motor vehicle designed for driving down a highway.

When observations made in the course of standing about at the edge of the water

have reached a conclusion of some kind, common sense comes into its own. It is

remarked that one cannot simply wait for the water to go down. Its presence is

incontestable, its absence merely speculative. Although there is a firm belief, which is

given expression, that one day it will be possible for the truck to continue on to

Baghdad, what occupies the foreground is the current press of time, the lack of

provisions and accommodation. The truck must be left where it is, and the water

somehow circumvented or waded through. The latter is at once tested by some,

mostly younger, people, who draw their clothing up over the knees. They notice,

under the interested eyes of the onlookers, that they have fallen into potholes, they cry

out, run back, some anxious, some high-spirited. They’ve done what they can, their

achievement won’t make the situation go away. Now the company falls into two

camps: one that wants to turn back, and another that wants to soldier on. Since there’s

no immediate agreement on what to do about luggage, they have breakfast.

And although the human will has reached an impasse and the forces of nature are

victorious, yet the latter have encountered a species that thinks of ways out and builds

up its strength thereto. Following the initial consternation, calm sends out its feelers.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

62

The road from Baghdad to Al-Hillah carries a large traffic in curious flatbreads, which

are shared out by generous Arab travelling companions among the less affluent and

the inadequately provisioned. They tear a strip off one of the flatbreads, roll it into a

cone and pour into it a kind of pudding from a tin box they’ve brought along, the

whole concoction rather like our cinnamon cone with ice cream. Everyone tucks in

happily, sitting beside or in the truck exchanging opinions and reminiscences about

things near and far. There are too some friendly Arab travellers equipped in the

Bedouin manner: they rattle small balls of dried milk in little canteens and after a few

shakes take a sip. They offer it around, it’s a sour beverage similar to our yoghurt.

Conrad and George will take polite little sips but George will feel uneasy, recalling the

hospitality they enjoyed from men of this sort some days earlier in the black tents, and

the loss of substance it inflicted upon them.

After the rigours of the journey, contentment will be found sitting around relaxed

and easy, eating, drinking, chatting. On the ground black cloths woven from goat hair

will be laid, or bright rugs that will later be sold, or only their protective coverings,

and after the eating and the chatting breathers will be taken, some will even doze off.

The truck stands motionless beside them. The muddy waters continue to spread

and not move away. The people lie quietly. But fear not, within a few hours they will

arrive in Baghdad.

2nd methodological observation: impractical means for overcoming the mishap

Seen here is a streamlined ocean liner,

conceived by Norman Bel Geddes, an

American engineer. It is formed on the

principle of Rumpler’s raindrop-car 1 and

the express train. You can see how the

exterior surfaces conform to the motion of

water and air currents. With appropriate

engines the liner should be able to achieve

speeds that put all previous records in the

shade.

Were such a liner to pop up on the

waters that have so suddenly swamped the

Al Hillah–Baghdad highway, it would

definitely arouse our travellers’ interest but

1 Unveiled in Sept 1921. Edmund Rumpler was an aircraft designer, forced by the Versailles treaty to adapt to another branch of his profession. [In the original text, the misprints ‘Geddas’ and ‘Rimpler’ are uncorrected.]

Babylonian Exile Part Three

63

they would recover from their surprise, unload their baggage from the truck with a

great deal of lively chatter, and transfer it across with the aid of the crew and sail away

happily, hearts filled with gratitude. Their astonishment would last all the way from

the scene of their misfortune until they reached Baghdad, would accompany them

from deck to deck, even into the hot roaring enormous engine room, hellish, hellish,

down into the vault of the screw crankshafts, up onto the bridge which, as they saw

from the highway, is shaped like aircraft wings. Having seen it all, they would begin to

worry about the potential cost of the ferry passage. But on the captain’s bridge it

would at once be explained to them that the ocean liner company considered it a great

honour to be able to rescue the stranded and broken-down of every highway and carry

them on their way, free of charge. This was in connection with Asia Minor’s systematic

transport strategy. But since, as we have noted, the streamlined ocean steamer is still

on the drawing board, it cannot be assumed that it would turn up on the Al Hillah-

Baghdad highway. And with that, all associated hopes are dashed.

More in the realm of possibility is the appearance of this steamer on the novel

watery expanse. For its construction lies not in the imagination, but following copious

deliberations and testing, making use of all past experience, shipyards in the Occident

and in America have actually built this type of ocean-going giant. And like an all-

powerful primeval monster it turns up in every harbour of humankind. With

astonishment and slight trepidation, thousands upon thousands mount its gangplanks

and entrust to it their lives, their goods and chattels, their salvation, and with their

lives the ocean-conqueror disposes over the happiness of many more thousands whose

fate is linked to the fate of the voyagers. Despite all awareness of its size, its draught,

its length, its displacement, we are unable to suppress our doubts that it will appear, at

least in this configuration, on the stretch of water between Baghdad and Al Hillah,

however devoutly we might wish to supply such a mode of transport for our stranded

broken-down travellers, or even allow them to glimpse and set foot on such a mighty

witness to human power. Because, for all the capabilities of our ocean giant, it can

demonstrate them only in accessible waters of a certain depth. Hence ocean liners,

fully cognisant of their own abilities, never venture into shallow waters, you never see

them in inland lakes, narrow river channels, mountain streams, and never in charming

ponds, even though in a hilly region it would definitely arouse interest and could

attract the tourist trade to many a secluded idyllic landscape.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

64

Though we must set aside this hope too, still we shall not immediately fall into

despair. We must focus all our attention and review all possibilities, however remote,

in order to preserve them and us from any increase in their misfortune. For let us not

doubt the beauties, variations, delights that await them in Baghdad, this former city of

Caliphs, this big colourful bustling human settlement.

Having for weighty reasons to take our leave of great streamlined steamers and

ocean liners, we must calmly and earnestly contemplate the possibility that this

expanse of water will freeze over. The stranded people, after overcoming their initial

amazement, would not think twice about stepping onto the ice. On a hot day they

would be terrified to do so. But once a few bold youths have tried it, the older

travellers will follow, they will edge forward from the land with their baggage, and

finally even the driver of the motor truck will say to himself that one must summon up

courage, for time is pressing and it won’t be long till evening and it won’t be safe in the

dark, the precious cargo is exposed to the threat of attacks by nomad robber bands

who are probably already aware of our presence. And so the driver would open the

throttle and steer cautiously onto the ice, it won’t crack, he’ll drive on, the ice is a

meter and a half thick, he picks up speed, the youngsters swing themselves onto the

truck, baggage is hauled up from every side, there’s lots of hallo’ing and laughter, a

silver lining to the cloud, and one must just have faith, and now they all sit up there

together with their stuff. The absence of potholes makes for a wonderfully smooth

drive, the driver must only take care not to skid when braking. And hardly three hours

later Baghdad comes into view, a sea of buildings on the horizon, and proud and

content they all, Conrad and George included, climb down at a wooden bridge where

an official is already waiting to demand a water toll from the driver, which occasions a

dispute about the transfer of the imposition onto the passengers, which is settled

amicably by a levy and voluntary overpayments on the part of a few propertied

travellers. They stand at the bridge and look back at the huge white smooth expanse of

ice, and find the whole of Baghdad, men, women, children, licking away, which is

understandable in such a high temperature (around 48 Celsius). Beaming they tell

each other how it all came about and how smooth it was, and who was the first to

venture onto the ice, and if they hadn’t been stranded on the highway they’d never

have made such marvellous progress. At first the water across the highway had

presented an obstacle, but then it transformed itself so unexpectedly into the opposite.

Whereat they throw themselves down onto the ice, say not a word more, and lick away

to their heart’s content.

One only has to deliver such a report to recognise that, alas, it brings us no farther

forward. Up until now there has never been a single known case of isolated freezing in

the open air of a substance using its own resources. Were anything of the sort to take

place, our alert refrigeration industry would long since have taken ownership of it. But

one glance into the great cold stores, businesses for the safekeeping of furs for

example, or food enterprises, market halls, slaughterhouses, the Berlin cold stores by

the Triangle station on the Berlin elevated railway, shows where we stand.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

65

So, must our travellers stay marooned before the pitiless expanse of water?

No!

While they have been resting, dozing, and patiently chatting away to pass the time,

elsewhere other things have been happening! The tremendous interconnectedness of

our earthly existence makes itself evident.

The interconnectedness of earthly things, and finally an end to the waiting

The watery expanse, which necessarily had a northern boundary as well, aroused

attention on that side. For there Baghdad lay, there the Tigris flowed, and it was the

Tigris that had overstepped its banks and caused the flood.

But in the great city are always people who suffer hardship and hang about on the

water or at the bridge and must scratch a living and watch out for anything happening

anywhere. Here we see an important principle of life on our Earth. On the one hand

we have states and individuals who ensure and guarantee (at least they do their best)

that it all runs smoothly, on the other we have sceptics who, with the greatest respect

to the powerful, know how the cookie really crumbles. They make a living from irreg-

ularities in the world’s course. The sceptics have an eye

for the shortcomings of human existence, and rectify

them each as best he can. They keep a close lookout for

what’s not working. Lots of things in the world work,

lots more don’t. The impecunious live from this.

Therein dwells a great justice and beneficence, even if

someone speeding along on skis will not readily think

of the benefit his tumble and the broken arm bring to

doctors and bandagers, cab drivers and pharmacists.

But all are already there lurking when he steps onto the

ski run.

Here, after the streamlined steamer and the ocean liner, is a so-

called guffa. It is constructed using ribs of the date palm, that date

palm which in these parts is employed for almost as many purposes

as the camel. The feathered leaves are turned into brooms, but they

are also worn as insignia of victory and triumph; from the leaf-stems

they make ropes and mats. It is well known how the fruit of this

marvellous tree nourishes entire peoples; they eat it as date-bread,

make honey from it, brew liquor and wine. This majestic plant-

creature – here’s a drawing – has also produced the guffa. The leaf-

ribs have been sealed with tar, and so now it turns up on the Tigris, to

the delight or consternation of passers-by. Those dotted along the edge of the sea-slash-floodwaters saw such, and their loud

cries awoke those sleeping, resting, dreaming. They soon learned much they hadn’t

Babylonian Exile Part Three

66

known before: first, that these poor paddlers inviting them to step into their

remarkable frying pans upon payment of a fare came from Baghdad; then, that they

were standing at the edge of an inundation from the Tigris; then, that matters weren’t

so bad after all. Embarkation commenced. On the highway a group of Arabs and

donkeys had turned up, they were already set to spend the night there, having erected

little tents; two men were already taking a bath in the water. The truck and driver at

once set off back to El Hillah, pursued by the blessings of the stranded. The donkeys,

actually clever animals but given to a justified mistrustfulness, set up a determined

unbreakable resistance to any closer approach to the water. So a guffa came in close to

shore, an Arab on the vessel made a grab for the forelegs, and there the poor creature

stood for a moment half on dry land, half on the floating vessel, and if it had

distributed its obstinacy evenly between the two halves, would of necessity have been

torn in two. But the Arabs, with gently applied psychology, cut short the donkey’s

torment of decision-making by throwing the bits of donkey still rooted to the ground

in a timely fashion into the boat.

Off they go! Heil us!

It was not without mockery that the travellers had sent their blessings after the

rattling bone-crunching truck. Now, greeted with shifty friendliness by the guffa crews

and carefully relieved of the fare, they experienced disappointment as they stood in

those frying pans.

How oh how did we dream of streamlined steamers, giant ocean liners and other

seafaring comforts! They were standing in a guffa, or as we say, goffle. It was tearing

them away from dry land onto the waters. Our travellers were out of the potholes of

the highway and into the whirlpools of the Tigris. They spun around and around, the

frying pan revolved all by itself, and as it did so rose and fell, in each goffle two

boatmen stood with long steering poles with which they propelled and steered. The

passengers shrieked and laughed. They’d been rescued by boats from the broken down

truck, where was the truck that would rescue them from the boats?

But these goffles seldom founder: “Take yesterday,” said one boatman as he thrust

his pole, “yesterday a boat with ten pilgrims overturned, they all drowned, but it was

only Persians.” The people became dizzy, but lots of people pay for that effect in

American amusement parks as a particular recreation. The inundation extended far

and wide. Where the spinning speeded up, that was the Tigris. They swept along and

turned about and there was much changing of positions and laughter and shrieking in

the goffles. And now an end was nigh to their long journey from Al Hillah and Babylon,

nay, from the Babylonian heaven. The tops of towers became visible, oh if only they

don’t slip away, you can drown up to the very last minute, and other vessels appeared

on the swift water, in particular curious little ferry boats floating on remarkably

inflated bases. These were cheleks, for which animal hides were obtained and inflated.

And now blue domes, mosques, tops of minarets, along the shore rows of blessed date

Babylonian Exile Part Three

67

palms. How sturdily they stood! What bliss to be so rooted! They landed by a bridge.

Let us leave the goffles, let us climb up to the bridge. Land ho, land, land!

And masses of little people accosted the passengers, so you didn’t drown, you’ve

arrived, your journey’s over, they wanted to help, earn, steal, watch for opportunities,

guide to the wrong hotel, assuming there was such a thing, ply with food and drink,

sell carpets for an outrageous price, they’ll bring the carpet along later.

But we now take leave of the company and fix our gaze on these two, the

Babylonian and his companion. With handshakes, bowing, mere tender looks we

thank the strangers, human and animal, for brightening up our friends’ path, for

sharing with them the joys and grief. We hope their business prospers.

The big Babylonian, absent from the Earth for millennia and never yet in any

earthly city, wanted to dive at once in teeth-baring delight into the midst of the throng,

hurl it asunder. But George whispered: “Great One, it wasn’t nice on the highway, as

you saw. And it wasn’t nice on the water. Now you’re in the city. There are potholes

even here! Please, stay somewhere in the shadows and wait for me.” And without

explanation he led the Great One aside.

Conrad the reluctant penitent’s first greeting to Baghdad! A hymn to human existence

And so they have clambered into the great wonderful cave called “the world”. They

were, as the saying goes, bright and bushy-tailed, maybe George was a little nervous,

from his previous experiences. The magic cave welcomed our roaming researchers

with lovely weather, bright colours, and din.

George is nowhere to be seen. All sorts of things happen in this city of Baghdad so

altered by war and its aftermath. Conrad is sitting on a bench.

He sat comfortably in the shade, found everything very pleasant, especially the

absence of jolting. “How lovely the sunshine is,” the Babylonian felt, his eyes gliding

over palms and the sky’s brightness, “how lovely the shadows, how clever people are to

make such awnings, how lovely the time of day that sends no one to share this bench

and I can stretch my arms along the back. Such a bustle here, no need for George to

hurry back. Always coming, always going, how they move, shout, every face different,

every shout different, camels, donkeys, carts, people.

“There I sat, chief of all the Babylonian gods, a divine sourpuss in the midst of my

Olympian horde, idling away swimming in fat, and when I opened my eyes I saw the

lamentable guards, that loathsome flock of wethers fit for nothing but blowing flutes,

banging drums. If I hadn’t had it so good, I could never have endured it up there. But

they kept me well stuffed, actually it’s all their fault. I just let the wagon trundle on.

No wonder they finally made themselves independent, the priests and kings, seeing as

I was no longer stirring up there with my horned bonnet, my fat. No doubt the rascals

stopped feeding me up for the benefit of their own health. It’s as plain as day. Drifted

Babylonian Exile Part Three

68

down here. It’s nicer here. They’ve managed it all, they – and I too. Such a lovely palm

tree, delicate thing. Where did I ever see a palm tree in Heaven. And this young lad,

this rascal with the donkey, I wonder who he’s looking to play tricks on now.”

He sat there eating his orange. “What a clever, wonderful, good thing is this eating,

this drinking. So much better than simply sniffing, even if it was whole herds of

wethers and cows. Smoke is insubstantial. What’s nice is: biting, nibbling, something

on the tongue, turning over in the mouth, chewing some more and swallowing it

down. And then it lies in the stomach and you feel full, and after a while you feel

hungry again and so you pick up something else. And there seem to be so many

thousands of different things, oh what do I have to look forward to, what a lovely

journey across the Earth. So this is what they call atoning. And how good must wine

taste, when even the air is so wonderful.”

He’d finished the orange. He was comfortable sitting there. “Sitting, feeling one’s

legs, the pleasant sensation in the back, and the fingers. If I’d known about it I’d have

hurled my lightning at the head of one of those old dodderers and made my own way

down. In the pure heaven, the way I’d arranged it for myself, it was cosy but vapid. It

carried within it the germ of enfeeblement. I fell victim. Among humans it doesn’t go

smoothly, possibly, but there’s more substance.

“Anyone who croaks down here but had his eyes open and experienced days, all the

days and nights, all the nights, and his body and people and animals and the wind and

shadows, he had something of existence, brief though it may have been.

“Just look, feel the breath that’s like nothing and was given to him, the breathing in,

breathing out, fresh air. Oh the wind, there are cool breezes, but how can someone

enjoy the cool breeze without accepting heat as well. Lovely colours. Ah, I feel so good.

I feel so indescribably well here in Baghdad.”

A shadow fell across the path. The man casting the shadow was George, the long-

legged lurching skeleton. He gripped the Great One by the arm, hissed, “Come on.”

But it would have taken momentous natural events, the heaviest blows of fate,

harbingers of the Day of Judgement and the proclamation of Egyptian plagues to shift

the Great One from the comforts of his train of thought.

So it came about that harassed George, his bad conscience etched on his grey face,

found himself sitting on the bench at the Great One’s side, arms around his shoulders,

and yet he wanted to run away, had to run away, but he was forced to take part in a

theological-metaphysical conversation.

It was Conrad’s great discovery, his heart overflowed with it: “How could we gods

have hidden ourselves away in a mere Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean heaven! And we

gave to humans, so we believed, the inconveniently cumbersome apparatus of mouth,

tongue, stomach, intestines? And then you can bang your teeth together (George

groaned, his eyes darted over the path, if anyone were to spot him, a good conscience is a

soft pillow), and the eyes can turn (yes, I must keep turning them, they might find me at

Babylonian Exile Part Three

69

any moment), you can lift your arms, lower them, lift, lower, and in so doing you feel

the joints, muscles (and they can use those to set on me, and wield a stick) and the

spine (which will feel it), and down below you have legs, knees (when will I get to use

them). And then on top of that we presented them with this wonderful city of Baghdad

and the palms and the shade.

“In this situation,” Conrad pulled the other by the shoulders around to face him,

and gazed earnestly at him, “we have to do something. You no less than I. There is a

grave risk that we shall lose ourselves too deeply in the human. My successor, my

stand-in, might enjoy that. We are and shall remain Babylonians! We shall wander

through the city, rest, eat and drink and then – look for someone who knows

Babylonian, who understands how to gain mastery over our ancient way of life, our

greatness, our nature. You will locate such a man in this great city, a teacher of

languages, a support for me, a master of ceremonies.”

First little stroll

Through the middle of Baghdad runs the “New Street”. Some say it was constructed by

means of cannon-shot fired through the city, whereby a number of buildings remained

standing while others shuffled off this mortal coil, but the focus was on a straight line.

Others say something about a Nazım Pasha who laid it out, and a Khalil Pasha who

completed it during the war, but these are Near Eastern rumours of a kind that fly

around in their millions and lend life here its much-vaunted fairytale character. Most

probably it was cannon-fire. Dusk was about to fall, the streets were starting to fill.

You could see female persons promenading in silken shawls with gold brocade. There

were men in stovepipe trousers, European style, and on their heads the red fez.

Who’s this marching along so jauntily in knee-shorts? They’ll be English Tommies.

Why does this bearded man well advanced in years who waggles his head from side

to side – an evil spirit will have conjured the tremors up in him – why does he on that

same head wear a white edifice?

The white edifice is a turban, and the bearded man is a Mohammedan mullah, a

Mohammedan scholar. There was once a Mad Mullah, Mohamed ben Abdullah, a Hajji,

whose craziness consisted, among other things, in defeating the English twice in

Somaliland. A few defeats brought him to his senses, and in the end he was no more.

But that is not the waggly-headed man with the fat nose on the New Street in

Baghdad, he’s never defeated the English and never will, he’s off to find something to

eat around the Maude Bridge, soured milk and bread and a few dates, but the whole

long way he’s wondering, the bearded mullah, if it will stretch to dates, which do his

ponderous belly good, he calculates and calculates and keeps an eye on the prices at

the vegetable stalls and waggles onward, we wish him a good bargain.

Conrad, marching along at a leisurely pace, had much to see, to listen to, smell,

enquire about. He enquired about Persians and Negroes trotting past, why these

Babylonian Exile Part Three

70

fellows wore white shoes, and how can you tell an officer of the English Air Force, and

conducted himself somewhat foolishly in the throng with his stopping, gawping,

laughing, whereby curses could often be heard which to him were totally

incomprehensible and merely increased his jollity.

It was an impatient notion of the harassed George to manoeuvre the very cheerful

Great One, for a change he said, into a side alley, and then another side alley, and then

there they were suddenly, in the Jewish quarter of Baghdad.

Encounter with Jews

Conrad suddenly came to a stop. He stood, looked about him. “Who are these?”

“They’re Jews.”

Conrad, first he was flabbergasted, then a quiver, a glow passed over his face, then

a smile turned the corners of his mouth up, then he burst like a bomb and laughed,

laughed: “Ho ho, the Jews. They’re still here. George, say it again. I know these. We’re

dead, I’m dead, you’re dead, they’re still living.” And pointed his finger at the people,

he flung his arm around George and whispered in his ear still laughing all the while,

and George tried to catch it, just a scrap, and caught onto something too and laughed

out loud and clear and they couldn’t take their eyes off the Jews.

“Jews!” whispered Conrad. “We know them, George! They’re our business. They’ve

always lived hereabouts, a people, a little people, a ha’penny people, a mingy little

tribe. To think they’re still alive! I could kiss them. But they look a little dirty.”

“The Orient,” George whispered confidentially, “the East. Here the sun comes up

and kills all germs.”

Conrad was enlivened by the sight of the Jews and their dwellings and how they

swarmed outside the walls of their houses with big baskets of cucumbers, apricots,

peaches, bread and in the middle of the street the donkeys with sacks of charcoal and

the Arabs, Persians, Turks, Negroes, everything all come together. Women squatted

on the ground fully veiled, face free. Iced milk was cried: Airan bos, airan bos! A girl, a

young child of the nation of Israel, her dark face scarred, looked down from a bay

window and fixed Conrad with her gaze. The old rascal received her gaze lovingly,

held it a long while, nodded and smacked his lips; never taking his arm from George’s

shoulder, he drew him to a rickety bench under a wooden awning in front of a bazaar

stall. The hawker began offering them all kinds of stuff, felt caps, old saddlery, leather

bags. The Babylonian contentedly let him jump around nattering away, but what was

it like for the Jew when the big man on the bench, whom he’d taken for a Persian, a

Shi’ite who was maybe on his way to the Al-Kazimayn Mosque on the right bank of the

Tigris, suddenly addressed him in Hebrew: “Old rogue, where did you steal this?”

The hawker dropped the mat he’d been offering. He stammered: “Who are you?

Would, would you like, to come into my house?”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

71

“His Hebrew’s dreadful, but it is Hebrew, I recognised ‘house’. Yes, these are Jews,

my dear old Jews.” And Conrad whispered and started on a long story about them. But

George suddenly knitted his brow, thought, thought, and looked at Conrad, frowning:

“Wait a minute. So you recognise them? Do you know, Conrad, I think they will

recognise you too.”

“I hope so.”

“You remember, Conrad, there was that name, Jeremiah? It’s just occurred to me,

he was one of them.”

Conrad sat there speechless. “The one with the curse?”

“Yes. I just remembered.”

“A Jew? One of these?”

“We’d best be on our way, Great One.”

But he made no move, just stared at the hawker. After a while he shook his head.

“No, you’re wrong there. It wasn’t them. Definitely not, George.”

“You can depend on it. It just slipped my mind. The Jews, Jeremiah, he’s the one

who cursed you.”

“These?” Conrad shook his head again, began to smile: “Just take a look at them.

They, curse me? However did they manage it?”

“Come away, Great One! It was definitely them.”

“Them? When did they have the ability? Who among them supposedly had the

power to bring me down, me, the lord on the Babylonian throne, and destroy our

palaces? And anyway, how could these here say it was I that did the destroying? Look

at them, George, they’re alive, they’re still alive, they’re doing well, see how the little

lad grins at me.”

“I’m afraid, Great One. Come.”

“You stay here. I command you. This, my adversary? You insult me.”

“I only heard about it. Because you were the mighty one! You wreaked such terrible

things on them.”

“I know, I know. On you too. And they were the righteous.”

“Come away, Great One, I beg you.” Really, George was trembling. “It wasn’t them,

it was righteousness.”

But Conrad laughed, a long hearty laugh: “So this is what my adversaries look like.

Here we shall find ourselves again. They’re hawking boots and leather straps. Buy

something from our adversaries so that they treat us gently.”

And suddenly the Babylonian had a magnificent idea. He raised his left arm high,

opened his eyes wide and smacked his knee: “You, George, the Jews are still alive, you

Babylonian Exile Part Three

72

must become God of the Jews!” And before the other could say a word, Conrad,

standing up, took him by the arm, bossy as usual: “We shall summon them together

and give them the order and you shall be the Jewish God, George.”

He begged: “I don’t want to.”

“No excuses. Hey, you, Reuben, young snotnose, fetch your father.”

“Come, Conrad, let’s move on.”

“I shall pay them back. They shall fear me.”

The hawker stood in front of them, hand at his mouth.

Conrad sat legs stretched out, his right arm held before him with balled fist as if

grasping his poplar staff, he spoke slowly and earnestly, ancient Hebrew, the man

understood only bits of it. “Call your people together, your great ones, kings, priests,

headmen. I shall reveal to you your god.”

The hawker rubbed his nose, stood there, pondered, he asked to hear the words

again, what was going on, who were these, nothing good. He whispered with his wife,

a slattern dressed in rags, she continued to haggle with a Negro, the hawker bowed to

his guests, scurried away.

“Sit here, George.” Conrad forced him to take a seat, crowded tight against him.

“You are the god of the Jews, I shall protect you.”

“It’s embarrassing, let them be.”

“We have come down in the world, George, I cannot offer you more. But they’ll

heed us, my dear old mangy curs.”

Hardly five minutes went by before two Syrians in long white shirts with jackets

over came up the alley, the hawker came along conversing with a little fat man in a

black coat and black hat. They proceeded at a stately pace, but this was not the excited

hawker’s doing, he kept jabbering away at his companion with mouth and hands while

the little fatty, an old greasy-looking fellow who carried his belly with dignity, set one

foot before the other as if measuring out the path. Not a word from the little man, you

couldn’t tell if he was listening, he probably thought he was comporting himself with

dignity amidst the throng and considered the stroll a fine gift from God. Here now was

the shop, the Jew’s bazaar stall. Under the wooden awning stepped the hawker and the

little fat man, as well as a trader from the next alley who was a so-called schammes,

which is to say, a synagogue sexton or rabbi’s helper. In his haste the hawker had been

unable to rustle up anyone else. The schammes’ entry under the little awning, the

lackadaisical greeting from the three assembled, for he did after all represent the rabbi,

and his non-response were one single action. George sat there like a chief idol, arm

outstretched to the right, as grand as if he were holding a poplar staff, head thrown

back, eyes half closed. At his side the old Babylonian, left hand on the back of the

bench. Georg muttered in ancient Hebrew: “Do not stand so insolently there, with

your book. I am your god. Dope.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

73

Beside the schammes was the hawker, beside the hawker his wife, behind the wife

the snotty-nosed brat. The Negro had left without buying anything, seemed best to

steal the saddle another time. The four of them looked at the two of them, the two

looked at the four. One thing was clear to the schammes: the strangers spoke Hebrew.

What they said could not be made out. They were Jews, but foreign. Why had they

come to the house of this hawker, exactly? Maybe pure chance, wanted to find out

where the nearest rabbi lives? Maybe there was business to be done. Maybe they had

money, from America. Again they bade the strangers “shalom”. No reply. Now the

schammes invited them to enter the hawker’s house. Boorish George maintained his

shameless pose, he hadn’t heard, but the Babylonian, whose heart was laughing at the

sight of his old Jews, lifted his hand from the bench, gave a brief nod of thanks, and

slowly stepped towards the door leading to the hawker’s courtyard. He opened the

door, George leaped to his feet, ran after him, they crossed the threshold into a square

space paved with tiles. As they did so, something else happened that filled the family

and the schammes with horror. At the doorpost was fixed, as the law of the Jews

required, the mezuzah, the little tube with sayings from the Torah. The two strangers

had crossed the threshold without passing a hand over the tube. What’s more, the big

one, first across the threshold, had seen the little tube, knew what it was – and

disregarded it. The Jews did not at once follow on, but the schammes was here on

official business, he placed himself at the head of the procession, stepped with dignity

over the threshold, gave the little tube a scandalised and emphatic kiss, the hawker

shooed his wife and brat back to the stall, they were all in the courtyard, the hawker

led the way, a flight of five steps came, they didn’t climb up but took two steps down,

the hawker was holding a little oil lamp, into an underground room, the serdab, for it

was dreadfully hot. There the three of them sat down, the Babylonian, George and the

little schammes, not speaking. The hawker had disappeared to fetch water jug and

bread. Scorpions crawled on the ground. To Conrad it was all, apart from the sweat,

quite dazzling. He addressed the schammes, who was rubbing his knees and sniffling

up at him from across the table: “And what business are you in, dear friend? Does it

pay well?”

The schammes noticed he was being spoken to. He made a shaky bow: From which

region had the strangers come, might some refreshment be pleasing. The hawker

arrived with his things, the schammes poured from the jug, gave them a piece of bread.

“Life was hard on us after the war, but the gentlemen will not forget us.”

Conrad gave George a poke. “What do you think of this chap, isn’t he lovely! That’s

how they used to talk, thousands of years ago. – No, sir,” he turned rudely on the

schammes, “we won’t forget you. That’s exactly why we’re sitting here.” And he had to

burst out laughing again, the fellow’s face was such a picture of fear. “We’ll take a sip

of water, George.” And since bread was there beside the jug and no better idea

occurred to them, they stuffed it into their mouths.

The two Jews now sat there like oil-smeared idols. The strangers had stuffed food

in their mouths without saying a blessing. Had they forgotten. If so, they could push

Babylonian Exile Part Three

74

what was still in the mouth aside, what else were cheeks for. They kept a close eye on

them. Glug, glug glug. No, it was gone. The hawker, showing off in front of the

schammes, said: “One should avoid over-hasty eating.” Now the schammes stretched a

hand over the bread, spoke the blessing, ate. And see, only the hawker said Amen. The

schammes whispered, “What is this? They speak Hebrew, but they are no Jews. I said

the whole blessing, I’m no Samaritan, and they didn’t say Amen.” And he wanted to

stand up and leave without further ado and ask the rabbi what should be done in such

a situation, two there who speak Hebrew, come from afar and they’ve sat at table with

two who are unclean, when the Babylonian’s glance fell on him.

The Babylonian was so relaxed he again put his arm around George and observed

the schammes. He was smiling. But the other, King Hezekiah, was overcome by terror

of the Majesty’s glory, and had to yield up all that he had.2 And the little old man, as if

afflicted by an age-old memory, that face, that laugh, the posture, Conrad was sitting

quite calm, lion’s roar, yellow lion’s mane, the huge jaws. The two Jews trembled. The

hawker pushed more bread across, placed the jug nearer to them, so, it has happened,

what are we to do now, what will they do. Such puzzling paralysing silent fear. It

happened that two yellow dogs that had padded down the steps from the yard were

creeping along the wall. The hawker’s son had been sent down by his mother with a

query for his father about a sale, the dogs had gone ahead. When he entered the

serdab and stood by the table, he looked around him, saw the men, saw the

Babylonians, and threw himself, hands at his breast, onto the floor whimpering.

The schammes: “Come, child,” lifted the boy to his feet. At once he ran back out,

yelling, the dogs at his heels. This amused the Babylonian and George. They shoved

the table aside, George clicked his tongue as they passed the two Jews; the Babylonian

bade them “shalom”. But they stood there immobile. Their bodies were frozen.

They heard them laugh up in the yard and say: “Were they terrified of us, or were

they not? What’s your opinion now of these mighty victors?”

Down below the schammes raised his hands: “Silence, friend. Those were evil

beings, sent by the Angel of Death.”

“Oh, woe is me.”

“What’s with this woe is me? Woe is us. Didn’t you hear, they spoke our language.”

“What are we to do. They sat in my house. I am a defeated man.”

“Close the door to your cellar.”

They left everything as it was, the wife closed the stall, relatives came to fill the

house with their noise. Schammes and hawker sat with the rabbi. The rabbi read aloud,

sang, rocked: “Rebb Yehoshua ben Levi relates: three things the Angel of Death told us.

Thou shalt not in the morning take the shirt from thy servant’s hand and put it on;

2 Refers to the bribe King Hezekiah paid to Sennacherib to desist from besieging Jerusalem in 701 BC; see 2 Kings 18.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

75

wash not thy hands with the aid of one who has not yet washed his hands; and stand

not before women when they return from a funeral procession because I leap out at

them sword in hand and have leave to despoil them. – What remedy is there for one

who encounters them? – He draws back three ells from his place. If there be a river, he

crosses it. If there be another way, he takes that way. If there be a wall, he stands

behind it. But if there be nothing there, let him turn his face away and speak thus: And

the Lord said unto Satan: May the Lord have at thee, oh Satan.”

Then he leafed through and sought in the ninth chapter of the Sabbath Tractate to

see what was said there about false gods and contamination by them, and false gods

were compared there to creeping creatures and menstruants, and the same means of

purification applied to both those and these. And then he recited the later verse about

a ship, which was not at all relevant to the case, but he had long found it interesting

and so he recited the whole section, now and then berating the hawker for his

impatience (what will become of my house, what will happen). Only then did he put

on his gown and think: So many little people come, and such a din they make, the bit

about the ship is very fine, uncommonly fine, for example whatever moves of itself is

capable of purification, surely those were just a pair of scoundrels.

Of a hotel, and bedbugs, of which Baghdad has none

No more pleasant reception could have been arranged for Conrad in this new world –

the one that we too live in. Truly, he had no reason to fear this Jeremiah of the Jews.

While the three Jews were heading quickly, solemnly, most solemnly to the

hawker’s house, the hawker walking quickly, the schammes slowly and, the rabbi, as

befitted his dignity, very slowly, so that as they went they changed places and the

hawker became the vanguard, while this was going on, into the grand Hotel Maude in

Baghdad, escorted reverently by the doorman and greeted with a slightly quizzical

bow by the receptionist, stepped the great Babylonian and his companion, who looked

like a respectable pair. There are many hotels, pensions, lodging houses, all the way to

mass hostels down here in the city of Baghdad, which as already mentioned is a big

city, insofar as one can call a place with 150,000 inhabitants a big city. It has a

university, a scientific society, an airport, and air links to London, Delhi, Teheran, to

say nothing of the Baghdad Ulcer, and so although it is no longer the world city of the

Caliphs, it still ranks with the city of Karbala in the Arab Kingdom of Iraq. The

Babylonian stood aside in the entrance lobby while George conferred with the

receptionist and the porter who had come forward. Then came smiling bows from the

personnel, the receptionist himself inscribed the name of the Persian nobleman who

had arrived alone with his companion while his entourage and caravans were lodged

in one of the horrible mass caravanserais called a khan. George wanted to book a small

single room, but Conrad ordered: “You stay with me.” At which a huge twin-bedded

room on the first floor was arranged. The Great One happily allowed himself to be led

off to a bathroom, where George attended to him. They drank champagne in the room.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

76

By then night had fallen with its coolness and the barking of dogs, deep night

pregnant with blessings. Across the abyss between the two beds, Conrad stretched a

hand to the other: “So you see, I was right. Here we are in a fine hotel. What can

happen to us. Thanks to the Jews, I feel quite relaxed about the future.”

“They were scared of you.”

“We shouldn’t let ourselves get the wind up. We shall sleep, and spend another

lovely day on this truly delightful Earth. A good start, George. I’m grateful to you.”

“Yes, it’s been interesting,” George yawned, he was tired out, what bliss to lie here

and the door was firmly bolted, no one could come and grab him.

They were protected from mosquitoes, and this first-class hotel had no bedbugs.

Once, a long time ago, there was an Overseer of Prisoners, he had been born in

Constantinople, in the squalid part, and so was used to bedbugs. But when he came to

Baghdad and found no bedbugs, he was bewildered. Heat, the Overseer found, was

plentiful in Baghdad, and in January it rained, there was never a frost – but it made no

sense to him that in the flea-, mouse- and louse-ridden dungeons where his protégés

were lodged and repenting there should be no bedbugs. He was a righteous man. He

asked: why should a man sentenced according to law in Baghdad be privileged over

one sentenced in Constantinople? They had it too good in Baghdad, he considered. He

was no friend of modern humanity. Living bedbug-free seemed to him a monopoly of

authorities and people of status. To be poor and free of bedbugs verged on rebellion.

And so this official set about breaking Baghdad’s pride. He often brought in transports

of prisoners, mostly from Urfa, Mardin, where there wasn’t enough room for them.

Now he organised from these towns an import trade in bedbugs.

There are many species of bug. There are water bugs, scorpion bugs, swine bugs,

sea bugs. They suck water creatures dry. On us, land bugs have been let loose in the

form of assassin bugs, shield bugs, house bugs, plant bugs. The bedbug lives in beds, a

flat brown domestic creature that stinks when disturbed and lays eggs four times a

year. After a few months, from each batch of 50 eggs more bedbugs emerge to bite,

suck and stink. Nights are for sleeping, thinks the simple man. What heavenly

nocturnes and lullabies has he composed, mindful of the blessedness of sleep and

sweet dreams. Then the bedbug approaches, 50 eggs four times a year, and bites and

sucks and stinks, and shows that the simple man had the wrong idea. The bedbug for

its part can also not sleep at night, it has to earn its bread (our blood) and hide by day

under carpets, and even there its life is not secure.

When the righteous Overseer of Prisoners brought hordes of these feisty creatures

to Baghdad in bags and old clothes – it’s a very ancient species, it lived in the amber

trees of prehistory long before prideful humanity appeared – he found to his dismay

that they failed to thrive. They survived a few weeks, but there was no life in them. At

first the righteous man thought there must be a bug disease, and he fetched more. The

same thing happened. Then the angry thought arose: the prisoners here are especially

wicked and have bad blood; but they failed to thrive even in his own bed. Then it

Babylonian Exile Part Three

77

became clear: it was the heat. Within a few months all the bugs imported with such

difficulty were gone. Now the old man looked inwards, and realised: one should not

mess with Creation. Everything has its reasons. Where there’s excessive heat, bedbugs

are not needed. He gave up his plans for world improvement. Prisoners in Baghdad

must continue to make do with heat, fleas, inadequate food and human chicanery on

their path to repentance.

Surprise! A third Babylonian!

Flown, the dark night. The Babylonian came awake in his delightfully soft bed. He

regaled the other, who was already up, with a long lecture on the kind of human

existence they’d come upon the previous day, how they’d been cheated up in Heaven

and how this here was the only true kind. He submitted to washing and dressing, at

breakfast praised the white bread. He pointed out every breakfast item on which his

eye alighted, honey, butter, tea, bits of meat, jams: “We were cheated of this, and this,

and this. But we’ll sort it all out.” So he ate and drank, and encouraged the other, who

however had no great appetite because of the heat. Conrad strolled for a morning hour

with him through the city.

And as they neared the Maude Bridge, Conrad was so immersed in the sight of the

confusion making its way in queues of carts towards the bridge and coming from the

bridge that he failed to notice George had disappeared. The bridge creaked and

squealed from all the vehicles. Wobbling horse-cabs, gharries with their little ponies

rolled along, mule after heavily-laden mule plodded on, they wore little chains of

pearls against the evil eye, little donkeys jingled their bells. Conrad raised his arms and

said: “I cannot cross the bridge in this melee. I would like to go over. What do you

think, George, shall we take a cab?” But George had vanished. A white sharp-tongued

woman with long heavy earrings addressed Conrad. He didn’t understand. Where was

George. He looked back along the road, cart after cart, such masses of people. A chill

band laid itself over Conrad’s brow, his fists clenched, where was George. He went

back, it was hard to cross to the other side of the road, he didn’t know he was

supposed to wait, a policeman held him by the arm, his voice threatened, and some

other men addressed Conrad with rough angry gestures. Finally the queue of carts

came to a stop, the policeman lowered his little flag. Conrad was across, the other

shore, he was sweaty, and alone.

Close by at the entrance to a muddy alley were two men. One, white-bearded, was

holding a broken-down droop-headed little grey nag, an ancient creature, by the

bridle. And the one talking to him, talking talking and hugging, hugging him – that’s

George! Conrad stood there, breathing. Blood flowed again through his hands. A ghost,

he told himself. Life here can do that. It toys with us. He looked nervously back at the

bridge. And calmly strolled towards the two men. Then another shock went through

him, and he halted. They were talking loudly. And Conrad understood what they were

saying. They were speaking – his language. The old man must be a learned doctor, an

Babylonian Exile Part Three

78

archaeologist like the one on the field of ruins, George had bumped into him, right,

right, of course, I planned to learn Babylonian, about conditions back then, about

Heaven, about the stars, I forget it all so quickly, George has such luck.

Now George’s eye lit on the Great One. “Here he is, Waldemar! That’s him!” And

the little white-bearded man turned around, bowed all the way to the ground, and

because he was holding the little grey nag by the bridle it too had to step closer, lifting

its astonished head to Conrad. The little man had a blissful smile, kept bowing and

bowing, and what he now whispered stabbed Conrad to the heart, and he froze:

“Father, Lord, whose royal sway is fulfilled. Oh strong young bull with strong horns,

complete in every limb.”

George placed a hand on the Great One’s arm: “It’s Waldemar, one of your sixty.”

You have to admit, this was a surprising encounter. It was incredible. This was

Waldemar? How come? Why was it Waldemar? It was – a man with a white beard, a

tramp with a pony. How the pony stares. Maybe it too is one of my ancients, number

two perhaps or six or four, out of the sixty? George is teasing me. Rage rose up in

Conrad, he roared: “You abandoned me. And you plant yourself here.”

“But Conrad, Great One, look at him, see who it is.”

The little man bowed, that blissful infatuated smile, Heaven, Conrad knows it of

course, he bowed murmuring: “Father, Lord, Great One, who entereth in full majesty.”

How did this fellow know the hymns? He roared: “It’s a scholar, a doctor, from the

digs.” The whitebeard piped up: “I spoke to him as well, I was just telling George.”

And all Conrad could do was take both George and the little man by the arm and

into the muddy alley. And the old man repeated his story standing by a house wall.

After Conrad left, things had become heated in the old Babylonian heaven. For a

while the sixty ancients had passed the time with the usual choral sessions, rhythmic

gymnastics. But the food they were expecting never turned up. George had already

mentioned that he and Conrad right after their arrival sacrificed a wether, but nothing

of it arrived up top. They’d waited and waited, kept an eye on the bonnet and the staff

and the lightning, and the throne is still standing there as ever, but in the end hunger

got the better of them.

Conrad interrupted angrily: “And you don’t like going hungry, eh? Hadn’t you

stolen enough from me?”

The little man darted a nervous glance at George. Who said equably: “You heard

him, there was nothing there, not even to steal. And so they went hungry.”

I depend on these lowlifes. Must get used to humiliations. Conrad flicked his hand

contemptuously: “Go on.”

“So we decided we had to do something. Just what wasn’t clear. Up there, there was

nothing to be had. You know how we relied on smoked goods from the Earth.

Someone said we should do what they do in a shipwreck or on a desert island: the

Babylonian Exile Part Three

79

strong kill the weak and eat them. But we were all so decrepit, nothing on us, so it

wouldn’t have helped. Then we all came to the same conclusion: slip away one after

the other. We didn’t say it out loud, none dared say it to another. For it would have

been dreadful if you’d returned and found your throne unguarded and your bonnet

and staff and the lightning. But there was no holding back.”

“You were all demoralised.”

“If you wish, Great Lord. You were missing from us. There was no authority among

us. It was like after a battle’s been lost: every man for himself. And so it happened.

Every time you turned around there was one less of us. We looked around as seldom

as possible, just so as not to see.”

“Bunch of shirkers.”

“One after another went. They slipped into the storehouse, fetched a pair of wings,

a sigh, and one more was gone. Where they ended up I have no idea.”

And the little man began to weep silent tears. “But I remembered the first

expedition down here, when we fetched George, and the stories he told. So I wasn’t

taken by surprise. I knew you had to keep a cool head, always straight on, avoid the

stars, out past Sirius, then left, then Mercury comes, George described it for us in such

detail. And I passed the details on to the three who set off together with me.”

“So we’ll bump into them down here as well,” Conrad remarked drily.

“I lost sight of them, in the end each had to look out for himself. It couldn’t go on

up there, we were on our last legs from hunger.” And the little man sobbed and flung

his arms around the ancient nag and his sobs turned into a humming and he sang:

“Behold, ye brethren, my suffering under the misery of this life in a strange land,

and there are none to be found who can comfort me. My tears, my tears a flowing

brook, no butterfly to release me, poor wretch, ah, from my sorrow. With tears I wrote

in the sand. Ah, if only I had remained alone above and had died there where I

bloomed and sang, now I am filled with yearning, withered and sick. I shall die in a

strange land and none shall be found to mourn me. I dread to die in a strange land. Ah,

all I possessed I gave away out of my own hand.”

Thus did the old man sing, clinging to the mane of his nag. And what did Conrad

do? He asked: “Where did that song come from?”

“They sang it out in the country, peasants, I made my way begging amongst them.”

“You were begging? What? You did that? You did that to me?”

“What was I suppose d to do?”

“You were supposed to stay up there. And abandoning my throne, my staff, my

bonnet, my lightning.”

But it made the sobbing man happy to hear Conrad’s angry voice, Conrad can say

whatever he likes. “Now I have found you again, Great One. Now I am no longer

Babylonian Exile Part Three

80

forlorn.” He kissed Conrad’s gown. “It was so hard to find a trace of you. It took me

days to feel human. See what a decrepit old man I’ve become. But I soon found my

Elsa, my little grey, she carried me. I asked around in the countryside if anyone had

seen two men, one big strong and mighty, I knew at once you’d be like that, and a

lanky slinking fellow. And some came along and said they’d been robbed, and I knew

at once it was our George. And so I kept asking the way and claimed I’d been robbed

too. And when I heard complaints that two men had been there and abused their

hospitality, my heart rejoiced, for I knew you had been there. And so I came to

Babylon. Oh, Great One! Oh Great One!” The little man wept horribly. He flung

himself down in the mire at the Great One’s feet. The Great One quickly pulled him

up, glaring into the distance. George slipped away to the end of the alley to see if

anyone was eavesdropping. But of course they were speaking Babylonian.

“The man from Bremen was very kind. He gave me some gold coins when I sang to

him on the road. He too asked me who I’d learned my songs from. It was people in

black tents, who called themselves Jörücks.3 He gave me food and I had to sing the

songs into a box with a funnel, it caught the song and I heard it, afterwards it sang all

by itself from the box.”

“Is there such a thing, George?” asked Conrad, still glowering and distracted.

“For sure.” George was impatient. “We have to go.”

“And once I was in Babylon I couldn’t miss your trail. For you were seen walking

through the village, and then you got on a truck heading for Baghdad.”

“And you rode your pony the whole way? Even over the water?”

“Water? There was no water.”

“You didn’t ride in a goffle?”

“Preserve me, Great One, how would an old man like me ride in a goffle?”

“You’re a clever one,” Conrad nodded, “you’re all cleverer than me.”

“Sorrow does that,” Waldemar whispered meekly.

Now Conrad extended a hand to him and stepped grave and upright out of the

alley. He had heard the cry Airan bos!. Which he knew was cold, George paid for a

portion. And then Conrad strode through the inextricable confusion of the Maude

Bridge back to the hotel. He had already forgotten the conversation. The thronging

humanity was heavenly. The hotel was delightfully cool.

*

Yet we are destined / To find no resting place. / Dwindling and falling / These

suffering mortals / Blindly from one / Hour to another, / Hurled like water / From one

crag to the next, / Year after year down into uncertainty.4

3 Turkic tribes of central Asian origin. 4 From Hölderlin’s poem ‘Hyperion’s Song of Fate’.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

81

Two servants with differing views of their master

The other two tailed along behind.

“And how is the Great One, George, how’s he been coping? The whole way here

with my little filly I had only one thought: how will the Great One come through this.”

George snarled: “He’s come through.”

Waldemar, white-bearded homunculus, was overjoyed: “So it’s all OK. Believe me,

George, now we have the worst behind us. Now we can breathe easily again and be

happy. He saw it, really, didn’t he – Babylon?”

“The lot!”

“And didn’t give up? What a lionheart, George!”

“He shall atone! Justice!”

Waldemar was astonished: “What sort of justice? He had bad luck. We should

smooth the path for him. Our lord, our king, our chief, he is these even if every army

should defeat him. Have you forgotten, George, how we served him, with singing and

serving, trivial matters but it was not granted us to do more, and he tolerated us and

cast his glance over us all? Back then, back then – we could never thank him enough.

Now we have him here with us, George, my whole heart clings to him, I have found my

home again, what are all the temples of Babylon and all the sacrifices, for him they

were just decoration, clothing, food, a place of residence, and now, my dear

companion, now we must rejoice that we can truly be of service to him.”

George roared: “He must atone, the coward, I’m going to pay him back.”

“You’re onto a good thing, George, believe me, you’re burdening your heart for no

good reason. You’ve suffered much, George, I know, threshold, ropes, pillar, cast them

from you now. See, I found my little filly, my Elsa, I found my way to you, lots of good

auguries, you should interpret them aright. And he chose you to be his companion.”

“I’ll be his companion all right! I tell you, Waldemar, that in itself is justice! He

never finished off the Jews, we came across them yesterday in an alley, he wanted to

strike them dead, I tell you they’re living happily hereabouts, trading and what have

you. And he’s not going to finish me off. But he’ll be finished off. Without me he’s a

limp rag. A limp rag, I tell you. That’ll be justice, Waldemar, I tell you, the greatest

thing in the world is justice. Justice, let that sink in. That’s why he must atone, atone.”

Wonderful there should be such a thing as justice, how his eyes pop, old Waldemar,

so we are somebody after all, he’s never heard this before. “You’re a wicked fellow,

George. He was always just. Come, no more such talk.”

“We have time. What must come will come. Here we’re food for crows, you mark

my words. No one can keep him supplied with what he consumes. And he won’t lift so

much as a little finger.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

82

“You can’t expect him to work, George!” And the old man stood with tear-filled

eyes next to George outside the sumptuous hotel. “Ah, why must you curse Conrad

like this? When I look at him I have to weep. How clueless he is wandering around

down here. Don’t you see how everything has two aspects, joy and deprivation, lovely

fruit and hungry people, invalids and beggars, oh, exiles and lovers who must suffer?

You let him walk right into it, he who knows nothing, sees nothing, and one day surely

he will see it, and what will he do then?”

“He’ll brag, as always.”

“He’ll experience for himself, what are you saying, our Great One will experience it

for himself. No, don’t laugh. Do you know this world? We have no idea what plans it

has for us.”

George shrugged, turned away, whistled a march, climbed the steps to the hotel.

Babylonian superiority is to be buttressed by tuition, a difficult manoeuvre. The first lesson

“In this city of Baghdad,” Conrad declared, “which has given me my first taste of a

human community, I intend to remain only long enough to find a teacher who can

buttress our Babylonian superiority and Babylonian knowledge. For both are fading

hour by hour. I confess to my shame: even the yearning for my own heaven is fading. I

fear we are being tempted by pleasures. And so I request you, George, find me this

teacher, this support, this armourer.”

– “You will have heard, my dear sir, of the presence of my master, who is a

Persian khan and a pillar of the government. His name is Ibn Kurmani, and he

is lodging in this city with his caravan and a small entourage, not on pilgrimage,

but for both business and pleasure. Khan Ibn Kurmani, pillar of the

government, my dear sir, through me, his secretary, my name is Ullah Kanbu,

has come to hear of you and your great scholarship. Khan Ibn Kurmani, pillar

of the government, my dear sir, much travelled and in possession of much

knowledge, wishes to find out what you know of ancient Babylonian matters,

and wishes to procure from you the largest possible portion of that knowledge.

I myself, Ullah Kanbu, acting here as middleman, intend to agree a price with

you and expect a corresponding return. As for my master, Khan Ibn Kurmani,

pillar of the government, you are not to press him too strongly if he is

disinclined to pay attention, but the instruction must be conveyed in a manner

appropriate to a high personage. He is inclined to indolence, makes scurrilous

remarks, and has a quick temper. He will therefore hardly importune your

Excellency during lessons, but when he is in the mood will accost you

vigorously and in certain circumstances inflict upon you an armed assault. He

is well armed, wears two small daggers in his belt, plus a Browning. Khan Ibn

Kurmani, pillar of the government, my master, will tomorrow evening, as

Babylonian Exile Part Three

83

darkness falls, come to seek you out, with two companions from his intimate

circle of whom I, Ullah Kanbu, shall be one.”

Evening was falling on Baghdad. The sun’s crimson rays faded, no more glint of

minarets, cupolas, house roofs, gone the gleam from bodies of water, from palm trees

that stood now as shadowy cutouts against the celestial colours. Those colours paled.

From the east5, from an unfathomable landscape beyond the horizon, grey and black

trailed closer. Night dragged the blackness beyond the horizon in a net up over a sky

that by day had glowed. And everything on Earth grew calm and emerged onto streets

and plazas and sighed in contentment. A pleasant breeze arose, enhancing the

coolness. And up above, horde after horde of stars dared to emerge; by day they, like

humans and animals, had retired indoors and now sparkled, moved, and exhibited

their flickering brilliancy. Like a mighty widely extended army they appeared up there,

big individual stars that stood solitary in the darkness, and uncountable smaller stars

that lost themselves in the depths of the heavens.

Once this veil of darkness had been drawn across, the streets, alleys, riverbanks

and coffeehouses of Baghdad experienced a livelier ferment of people. And among

those on the move at this late hour could be found the four on whom our attention is

focused: the Babylonian, his lanky companion, the little man with the white beard,

and the nag. They set off from the Maude Hotel, where the three of them had

collected the Babylonian, for George now lodged with the other two in a small and not

very cosy caravanserai, despite Conrad’s insistence on the Han al Ortme at least, the

big old stone caravanserai among the bazaars. It wasn’t the price that deterred George,

more the tiresome questions so easily raised in such accommodation. Meanwhile the

first thing George had bought for himself in the bazaar was clothing, European, Syrian

and a respectable suit of Persian. He had a quick ear for languages. It transpired that

his ability to dress well enabled him with his sombre brown beard to bump into his

master in the street or sit across from him in a coffeehouse unrecognised. Waldemar

continued to sing in the streets, and did his bit to help out. Humbly and gladly he

handed over whatever he earned to George. He grew used to the other’s habit of

laughing horribly and handing nothing back. For the lanky fellow had a sinister notion

that he’d be able to make use at some point of the old man and his little nag, for

circumstances can arise, for example one might have found something and be unable

in an emergency to remember offhand where it came from, apart from which the old

man could provide useful contacts.

Now as these four strolled through the dark alleys and streets of Baghdad, they

were guided by a fifth, a Syrian introduced by the old man. He was to lead them

through the confusion of alleys down to the riverbank, close by a place where water

was fetched, that teemed with singing gossiping women and girls. Not far off, where

the river glinted as it slid silently on and some were still stepping in to bathe, there

stood among other wretched wooden structures the little hut of a cigarette-roller,

5 Original has ‘west’, clearly an error (made also elsewhere by Döblin).

Babylonian Exile Part Three

84

where, supposedly, lodged the elderly scholar who was willing to sell Babylonian

wisdom to Conrad and preserve him from sinking foolishly into the morass of earthly

pleasures (to which, as we have seen, he is all too inclined). An old woman with an oil

lamp led Conrad and George up to the low roof. Waldemar, his little horse and the

guide waited on the riverbank, smoking and slapping at insects. During the hour

Conrad spent up there they exchanged few words. They reclined, laughing only when

a swimmer came too near and they threw a handful of sand at him out of the darkness,

and he dived and shouted from a distance and vanished. Now and then one or the

other stood up to relieve the tail-thrashing little grey of its tormenting bloodsuckers.

On the roof, Conrad and George squatted across from a big fat living figure, which

revealed itself to be an old ponderous man sucking smoke through a water-pipe. His

face was obscured, for the only illumination came from the stars, but before long

moonlight appeared, picking out him and the whole rooftop and down below the

three lounging on the riverbank, Waldemar, the little nag and the guide, and the

glorious river flowing so wonderfully in the starglow with its swimmers and dark

clusters of palm trees. The old man sat legs crossed. Conrad and George, unfamiliar

with the customs of this world, had already noticed while on the road that this was

what people did here, they had practised, and now squatted in great discomfort, both

minded, despite their thirst for knowledge, not to let the lesson last too long.

The lesson began. The old man rocked again and said “Salaam.” The other two did

likewise. Nothing ensued.

The woman with the oil lamp emerged again from the hatch carrying a water-pipe,

which she placed before Conrad, vanished, brought another water pipe, placed it

before George. In so doing she said something they failed to understand, smiled a

smile that filled them both with revulsion, and left them alone with the hookahs.

The lesson began.

Since the teacher said nothing, just rocked and sucked smoke and now and then

glanced at them, they thought it part of the lesson. They felt for the tubes, exchanged

glances. Then George risked it, squinted and took a cautious suck. Down in the bowl

charcoal burned on the tobacco, the water in the vase cooled the smoke, removed bad

gases. And now the tobacco released its sweet fragrance and George’s features relaxed.

He nodded, took a deeper pull, and great contentment spread across his face. Conrad

observed his smile, cautiously licked the mouthpiece, took a pull and was filled with

the same pleasurable feeling. The three sat there. The old man nodded and rocked.

The mosquitoes were not much of a nuisance. It was cool. An unexpectedly pleasant

evening. It reminds me of old times, thought Conrad, looking across at George. Who

understood. They had both forgotten their august mission.

They saw that the old man had George’s letter of introduction before him. But the

fat man still said nothing, only smoked and now and then glanced across at George,

whom he clearly identified as the writer. Although filled with great contentment by

the pleasures of tobacco, these glances made George uneasy. What did this man want

Babylonian Exile Part Three

85

of him, and why did he not speak? He could speak, after all, and it was written there

what they wanted. Then, as the old man lifted up the document once more and looked

at it, George was alarmed. He had spoken of payment and the expected services, but in

the press of matters during the day had neglected to agree terms with the old man. He

laid aside the pipe hose, felt nervously at his breast where a leather purse hung under

his shirt by the belt. It was there, heaven be praised. And now George smiled at the old

man, who at once put down the paper. George got to his feet, said “Salaam” again,

bowed unusually low and placed a considerable sum on the paper. The fat man picked

it up, inspected the pile of silver coins, tucked it away at his side, and as George

squatted back down exhaled a puff of smoke. And thereupon began to speak in a

language that neither understood.

A shock! They don’t understand his Babylonian, and amuse themselves with tales of their Persian homeland

Both of them failed to realise he was speaking Persian, for the very reason that sitting

across from him were Khan Ibn Kurmani, pillar of the government, and Ullah Kanbu.

George, still sniffing roasts, responded in Arabic, advising that his master preferred to

conduct their dealings in Arabic, to which the other readily agreed and at once

introduced himself. In the darkness, in the cool of evening, by the silently flowing

river, while they smoked, the fat man spoke slowly, weighing his words like a precious

commodity. They listened quietly. Conrad found it uncommonly comforting. A flute

melody came from a nearby house, causing the fat man frequently to interrupt himself,

and a man’s voice sang along:

“As earlier you flew into the heights, so now you have plunged into the depths, my

heart. As earlier you traversed rivers and lakes, now you have come down to dry land,

my heart. My youth came and went like a wind, its gift lingers like honey on my gums.

Have you become a bud, a rose, a ruined garden fallen into alien hands, my heart?”

“You will encounter and experience much here in Baghdad, gentlemen,” said the

fat man, “if you stay long enough. At first, if you are here for only a week, the city will

impress you as disorderly, ill-kept, even chaotic. It will be like a woman who has slept

badly and goes about the house tired and grumpy, no pleasant sight for her spouse

who has slept well, and a cause of apprehension for the little children and especially

for the staff, should there be any. But if you stay longer in this city which you honour

with your visit, all this will change. Have you ever met with fresh snow in the

mountains, on the high plateau, in spring, at a season when you did not expect it? You

will regard the lovely snow with unease, but only because you had expected something

else, vernal mildness, young buds, the twittering of birds. One must face up to things.”

With this he concluded his preface, and made way for the water-pipe, the flute and

the singer. Who sang: “As earlier you flew into the heights, so now you have plunged

into the depths, my heart. As earlier you traversed rivers and lakes, now you have

come to dry land, my heart. My youth gone, gone with the wind that carries away the

Babylonian Exile Part Three

86

faint perfume of scented flowers. Gone my youth, and with it soon my maturity like a

raging river unable to free itself from the sands that it must carry along, and it

becomes muddy and will soon sink into the swamp.”

The fat man nodded: “You understand what he’s singing, gentlemen? I know the

man. It’s his brother playing the lute, he’s blind. How he himself ended up in the city I

know not, once he herded goats and camels out there with his tribe, he must have

done something bad. Now he’s a porter, but the biggest burden he carries is his family,

who cause him trouble. They support themselves in dubious ways.”

The two as they smoked absorbed this into their mellow mood. George felt

compelled out of courtesy to ask idly how this man and his family might find their way

to the right path again. The fat man sighed: “Just look at me. I was a teacher in my

community. The vagaries of fate played badly with me, so I had to leave my home, and

in the end I have grown not in wealth but in knowledge, and unfortunately in girth

also. If you wish to help the man singing there, I shall inform him. They are people of

Kurdish origin, one daughter is alas a dancer.”

“My master might be interested to see her dance,” suggested George.

“No, no. She dances in disreputable places, in a bad part of the city, you will never

have been there.” The fat man quickly saw the prospect of future income becoming

diluted by this dancing woman, and after a few puffs changed the subject: “We must

come to the point.” It was not clear which point he meant. “Anyway, in our city love is

no novelty. Indeed, if you wander through the city and its environs you will come

across symbols of scholarship and piety, but also a marvellous monument to married

love. You know the tomb of Zubaidah.” This they had no trouble denying. The fat man

told them where it lay, on the west bank of the Tigris at the edge of the desert, near an

ancient Mohammedan cemetery.

“There rests Zubaidah, at the farthest edge of the burial ground. She was the

dearest love of the Caliph, Haroun al-Rashid. The structure you will see there was not

erected by him, it resembles a small slender grapefruit. Her name has not passed from

memory. During his life he kept her always at his side, and when she was no longer

with him still wanted her at his side. But when he bit the dust they carried him off a

thousand miles to Meshad, the shrine of Imam6 Musa.”

They smoked. The old man threw in: “Actually he wasn’t that much of a homebody,

as you can tell from the fairytales. As Persians you’ll know all about that.”

“Of course, of course,” Conrad confirmed. Even George said: “Naturally” and blew

several sorrowful clouds of smoke. He snarled: “We Persians have no good opinion of

Haroun al-Rashid. There are certain things we cannot forget.”

“You see,” the fat man said delighted, “here we have proof that history is alive. The

people of course know him only as the friend of fairytales, as the magician who slips

6 Original has ‘Iman’ – silently corrected.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

87

disguised down alleys, and eavesdrops and interferes. But that was the Barmakids.” He

gave a gloomy nod, and stared ahead.

“Yes, the Barmakids,” George too nodded glowering, “a bad business.” And Conrad

sucked on the mouthpiece, felt good and made fierce grimaces. Heaven knows,

thought the Babylonians, who these Barmakids are, but it was definitely a bad chapter.

George declared firmly, “My mother told us about these Barmakids when we were

little, on certain dull days when the clouds hung low. We were all deeply affected. She

used to wear traditional Persian costume at such times. She was a handsome woman

right into her old age.”

“Peace be to her ashes,” the fat man bowed his head. “Old Barmak came from Balch

in Persia, I’ve heard it said. You gentlemen know the place. It lies in Afghanistan.”

George pondered: “Balch, Balch, let me think, we’ve come through many places in

our long lives, places big and small, old and new. All have a name, some change the

name, or the pronunciation suddenly changes. Balch, do you know Balch, Khan Ibn

Kurmani?”

Conrad, uninterested, thought a while, then declared decisively: “I know Balch.”

“There’s said to be also a river Balch,” the fat man suggested.

“Oh, we know that one,” George confirmed happily. “The river Balch is well known

in Afghanistan. And whenever my mother saw rainclouds approaching and the

mosquitoes began to sting more fiercely, we all withdrew to the cellar, she’d join us in

the traditional Persian costume handed down through the generations, we children

would gather around and she’d begin to tell us all about Berthold.”

“Barmak,” the fat man corrected him.

“Quite right, in Persian we say Berthold, every land has its own customs, its own

language. She’d tell us such lovely stories, we’ve never forgotten them, about the river

that Berthold was born beside. A wide foaming river, she said, it foamed and raged and

threw up waves. She made it really vivid. Even now, so long after she was torn from us

children and we can no longer hear her voice, I remember how she described the river

where Berthold was born and spent his childhood and earliest youth.”

“Yes, he left there early on.”

“Very early, too early. But life beside that river was not in vain. Through all his

deeds there came the roar of this foaming river. We Persians take delight in this, out

of local patriotism. Seriously, it’s one of our vices. This river.”

Conrad gazed in astonishment at his assistant, George pleased him nattering away

into the air like this. But George ignored him, and continued in a schoolmasterly tone

to the fat man: “Ah, were I to tell you, great Khan, and you, wise teacher, of this river,

which flowed also through my own childhood, I would not know where to begin or

where to end. Our mother depicted everything with such clarity. Near to our town the

river had a certain width. After leaving the town it maintained this width for a stretch,

Babylonian Exile Part Three

88

later it changed. Its roar could be heard from afar, even the deaf are said to have heard

it. The waters flowed in a never-changing stream, and at a speed which people who

have travelled widely can confirm to be remarkable. Thus horses, positioned in groups

of four on the riverbanks both left and right near our town to measure the speed and

which were supposed to storm away at the sound of the starting pistol, are said on the

first occasion not to have stormed away, the powder in the pistols having grown damp

from persistent rains. So then the signal was given by the old and very dirty shirt of a

shepherd, whose name I forget (but that’s of no matter), a child was assigned the task

of swinging the shirt, but because the child was so small the horses failed to notice

and stayed put. Because the shirt was so dirty, hence dark, the third attempt also

foundered, the shirt had to be replaced, no white shirt was immediately available, the

start was postponed, the crowd became very restless. At the fourth attempt the start

succeeded, when one horse from the first four on the left bank became impatient, it

had been poorly fed and wanted to go off to graze, and then they all set off. It was a

tremendous spectacle when the thirty-six horses on each bank of the river, watched

eagerly by the entirety of the populace arrayed on nearby hills as if on terraces, raced

along the banks and learned men watched carefully to see which ran faster, the horses

or the river. The matter remained undecided. As most such matters are not decided.

Moreover one horse lagged considerably behind the others. Enquiries were made to

find its owner, and it proved to belong to a very rich man who took little care of his

livestock. Such deficient participation in a public event – but I am wearying you,

gentlemen. The matter concluded with the banishment of this rich man, who however

soon returned and still lives there to this day. All this and much more did our mother

narrate to us on dull days about this river. We cannot forget. When we Persians go

travelling, we often dwell on our childhood.”

“That is understandable,” the astonished fat man agreed. He had kept wanting to

interrupt and ask questions, but George’s gale-force delivery afforded no openings. He

sat there uneasily. What did these people want. He cast around for the point of the

conversation. What he himself wanted was clear enough, namely to fleece them. “But

near to this river,” he groped uncertainly for the topic, “are found famous ruins from

an earlier age. Allow me to refresh your memories. The ruins of ancient Bactria.”

“Very well,” George generously conceded; “whether we called it Bactria I really

don’t know. When an indigenous resident led us on one occasion through the ruins of

Bactria, my master and me, he tried to persuade Khan Ibn Kurmani, pillar of the

government, to restore the ruins and erect a sightseeing tower, maybe a hotel as well,

but we wouldn’t be drawn in. The fellow seemed unreliable. And the economic crisis

was casting its long shadow.”

Conrad laughed out loud. “Yes, it was Bactria. He meant to take us for a ride. But

he failed.” Whereat they jointly and severally sat silently smiling into the darkness and

retreated into themselves. They heard the shouts of swimmers being pelted by the

Syrian. Stars twinkled grandly. For a long while the mournful flute proceeded alone,

then suddenly the monotonous male voice started up again.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

89

There was the man, his daughter Zobeida, love. How big the world was. How

curiously entwined. Such a puzzling confusion. And now the old man raised a hand,

pointed over the roof out across the river. The other two saw nothing. The fat man

kept smiling, and pointed more emphatically. So Conrad took advantage of this

fleeting opportunity to unfold himself from the uncomfortable cross-legged squatting,

and George followed his example. And they stood, flexed knees, stretched, hobbled

closer to the edge of the roof. Where they saw what the old man meant. The moon

had just disappeared behind clouds, so the river was running black.

Two little lights were floating side by side on the black water, delicate little lights.

The current carried them on. The old man: “Those are lights placed on little boats by a

lover, a woman or a girl, and launched onto the water. And what do they mean by it?

One of the lights is herself, the other the man she loves, whose love she seeks to

secure, or from whom she wishes to receive a child. And now she is asking Fate. She

cannot be seen as she stands on the riverbank. But she is standing there somewhere,

maybe at the place where water is fetched, maybe watching from a bridge. How long

shall the two lights remain side by side. How she rejoices, ah, he is with me, he

remains by my side, I shall win him, he is mine. Then a wave comes, they are torn

apart, she watches, her heart thuds, she cannot bear to see what will come, but it was

just a little ripple, little boat drifts back to little boat, they bump against one another,

stay together, such a blissful sight, many along the banks are following the voyage.”

Conrad stood deep in thought beside his companion. After a while he turned, laid

an arm on George’s shoulder, and said: “We must be off. The evening grows late.”

George still had to come to an arrangement with the old man. At a handclap the old

woman with the little lamp appeared. The steps led down. Waldemar and the Syrian

stood up from the sand. And so the five of them headed for home.

Second Babylonian lesson. The old man brings out the big guns, the pupils come off badly

Two days passed, during which Conrad devoted himself to strolling through bazaars

and sipping sodas on the hotel terrace, and George to obscure activities, before they

made their way again in the cool of evening down to the riverbank for another

Babylonian-buttressing lesson.

“What do we want from this fatso,” George had asked. “Up to now he’s told us

nothing about Babylon. Who can say if he actually knows anything.”

“We shall go,” Conrad decreed. “He is holding back. A man of his girth is sedate,

and does not rush madly in.”

Not a moment of his existence was displeasing to Conrad, not a moment seemed

empty. The old rascal felt extraordinarily well, and equipped with everything necessary

to enjoy his human body and all that the world offered.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

90

For it is certain: thousands of stars twinkle in the

night sky, and they have bequeathed to me a great

blessing. The twinkling of each one is a joy to me, I

gaze at it and give it my joy in return. So wide is the

world outspread, so immense the outpouring of

heaven, yet it is not sundered but swims like a fish

with strong fins now here, now there, and carries me

with it on its journey.

On the way to the fat man’s place their path

crossed with a torchlit procession emerging from an

alley onto open ground. A Jewish corpse was being

borne to the cemetery by torchlight through the

darkness amid wailing laments. George whispered:

“Dead Jew.” Conrad stood enraptured. Even here

fortune’s breath was on him.

Torches flickered red out of the dark alley. They flickered red with black smoke.

They said: “Please excuse us. We have absolutely no wish to impose. All we wanted

was to show you this wretched alley. How merrily our light brightens these walls and

windows. Observe the long fluttering shadows behind us.”

The wailing women and their hand gestures meant to convey: “Don’t let our

keening trouble you. We’ll be done in a jiffy.”

The three coffin-bearers, one at the head, two behind: “This is how we must stoop,

we want to show you how heavy a person can be. Corpse-bearer is not our profession,

we are his relatives. Harken to our tread down the alley, step by step, all keeping pace.”

The corpse lay between boards. As it passed Conrad, it couldn’t resist pushing up a

loosely-nailed board and sticking its head out. It shook off the shroud, said in a

sonorous voice: “Greetings, lord, what a surprise. Thank you for showing me the

honour of standing there, though I am but a simple man. For taking the trouble at this

late hour. But you have business to attend to.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

91

“A lesson!” Conrad corrected.

“A lesson! Yes, always be learning, my dear sir. One needs only a smidgen, of

course. But now I must lie down again, I mustn’t interrupt the ceremony. A very good

evening to you.” And with a shake of the head it flicked the shroud over its face,

straightened up in the coffin, the loose board rattled slightly.

They sat on the roof with the fat man’s water-pipes, Conrad and George. Khan Ibn

Kurmani was still distracted. For the sky, black and immense, was speaking to him:

“Revered Lord Conrad, since you have encountered so much of interest on your

journey, I shall not shrink back. I have no wish to hide my light under a bushel. I

should like in my modest way to contribute to your wellbeing. You see how lovely I

have made myself, for you, for you! You do not yet know the elegance of the rustling

genteelly scented world. You are making your way into it. I am a noble voluptuous

east-westerly lady. Custom demands I keep my face fully veiled. Now and then you

may catch a glimpse of my eyes that shall betray certain things to you. I am wearing a

long black silken dress, my best, for you! Note the delicate silver chasing, I am so

proud of it, am I vain? Allow me my pleasures, lord, we all have our weaknesses. Do I

please you? I am so glad. My greeting, Lord Conrad. My hand.”

The river’s glinting: “For thee! Just to break up the darkness.”

Undoubtedly other objects were also expressing themselves, house roofs, a few

swallows, but their words were not directed at Conrad, they were merely passing

remarks about him, reacting to him in a humorous vein.

This time, as soon as greetings had been exchanged, George handed over to the fat

man their credentials in the form of silver coins. Tobacco smoke, shouts from

swimmers, distant hum of the city. The fat man: “I cradle myself in the hope that my

recent words did not fail to elicit your applause. I myself, dear sirs, can assure you that

the long hours I have spent in reflection here above the waters of the Tigris have been

much occupied with your observations and remarks. In particular what Mr Ullah

Kanbu, in a manner no less apposite than his words were eloquent, related of the river

Balch in Afghanistan.” George felt obliged to interject: “Don’t forget about the lessons

that my master, Khan Ibn Kurmani, pillar of the government, wishes to purchase from

you regarding things Babylonian.”

“Great matters are not conquered by direct assault, what is good is not attained by

avoiding what is less good. One who crosses a river does not neglect to make

preparations, tuck up his clothes, negotiate with the boatman. A camel rider who

attaches himself to a wandering caravan –”

“I understand,” George nodded. Wary of his master he forbore to add: “You old

fraud.” So he kept the growling to himself.

The old man drew a huge pair of spectacles from his jacket and in the light of the

tremendous night sky and the oil lamp at his side read from a book that lay at hand.

This occurred in a language they failed to understand. Since the two of them were

Babylonian Exile Part Three

92

afraid it might be Persian, they nodded now and then and showed attentive faces. But

when the double-Dutch recital never ended, Conrad looked across at George, which

emboldened George to clear his throat several times so noisily that the fat man looked

across at him and removed his spectacles. He asked amicably: “Does it weary you? I

am rushing ahead too quickly. But these are the first basics. My method consists first

in educating the ears. It is through the ears that language enters the mind and then

reaches the tongue. You have at least become aware of the sound of the Babylonian

language, a somewhat rude and unfamiliar sound.”

“Peculiar,” George interrupted; he was quite crushed.

“As to be expected from its antiquity.”

“Please, worthy sir,” Conrad pleaded, he was quite anxious, “read on a little way. I

want to listen with care.”

The old man replaced his spectacles, took up the book, and read and read. He read

fluently, with great expressiveness. Now and then there seemed to come a question,

now and then he raised a finger, smiled at them and seemed to be drawing their

attention to something. He spoke through his nose. Sometimes in singsong. Drops of

sweat broke out on Conrad’s brow. He whispered to George: “You see! I was right. We

know nothing now. We’ve gone to the dogs. We shan’t leave Baghdad until we’ve

learned it all.” They both sat there, struck dumb, deflated. The old man read on,

gesticulated. At last he broke off to warn: “You’ve allowed your water-pipes to go out.”

And the sister had to come with charcoal refills.

Once the woman had left, the fat man started complacently up again. “We shall

now take a break, and I shall give you, as your friend, a Baghdad potpourri. Agreed?

First, the Baghdad Railway.” A second volume lay open on his lap, into which the fat

man now and then glanced. “The Baghdad Railway. The line some 2400 kilometers

long from Konya7 in Asia Minor via Adana, Mosul, Baghdad, Basra to the Persian Gulf,

a continuation of the Anatolian Railway, is part-completed and in operation. Of note

is the 3795 meter tunnel through the Taurus Mountains completed in October 1918.

The line, constructed by a Franco-German bank consortium since 1899, is partly under

British and partly under Turkish administration. But that could change.” He smiled

intently at the other two. The other two declared that they hoped so too.

“We are in a bad way,” thought Conrad. “Babylon is finished. The city lies deep

under the earth, and we with it. How shall we come out of this? Is he a fraud or is he

not? Anyway, his instructional methods are deplorable.”

Now the fat teacher pushed the oil lamp aside, took off the spectacles and grew

relaxed. “How beautiful the city looks! It’s time you started to enjoy it. Your ears

should be cleansed of those foreign sounds. I don’t wish to overburden you,

gentlemen.” And he calmly clapped both volumes shut.

7 Original has ‘Kovia’. Silently amended.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

93

They clomped downstairs. At the riverbank the other three, the Syrian, Waldemar

and his nag, turned in surprise to see them back so soon. But there was nothing for

them to do. Conrad and George settled on a rotting log a little apart from the others.

Conrad was utterly contrite. He couldn’t keep it to himself, had to confess to

George: “You heard him, he read out to us, such a long passage, I listened with ears

pricked up like a mangy dog, and understood none of it. That’s how it is.”

George’s head too was drooping. “I knew that coming down here changes us.

Nothing stays in the same place. You must be thankful you still know your own name.

But changing the language as well?”

“We don’t even speak Babylonian any more, George. You heard. The ground is

gone from under our feet. In the end we’re just ordinary people. What can we do.”

George sighed. Hesitantly he asked: “Do you want to go back up there, Great One?

Can you? You heard him, they all left.”

Unhappy Conrad shook his head, opened his arms: “I know how badly things stand

with us. Don’t make my heart even heavier. We’re refugees, outcasts. But I don’t want

this, don’t want it. I can’t drown here, go down without a fight.” These words were

deeply felt.

“Just don’t start up again like you did in the cave, Great One, when it was raining.”

“What can we hold onto, George?”

Conrad stood up, his face grim. But he wouldn’t have been the glutton and

epitome of arrogance that he was if he hadn’t within half an hour nattered his mood

away. At noon next day he had his triumph. George arrived through the burning heat

at the hotel, where Conrad was sitting in the bar drinking sodas at breakneck speed

with an elderly English lady. George had a book in his hand, one of those from which

the fat man had read. George beamed: “His sister lent it me for a few pennies, he’d just

gone out. The fellow’s up to no good. He’s a cook by trade. It wasn’t Babylonian at all

that he read to us. I asked her if he knew Babylonian. She had no idea what that is.

The book’s Persian, a school book with travel descriptions, recipes and so on.

“How marvellous.”

“Of course we should have recognised it. But the scoundrel realised we’re not

Persians, and made fools of us, for a hefty fee.”

“No matter, George. A rock has rolled from my heart. Pay attention: victory (but

what victory exactly?) is ours. Now we plough ahead with redoubled force! A new

teacher, George, and quickly!

A new teacher is sought. We present: Nadji the tippler

The new teacher, pointed out to George in his caravanserai, was a decayed drunken

person of middle years and Turkish origin. He had no fixed abode, appeared every day

Babylonian Exile Part Three

94

in the caravanserai to make himself useful to someone or other. He generally met with

a great distrust, but not to the extent of being thrown out. Such creatures were as

much at home in the caravanserai as cockroaches. He wore a pair of coarse once-white

wide trousers, and possessed a broom, a candlestick and two lengths of rope,

occasionally also an axe with which he could help chop wood.

This man, Nadji by name, was to be Conrad’s second Babylonian teacher and

support. For certain confidants in the caravanserai assured George: Nadji was a failed

teacher, who at one time had taught in far-off Constantinople. His lamentable taste for

drink allied with indifference to all external events had brought him, they said, to this

rickety pass. George should lose no time engaging him. And he had stashed a pile of

books from his better times with his cousin Himmatyil, a tavern-keeper.

Conrad and George soon found themselves at Himmatyil’s, led by the Syrian,

Waldemar and the old grey nag. Never expecting to see such noble visitors in his dive,

the host fussed about them all evening, cleared half the barroom of its crowd of rogues

and layabouts, and they had to sample many varieties of his wines. He presented these

remarkably cloudy concoctions, now yellow, now red, now hyacinth-blue, as wines

from “Aleman”, i.e. Germany, “Ingiliz”, meaning English, “More”, Greece. “Bozdja Ada”

he praised a supposed Muscat, “Kata Khoriya” a marvel from Constantinople. The

crowd around him, unemployed artisans, habitual topers, fishermen with willow

baskets, contented itself with an especially cheap liquor, which resembled the meat

left clinging to tendons in that it was made from grape residues and was called bir

shisha düz.8 A big lamp hung from the ceiling, a Negro, a waiter and a candle-pourer

sat at a side table where a feeble light was burning, each had a glass in front of him,

and because they weren’t able to bellow just now were playing an exciting game with

an apple. Each held a short knife in his fist, one threw the apple with his left hand, and

each tried to catch it on his knife and in one stroke split it in two.

Conrad’s three-headed retinue were enjoying an entertaining wait. Out on the

stone terrace, the greater part of the clientele had piled around the three trying to find

out who they were, and because these gents could make no headway with the dumb

Syrian they attached themselves to Waldemar and his nag. First they tried to extract

money from Waldemar. Then they set about ascertaining his disposition, or at least

that of his nag. “What do they call you,” one asked the nag. It kept silent. “You see, she

doesn’t answer,” said another, “she doesn’t know your language. Come, horsey, tell us

your name. Tupsus? No. Hedy Agam? No. She’s not called Tupsus or Hedy Agam. So

what might our little nag be called? Has she confided her name to you, stranger?”

Waldemar explained that he had named her Elsa. They all burst out laughing, and

offered the old man ironic congratulations. They made circuitous friendly overtures.

Waldemar, they all agreed, had taken the easy way out: see a horse and give it a name.

“But where did you get the name from? Every animal wants its proper name. Else we

could call you Knapsack, or Piglet!” So they continued to examine the nag, and it came

8 ? “One smooth water-pipe”.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

95

to an end only when one stepped up to the nag and asked: “Is your name Okkalyk?”

meaning Liter-guzzler, and breathed up at her from his liquor-smelling jaws.

Whereupon the nag threw her head high, they took this for a yes, and amid general

enthusiasm christened her Okkalyk with dregs from their cups of wine and liquor. The

owner protested, for his little nag couldn’t stand even a dram of liquor. They laughed:

“She says otherwise. She should know.”

And then, knowing now who they were dealing with, they went into a huddle to

discuss how to separate the little nag from her owner. For he didn’t feed her properly,

and mistreated her.

First session with the new tutor. A run-up, anyway

Inside the barroom, meanwhile, the poor devil had turned up, the Turkish sage, who

wrapped his baldness in an enormous turban and hobbled in on bandy legs. The legs,

he explained, had gone crooked when he was still a youth, a schoolboy in Stamboul,

for he’d had an insatiable appetite to devour the wisdom of the Koran, to become a

hafiz, guardian of the doctrine, and his tender legs weren’t up to the task. The hairs on

his head had fallen out early, deprived of the nutrition sucked away by his brain. But

then sorrow over a lost love brought liquor into his life. For while love is an elegant

little plant, love denied is a knotty oak tree. Sorrow over a lost love had suppressed all

the knowledge in him. Then came wine and liquor, and proof of the proverb: wine

turns a man into a flea-market, and whatever a man has in him he lets out into the

daylight. That’s how it went with the lovestruck fellow: “Eyerče scylemez ama neler

belar ašg: even when he does not speak, what does the lovestruck man not know.”

The host, in whose estimation Nadji had suddenly risen, did not lead him at once

to the parlour where he had accommodated the honoured guests, but first sat with

him at the serving table and did what he could to make him aware of the situation.

“They want you to instruct them, Nadji.”

“I know.”

“You will take no more drink, Nadji.” – “I know.”

“I shall give you these anchovies, to sober you up.”

Nadji eyed these with a worried look, swallowed some down.

“Now stay by my side, Nadji. I’ve cleared out my room so you can teach in it. You

will show me, honestly, what knowledge you have in you to impart, and we shall make

an honest division, for you still owe me lots and will still owe a lot.”

“As God wills.”

“They can drink as they learn, as much as they want, for it eases the uptake of

wisdom, but you must remain sober, Nadji. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

96

“Otherwise they will soon stay away and I shan’t let you in here any more.”

The host now tried to nudge Nadji into the room, but still he sat miserably and was

an obstinate mule. The host could say what he liked, he always answered, “Yes, for

sure,” but kept sitting there. At last he lifted up his tear-stained face: “How am I to

speak and instruct and such critical noble persons, when my old sorrow has returned

and a band of iron has wrapped itself around my breast? I shan’t be able to say a word.”

“You shall. Pull yourself together.”

“Do you know what halym is, host? The illumination of the heart. We have a

human heart. And when we grow old it beats sluggishly. It is no longer wood, but

stone. My heart doesn’t want to burn. I am without illumination.”

“Then you are no sage, Nadji. Then you are a fraud and know nothing.”

“I know everything, more than anyone here and in all of Baghdad. But the well is

plugged. Take tongs, remove the plug, and the well shall flow again. Give me halym,

host, and I shall speak.”

So there was nothing left but to dress the anchovies with a little light wine, which

dried Nadji’s tears. Nadji smiled again. He stood on his bandy legs. “Oh God,” said the

host as he led him along, “into what puddles does your light fall.” In they went.

It could be seen that this not particularly clean room had been kitted out by the

host in a surprising manner, with borrowed mats and a superb new carpet lent by a

long-time regular who was in the trade. There were even water-pipes. The host

squatted next to his guests and handed out little cups of coffee. No conversation

started up, and this, as the host correctly read from Nadji’s mournful features, because

of the coffee. Nadji was taking sips, true, but his head drooped and he had a troubled

look. Rage stirred in the host. After a polite inconsequential exchange of words with

the guests, he served more coffee. Everyone kept silent over the little cups, held them

before the mouth, breathed in the warm fragrance. And nothing happened.

“Halym!” implored Nadji into the air. “Yes, halym!” the host hissed, and had to

restrain himself from setting about the old rogue.

“Halym,” the bandy-legged man said again. He flicked a dark doglike glance across

at the presiding host, who had a cup in the palm of his left hand and was tugging at

his beard with the right and growling wordlessly. When the glance was not returned

and silence reigned, it became clear to the outraged host that Nadji was about to stand

up and leave. The rascal was emitting hoarse gasps, he clutched at his throat, gave

every sign of incipient death from thirst. Now the host was led to put the best face on

a bad situation and haul the tiller around. From the mouth of the host, who saw

himself as a jovial man of business, came friendly enlivening words, sonorous recited

verses for which he had his feeble companion to thank: “Waiter, bring him wine,

which is the foundation of the soul! And which means peace. That wine which

polishes the heart of the perfect man, and harms the understanding only of the callow.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

97

The host, adept at handling every situation, had struck exactly the right note. Nadji

made to jump up at once and rush off to the barroom, but the host went “pssh, pssh,”

clapped his hands in an old-fashioned way. The waiter, greeted by Nadji’s neighing

laugh and the host’s menacing look, still with the knife from the apple game in his fist,

stuck his flushed head around the door. And was instructed to bring wine. The host

rattled off lots of names, at each name expressing delight. Nadji eagerly seconded the

emotion. They sat, drank and in a short while illumination, halym, was with Nadji.

Nadji expresses astonishment in a variety of ways at the foreigners’ intention to learn Babylonian, of all things

To start with he made derogatory remarks about anchovies and coffee, asserting that

anchovies came from water and already drew fluid to themselves, salt increased this

tendency, so he must beg pardon for his great thirst, which came not from his own

nature but from anchovies. Coffee has heat; but whoever would teach should not be a

pan of coals. So he must leave no stone unturned in damping down the calorific nature

of coffee. And he drank and drank and it was clear that he had come away victorious

over the coffee and had also quelled the nature of the anchovies. Unlike the fat sage on

the rooftop by the Tigris, this barroom scholar at once grabbed the bull by the horns.

“Babylonian,” he said, “is what you wish to learn, to bolster your knowledge of

Babylonian matters. One hears Babylonian, thinks Babylonian, and asks himself, why

Babylonian? Not that one has anything against Babylonian, on the contrary, a great

love for Babylonian, which is of course a noble thing, but why just this and not that,

and if that then why not something else? When we know how full the world is, how

packed from top to bottom. Like a strong camel on a trek through the desert.

Babylonian, I ask you, dear host, you’re an old man, have you or any of your relatives

or anyone else in this house ever had a desire to learn Babylonian? I see you deny it.

That is enough for me. You have never had this desire. But here in your house, in your

parlour, received ceremoniously by you, here sit two foreigners, nobles, great men,

Khan Ibn Kurmani and his assistant Ullah Kanbu, and outside there are two other men

of his retinue in the company of a grey nag, and it is not inconceivable that they too

are filled with the same urge for knowledge. So many all of a sudden wish to learn

Babylonian. How long have you been in Baghdad, host?”

The hesitant answer: “Thirty-five years.”

Nadji opened his left hand in acknowledgement, with the right grabbed the glass

and offered a toast: “I should like to congratulate you. Thank you for enduring this city

for thirty-five years. She does not make it easy for everyone. I have served here even

longer. But when, I ask myself in this lovely hour, when have four men ever crossed

my path all at once, two of them nobles, aristocrats, two of princely stature, who all

wish to learn Babylonian? When? Tell me, host!”

“Never, I think.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

98

“Exactly so. He has spoken, noble sirs. You heard him yourselves. Never. Ne-e-ve-er.

Never, neither back in Stamboul, nor here. So many thousands of people, Stamboul

might house a million, among the millions who have passed before my eyes, before the

war, during the war, after the war, there was not one to be found who wanted to learn

Babylonian! And now here you sit before me, witnessed by this room and our generous

host and myself.”

The host bowed in apology to Conrad: “He is a clever man, and because he

normally thinks a lot and keeps silent, now he’s talkative.” Conrad raised both hands

with a placating smile: “Please, please.”

“You are a student of character, a connoisseur of humanity,” Nadji continued.

“With you, every being is in good hands. What is small you allow to be small, what is

big, big. Nothing annoys you, nothing astonishes you.” His puffy little eyes stared

raptly at Conrad and George, George and Conrad. They found it pleasing, for this man

was different from the first teacher, the fat man who kept silent so long, swaddled

himself in dignity and in the end was just a fraud. Here you saw a heart.

Nadji trilled: “In the twelfth sura of the Koran it is written, Joseph, peace be upon

him, revealed to Mecca: Joseph the son of Jacob found favour with the wife of Potiphar,

but he said God forbid! Sinners can never be happy, and resisted the woman’s

attempts to have him lie with her. They ran towards the door and she tore his shirt

from behind and accused him to her husband. Then the women of the city mocked

and said: ‘She invited her young slave to sin with her, she loves him and means to

deceive her husband.’ So Potiphar invited the women to a dinner, laid a knife before

each one and said to Joseph: ‘Come, show yourself to them!’ Now when they saw him

they were so entranced by his beauty that they failed to notice that, instead of the fruit,

they were slicing into their own hands, and said: ‘This is no human creature, but an

angel.’ So bedazzled were the women by Joseph, and forgot what feeling and propriety

are. But you noblemen are not bedazzled! You are mirrors of rectitude. Do you know,

host, these noblemen understand me, do not send me away, accept me, in their

vicinity I feel as if in a lovely bath, they grant me my miserable existence, ah, without

house or home, without wife or child, with no regular nourishment or proper clothing.

Ah, if my mother could see how I am treated.”

He wept quietly and muttered gloomily to himself, his fat nose dripped. How were

they to extract wisdom from this man. The host defended himself: “He enjoys my

hospitality every day. Pull yourself together, Nadji. Or else the foreigners will think

you a drunkard, raving nonsensically.”

“Halym,” Nadji beamed, “not raving, but wine brings illumination. Prove to me,

host, that I am drunk and you are sober! Prove it! I’m sitting here and you there, prove

it to me. I’m waiting.” And he gave the host a challenging look. “I must insist that you

prove it, for you attack my honour. I may not be as noble as these here, but still I have

my honour. I have to sin against the commandment not to touch wine, for if I do not

commit this sin I must commit a bigger one, dear sirs. I am a preserver of knowledge,

Babylonian Exile Part Three

99

and that I am so is conferred upon me. But none of God’s creatures is perfect. And so

it has also been given me to keep silent, to be stubborn, and keep to myself what I

know. I saw myself at a fork in the road, and in deciding between two sins plumped for

this one. I have sacrificed myself, but many have profited from it. Is it fair to reprove

me for my dependence on wine? Tell me, noble sirs! For the sake of humanity!”

Conrad and George both hastened to assure him of their sympathy. As far as they

were concerned, they had just one desire: that he impart to them all that he knew.

They would gladly grant him whatever he needed.

These were magnificent words, sugar to Nadji’s ears. Clicking his tongue he shook

his giant head with the giant turban, his whole figure swayed in bliss. Emerging from

his transport, tender reproaches against the host, the host’s menacing looks in return,

Nadji resumed his theme: “Babylon! And this is a famous place on the Euphrates and

once was a great city and a great people lived there and great kings ruled there and –

were gone! For they were blown away because they were unrighteous, and would not

repent their sins. The works of these people were in vain, and they remain forever in

the fires of Hell. Strike! Strike!” And he beat his fist on the mat next to him and kept

repeating the truculent threatening word: “Strike! Strike! And they should be gone,

along with all their temples and wicked towers, because they served false gods. And

their buildings were not founded on righteousness and piety, but on the edge of a

sandbank washed by water, which tumbled them into the fires of Hell. Strike!”

Now he fell silent, took a swig and looked closely at Conrad: “You have heard, dear

sir, that even these wretches spoke a language and differed at least in that respect

from animals. Now you wish to explore the manner in which these wretches spoke.

This is another proof of your benevolence. You desire that even those wretches should

abide. Do so! Would that everyone emulated you and followed your example. But

wicked spirits exist, and Satan. The wicked spirits ascend into the starry heavens, into

the Zodiac, try to penetrate the secrets of Heaven and reveal them to sorcerers. They

are driven back with fiery rocks. Many works of mankind, and many languages, are of

this kind. One must take care not to disturb them, so that one is not placed in danger.

And so I ask you, and must put you formally and searchingly to the test: What, how,

why do you wish to learn Babylonian? Are you not afraid? What? How? Why?”

Conrad and George sat stunned under this assault, but declared they weren’t afraid.

“And why, why?” Nadji insisted on knowing why, and tried to entice the host to join

him in this question. But he sat unwilling all the while, and finally burst out: “Don’t

ask so many questions! If someone wants to buy something, you should just let them.”

Nadji’s stream of wisdom is stopped by a tremendous revelation from the foreigners: they seek buried treasure

After brief deliberation, Nadji started to respond with a story about what had

happened to him twenty years earlier at the Prisoner’s Gate, where – but George now

Babylonian Exile Part Three

100

proffered an explanation of their thirst for knowledge that fully satisfied Nadji. For

George, concerned that here too he would be cheated of a proper return for his money,

quickly span a yarn about their extensive properties in the Babylon area, they had sure

intelligence of buried treasure in the field of ruins, had learned that certain tablets in

their possession contained precise instructions for locating the treasure, and they

distrusted the European researchers, all those poor beggars from Bremen and Berlin

who would of course fall upon the finds and you have to get there first and if in the

contingency that they, meaning Khan Ibn Kurmani and he himself Ullah Kanbu, did

find something beneath the crust of soil and rubble, things of great value in gold,

silver, jewels, works of art or even just raw materials, they wouldn’t hesitate or demur

to think of their teacher, and they were prepared this very day, right now, here in this

tavern, this very hour, in this parlour, to enter into a contract with him confirming

that and how much, contingent obviously, a proportionate share of the excavated

finds, the treasure, should accrue to him. Written, read, signed and sealed right here

by the three of them, witnessed by the host.

This pronouncement, backed up by Conrad, impressed Nadji no end. And the host

as well. It was the latter who at once intimated that before the contract was settled he

would like a word in George’s ear, so as not to burden the Khan with trivialities. After

some hemming and hawing he indicated that all it was, was a matter so to speak of not

easily specified middleman fees due to him, because as a matter of fact he hadn’t

exactly led Nadji to the foreigners, anyway put him in a position and introduced him,

just in order to help him attain his halym and administer to them his important key

knowledge of Babylonian things. Nadji himself, sitting there unmoving, now suddenly

realised the huge role he had to prepare himself to play in the world. Never before had

he stood (or sat) at the very centre of events. He looked up, and looked down, and to

both sides, looked at his crossed legs in the wide trousers, recognised himself, loved

himself, revered himself. Treasure seekers. So he’d always been a good-for-nothing,

and now his hour had struck. Taken him by surprise. Outside on the stone terrace

others had sat and crowded around the little nag, he himself, if the host had not taken

him by the hand and led him indoors, would have stayed outside, for that kind of

company, noisy and finding amusement in a mule or a horse, suited him better than

the two foreigners here in the parlour giving themselves airs like a court of law. But

now all was changed.

He thought. That knocking sound, what was the knocking sound? On that day

shall all humankind be as scattered moths and the mountains as combed wool. He

whose weighing pan is piled heavily with good works shall lead a contented life, and

he whose pan is found too light shall endure the abyss of Hell. The Day of Judgement

is at hand. My long delayed justice is here. I have received a sword in my hand, I, Nadji,

old soak, brought here to the caravanserais in order to sell my talents for a few pennies

to ignorant camel-drivers, barbers, water-carriers, the illiterate.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

101

Hopeful progress of preparations for tuition. An excavation contract is drafted

At this point the host finished up his glass, and with apologies to Conrad invited

George to follow him outside. Meanwhile Conrad squatted not saying a word, pleased

that things now flowed so smoothly; while Nadji wrapped himself in ever-denser

clouds of pride and bliss, not unlike that twenty-two centimetre long frog with the

twenty-six centimetre long hind legs that lives in eastern North America and in the

rest of the world is known only by its name: the bullfrog or ox-frog, Rana catesbeiana,

of the family of tailless amphibians or Batrachia9; with its enormous back legs the

creature can take enormous leaps, its voice is uncommonly loud, and so-called

humans, wicked people, just love its back legs. The bullfrog Nadji raised his voice

inaudibly to the Babylonian, soon it shall be audible, he made mighty invisible leaps

with his inedible back legs, soon we shall learn where to.

Meanwhile, out in the barroom the host and George concluded a deal, committing

as men of honour with a handshake and embraces to keep mum about the agreement

overall and its specific points. The pact entitled the host Maruf, son of his father and

of his mother, to a fifty percent share of all finds from excavations in the Babylonian

field of ruins. Should, however, any find eventuate beyond the actual area of

excavations which had any direct or indirect connection with the tuition about to be

imparted, this should have no effect on the rights of the host Maruf, no diminution,

halving, thirding, no abridgement of any kind regarding his claims. In return for

recognition of his claims the host Maruf, father of his children, brother in law of his

brother in law, uncle of his nephews, promised to pay George a.k.a. Ullah Kanbu,

assistant to Khan Ibn Kurmani, pillar of the government, a one-off sum of 250 marks,

on the assumption that the total amount from the excavations due to Mr Maruf,

tavern keeper, resident of Baghdad and hence of the Northern Hemisphere, would not

fall below 500 marks. Should the value of the finds be higher, the commission due to

Ullah Kanbu would in no way be increased. To which George, with much wailing and

lamento, declared himself in agreement.

Grimly acknowledging the host’s business acumen, George at once followed him

back into the parlour, where the host declared that agreement had been reached on

some legal prerequisites for the undertaking, whereas dealings that involve valuable

assets require open discussion among all concerned parties. And he therefore

proposed to draft a written contract concerning excavation works within and beyond

the Babylonian region based on all relevant steps facilitated by Nadji. There should be

a fundamental recognition, to be negotiated solely by Maruf, resident of the Northern

Hemisphere, and Ullah Kanbu, a very skilled man of business of Persian origin, that all

treasure-seeking ventures conducted by eventual associates of the Khan within or

beyond Babylon should be undertaken with the leading participation of the drunkard

Nadji here assembled. This point was declared accepted by the other party, the only

9 Original has “Latrachier”. Silently amended.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

102

lacuna being how to characterise Nadji, for, since we are all mortal, who were his legal

successors, predecessors or accessories? After thoroughly chewing over this red

herring, the host and the thereby-bound Nadji declared their readiness to agree that,

should Nadji become deceased before or after completion of the excavations, his share

should pass without deductions to the host Maruf, who however undertook to pay

over to and deliver to the account of Ullah Kanbu one point five percent after

deductions for expenses, perquisites and stamps as well as turnover, rollover and

holdover taxes, to say nothing of the Salt Tax. On the other hand, in the event of the

premature demise of the Earth-inhabitant Maruf and his departure to the appropriate

heaven, his share should fall to the surviving Nadji and Ullah Kanbu, failing any

objection to this procedure by or on behalf of the surviving widow of the now heaven-

dwelling Maruf or her two children from the first marriage, two from the second and

five from the third, which objection shall naturally and irrevocably take precedence

over all other objections from any other person, animal or object (see judgement of 17

March 1899 in the case of Kohler versus Bohler, dispute of a Will by creditors of the

disinherited, amount in controversy).

Once the participation of Maruf, the man of reason, had received thorough and

abundant clarification in such a regular manner and reserving any irregularities, the

task now was to tackle the most difficult and crucial point, the central, the solar point:

apportioning the share of said Nadji here present and in possession of the strongest

halym, and confirming it in writing. This is where the obstinate attitude of the

representative of the opposing party, George, was first to blame for stirring up and

dragging out the progress of negotiations. For the first objection from the wine-

waterer Maruf, who had been authorised by a triple nod of Nadji’s head to undertake

negotiations on Nadji’s behalf, that the entire proceeds should be placed at Nadji’s

disposal after deducting only the expenses and perquisites of the Persians, was

rejected by Kanbu as out of the question. For, he said, he would not deny that Nadji

here played the role of key-holder in relation to a closed lock – “well then, well then,”

expostulated Maruf, and “well then, well then,” Nadji complained – he would also

concede that they, the Persians and their chief partners and holding companies and

affiliates would without Nadji’s guidance be unable to take a single step, for basically

all the inscriptions already found and others yet to be found remained, pending his

interpretations, simply shards and broken bricks (a resounding gong a clanging

cymbal10) – “well then, well then,” roared the host rolling his eyes in righteousness,

“well then, well then,” Nadji’s soul, deceived, hoodwinked, was shattered to pieces –

yet there are judges in Potsdam, and the tipoff came from them, the Persians, and the

consortia to be founded would and must be Persian, this was immutable or else there

would be international ramifications, sometimes enjoying and sometimes lacking

support from the League of Nations. For should there arise any breach or even

academic discussion of such a substantial question impinging on trade dealings with

Persian treasure-seekers, they would not shy away from quitting the League of Nations

10 I Corinthians 13.1

Babylonian Exile Part Three

103

to set about treasure-seeking on their own account wherever in the world it might be.

Hence the entire proceeds from the finds must fall to the Persian contingent under the

protection of Khan Ibn Kurmani, pillar of the government, which high and honourable

and utterly irreproachable personage shall guarantee both that international

complications (all too big a risk in such matters) will not occur and that the division of

the profits will be fair. “There can be none in this room,” George concluded with

emphasis, “who doubts the purity of character of our Khan and hence the honour of

the associates and affiliates dependent on him. Should there be any such, let them

now rise from their seats.”

The diluter and purveyor of alcoholic and adulterated beverages now saw the

danger to his status and considered it the moment to play his trump, namely to tempt

Nadji, who was dependent on him, to express himself to some extent ex cathedra. The

centre of events, now displaced more to one of the focal points of an ellipse, should

speak in person. His halym was large, at a good and regular elevation. All conceivable

questions and answers in Heaven as on Earth were eagerly to be awaited from him.

“Eilala, eilala,” he sang, “where are all your hopes now, you vagrant migrant

gentlemen, foreigners, ladies and gentlemen from Persia? Eilala, eilala, you thought it

all too easy. How easy, then? Shall I enlighten you? Nadji knows, or he would be no

hafiz. Were all the trees on the Earth to become writing implements and all the seas

seven oceans of ink, their writings would never exhaust the truth, but even if they

were able to tell lies, those lies would never vanquish the truth. Why does one depart

from the homeland? The homeland is lovely, and where one is born one remains. They

must be great allurements, mighty indeed, to drive a man, two men away from their

homeland, from their roofs, so that they betake themselves to the wilderness of

foreign parts. Nowhere do the minarets stand so straight as at home, nowhere does

the fount taste so pure as in the homeland.” He paused; he had mentioned water, and

feared an objection from one side or another, but even the host kept silent in cunning

devotion and commercial dedication. “Whoever leaves the alleys and courtyards of his

native place voluntarily, and it is not the government or poverty that drive him away,

he must have set his mind on something in particular. There are people who are set

wandering by misfortune in love. They can no longer bear to see the alleys, the

courtyards, the palm trees or the bridges where they walked and ate with the beloved;

they want no more the sight of tents or flocks or the tribe that has denied them the

inamorata. Ah, tears! I can sing a song about that. Who would claim to know as much

as Nadji of such sorrow? Eilala, eilala, this sorrow determined his fate and led him to

this wretched lousy dive.” He blubbered “plurri-plurri-plurri, plurri-plarri.”

Thunder crashed. “Pull yourself together,” the proprietor of the hostelry roared

unceremoniously, making him jump. The proprietor of the hostelry bowed in apology

to the guests. Nadji submitted, after some trembling, once more to his halym: “And so

you, honoured descendants of the kings of Persia, have entered into a foreign land in

order to better yourselves, acquire even more than you already have, enlarge and

increase your prosperity. This is a kind of knowledge, albeit not as great as the

Babylonian Exile Part Three

104

knowledge acquired by Adam and Eve, of which the twentieth sura speaks, its title is

Te, Ha, the letters T and H, which probably mean ‘quiet’. You wish to pile up

possessions in that Babylonian land, in its depths, from its graves and hidden places,

and I, Nadji, am to be your shovel, spade, pickaxe. Although beaten down by fate, dear

sirs, do you think Nadji too blind to know who he is, namely the living Nadji and no

shovel? So is it. What he has, what has been given him, what a long life of wanderings

and harassments and learning has presented to him, he places unconditionally and

unreservedly at the disposal of the Khan in the milk of human kindness. You shall

have it. Whereupon let the Persians respond: will they match like with like? It is a

matter of compensating Nadji for a long life of wandering, of deprivation and of

learning. Will you atone, atone as the law requires?”

George declared himself ready to do so to the fullest extent possible. Nadji

continued relentlessly: “So, you have spoken. The compensation process has been

initiated. Answer me first a few questions, before I confirm the extent of my share.

Note Article 1315: Whoever demands the fulfilment of an obligation must prove that it

exists. Conversely, whoever asserts release from an obligation must prove its fulfilment

or the facts that have dissolved the obligation.” George acknowledged this in its

entirety. Nadji asked about Article 1455, noting expressly that this Article had nothing

to do with their legal transaction, but he wanted to ascertain the Persian attitude. The

Article reads: “A woman having attained her majority, who in a legal transaction has

engaged in trade in the property of a co-partner of a community of property, may not

repudiate that trade, nor may she demand reinstatement of the status quo ante

regarding that property even if this occurred before the compiling of the stock

inventory, unless a fraud on the part of the husband’s heirs has been perpetrated.”

This too met with applause from George.

Whereupon Nadji settled on a figure of two-thirds for his share. George reacted

with shock, clapped hands to his face, lowered them, and acquiesced. Rome had

spoken. No appeal was possible.

It took an hour to write out the contract in three copies, one for Nadji, one for

George, one for the host, a quarter of an hour to read it through and compare texts, a

quarter of an hour for signing and sealing. Then it was all done. The owner of the

parlour and tavern stowed his copy carefully away inside his mattress, where several

other debt instruments were mouldering; yet he still considered them property, and

thought they might be foisted onto someone else one day. Then he went into the

barroom. He was home and dry.

George placed his scroll down by his side. His face and Conrad’s were pictures of

expectation, the same expectation in both cases. Nadji opened his shirt, contorted his

body to stuff the crumpled scroll into the wide opening of his trousers, where it could

slide at leisure down to his ankles, where he knew there were two strong drawstrings

securing the openings. This done he too stood up and left the room, for he too was

home and dry.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

105

Left squatting on the mat beside three opened wine bottles and two glasses were

the Khan and his aide. The expectation faded. Replaced by pictures of disappointment.

The tutorial takes place, but the world proves yet again to be a lamentable place

In this difficult and almost hopeless situation, George once again revealed his

sophistication. He clapped his hands. The host appeared with two more bottles of

wine. Apprised to the absence not of wine, but of Nadji, he looked around and could

not but confirm the Persians’ opinion, and a short while later appeared again with a

snarling struggling bundle of humanity in the region of his right shoulder, which he

flung down at the feet of the two assembled and disappeared. For he was home and

dry. Nadji, who had no idea what he was supposed to do here, cried out: “I have two-

thirds. What do you want with me, you kharabati,” which means “incorrigible toper”.

He spat out around him the foreign expression mimzar oylu, which means son of a

whore. He dived for the door, but the host leaned against it from the other side

shouting “Teach them!”

“These donkeys!” Nadji roared, “I won’t teach them. You can teach them if you

want.” So the host reappeared, hoisted him by the shirtfront and dumped him skilfully

onto the proper spot on the carpet. “Teach them! I beg pardon, gentlemen!” Nadji

resigned himself to the situation and without further ado began to berate them both

as rogues and layabouts and attempt, with many glances towards the door, to

ascertain their wishes. Conrad and George both declared point blank, in unison, that

they wanted to learn Babylonian. Which brought Nadji to paroxysms of laughter.

We shan’t go into a detailed account of how the robust host was summoned yet

again to call the fellow to order. Furious at being torn from his drinking companions

and excluded from the gripping legal proceedings being conducted against Waldemar

for mistreatment and abduction of an old grey horse, he embarked at last, at last, on

the course desired by us all and now initiated despite all obstacles: the lesson. It

should and must be Babylonian.

In deepest rage against these Persians who didn’t even know Babylonian, he began

the lesson. He had a cane. Cane in hand, eyes staring and glassy, cheeks puffed out in

fury, but always with an anxious glance towards the door, he sat facing them. They

had to repeat after him, and already at the first word they had a shock, for they didn’t

recognise it. Woe! How necessary it was that they had begun tuition. How good it was

that they shouldered every difficulty.

Neshe-i zahba-i-ashgy zaklamak emo-i-muhal. Her keze mestaur-vesh ifsha-i-raz

etmek-de gutch. Thus did Nadji articulate, smack his lips, rattle it out.

That was the first text. Stung, they repeated it syllable by syllable, first George,

then Conrad, then both together with Nadji. It was a bitter painful exercise.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

106

Both wanted to leave in order to come again soon, but Nadji declared he would

have no more time for the whole week and they wouldn’t get away so easily. For a

whole hour he was and remained poison and gall to these Persian idlers.

When the first verse of Babylonian had taken hold, Nadji bared his teeth, felt for

his document, and found the second: Sersam Ashebeli da a-divary ne bilsun. Finally,

grunting and groaning, he came out with the third and final verse, and that was it for

today, he declared in a tone of finality, or else there’d have to be amendments to the

contract. “A Persian khan,” he laughed insultingly, “are you having me on?” They sat

humiliated. In what swamp must they catch their fish.

They chewed on the third verse:

Bir vagyt balyk sallyn

Adeh kaldym chyplak yattym

Her kezi bir diala alldattym.

It went quite well in chorus. Relieved - night had now fallen – Conrad and George

stood up. George massaged his big knee and calf. Nadji had made himself scarce, he

had confirmed for a week later. In the desolate barroom George paid for the wine.

Then they found the lane outside empty and dark. Once the host closed the door

behind them they couldn’t see Waldemar or the Syrian or the little horse. And no light.

They turned about wondering what to do. What had happened. Where was their guide.

Then cautiously they followed a noise that sounded like people. It came from the end

of the lane. There was a lantern glow. And there weeping was the little white-bearded

man outside a closed house door. The Syrian stood impassively by with the lantern.

Waldemar had been deprived by summary process of his grey, and the new owner

had withdrawn into this house along with the nag. So the old man wasn’t moving from

the doorstep.

Conrad and George had a job putting him off till morning. As for alerting the

police, George had weighty reservations. They’d discuss it further in the morning. And

because Conrad was of the same view, the old man glumly followed along with them.

They proceeded yawning through the alleys and streets of Baghdad. Dead quiet.

Conrad kept nudging his companions, and took pleasure in his new possession: Bir

vagyt balyk sallyn, Adeh kaldym chyplak yattym, Her kazi bir diala alldattym.

OUTCOME, YIELD = -1

Not to beat about the bush: what they had purchased from Nadji at such a price

that evening meant: “For a while I sold fish, suffered hunger, lay naked. Somehow I

always managed to cheat everyone.” The second verse concerned drunkenness, and

the third mocked stupid peasants from the mountains.

It was Turkish. “Nothing doing,” George concluded in resignation. “There’s no way

to learn Babylonian in Baghdad. And anyway it’s a nonsense for us to try buttressing

our knowledge of Babylon. It would be best, Great One, to forget about Babylon once

Babylonian Exile Part Three

107

and for all in order to arrive more quickly at our goal, especially so you can atone

intensively and undisturbed, repent and suffer punishment.”

Conrad, surprised, gave an outraged roar: “Where’s the logic in that? Have you

drawn no conclusions? I’m fighting for a review of the judgement against me.

Everything shows I have right on my side. Even now. It’s all so topsy-turvy here. And

anyway, is it my fault if I don’t atone? Atonement doesn’t just appear, how’s it

supposed to, here and now?”

George glared ahead and growled: “I can’t take much more of this. There has to be

a change.” Conrad radiated pure contentment, gave a mocking laugh and opened his

arms: “But why? We’ve been sentenced, so all we have to do is pull through.”

Minor postlude and Conrad’s proud decision: straight back to Babylon!

And so it came to a smooth, sound and universally satisfactory end with the wholly

heroic plan to appeal, to contest the verdict already handed down.

They’ve been knocking about in Baghdad for almost two more weeks now. They

had a lot of trouble with Waldemar, who couldn’t find his little nag and couldn’t be

persuaded to buy a new one, exactly the same, just as old, maybe even blind. He was

dead set – understandable in an old man – on finding his own horse, and sat half the

day in the barroom or outside on the terrace, waiting. The fellows who’d deprived him

of the little grey turned up cool as cucumbers. They even declared themselves ready to

restore the creature, for a reward. But when they went to fetch her, to their honest (?)

astonishment she was no longer in the stall. A third party, fourth, fifth, had stolen her.

And they debated and drank along with him, while our little nag lay already in the

knacker’s yard after five days of over-exertion on behalf of the new owner, proprietor

of a rickety hackney carriage that conveyed loads, luggage, furniture, vegetable baskets,

humans alive and dead, back and forth through the city. The little nag had been

destined for a life of leisure, a lucky star had led her to steadfast Waldemar, gentle

twilight years beckoned, she had seemingly reached harbour. But suddenly they’d

locked her in a stall, let her go hungry, harnessed her to a carriage, whipped her on,

for the nag none of this was a novelty, she suffered the lashes, wheezed in the heat,

but she had grown old. And when one night as she stood in the stall, woke up and a

strange tightness squeezed her breast, she was not afraid. She was used to all kinds of

things. Her flanks trembled, no one saw it. The legs collapsed. Slowly she lowered

herself onto the back legs, carefully tucked in the forelegs, to endure even this. But

this time it really was something special. It was Death. But not half as bad as most

things the little grey had encountered. She rolled onto her side. And what the hackney

proprietor saw in the grey dawn lying on the ground was a dead nag. He pulled his

nose, rubbed it: a bad business. He pondered how to get even with the grifter who’d

palmed this useless lump of horseflesh off on him.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

108

In the caravanserai loft, George was squatting beside the little white-bearded man

on bare boards where rats scampered through the night, and both were glum, each for

his own reasons.

Waldemar was grieving the loss of his little grey. The vexing outcome of the

Babylonian tuition grieved George. What’s he so upset about, Waldemar wanted to

know. A pack of mounted men rode through the bazaar, Persians in big round felt hats,

horses and mules loaded high with chests and sacks. George watched them, wasted no

thought on them, blew cigarette smoke high into the air, Waldemar did the same.

“I can’t see an end for us here,” George opined at last. “It wasn’t such a bad idea the

Great One had, to gather knowledge of Babylonian things, which would help him see

what a criminal he was. But what has he experienced? He’s seen Babylon. And

nowhere could look worse than that. Did it make an impression on him? Not a trace.

He makes speeches. He grumbles a bit, then lets fly with jokes. And where’s it all

leading to? It seems so hopeless! Is this meant to be a proper world? I’d never have

believed so much roguery and cheating could be concentrated in one place.”

“But what can we do about it, George?”

“Nothing. He’ll face justice. He’s developing delusions of grandeur. I’ll supply the

weapons.”

And indeed that very day Conrad declared his intention to return to Babylon. The

life of an emigrant was not to his liking. He would go to Babylon to gather up all the

threads in his hand! The path to atonement had for him already reached an adequate

terminus. George heard him out respectfully. He was tasked to find comfortable

transport – not, in any case, a goffle.

The camel, its origins, its uses and its opinions

This is a single-humped camel, a large sandy-coloured beast of steppe and desert,

maybe also grey, brown or black.

It’s also known as the dromedary, and if you imagine our sketch enlarged 25 times, you have its natural size. It has a hump on its back, a hump of fat, and a swanlike harmoniously curving neck, on which the creature has a small head which it stretches up, down, right and left as it likes. Mostly it doesn’t like, for it has to keep moving, and in the desert it’s enough to look straight ahead.

I think that if we had a neck like that, so much about human life would be different! I say nothing of the unusual collar that gentlemen would have to wear, it would be tricky to adapt the collar to the curve, but technology would find a solution, maybe

Babylonian Exile Part Three

109

using a hinge. But difficulties in greeting would surely arise, our arms wouldn’t be long

enough to reach the hat. Gentlemen would probably arrive at a point where at every

greeting the head was simply retracted a little. Just picture the street scenes! What a

confusion of turning twisting heads and necks encountering one another at second-

floor height and conducting conversations far from the ground. To integrate head and

torso, to bridge over the span of neck they would wear billowing ribbons,colourful

shawls, rustling silken scarves. But how convenient for gazing into shop windows:

elegantly the neck dangles closer, while the body calmly stands below and to the side,

and without bothering the neighbours pulls back once it has gazed its fill. What a

boon to our sewer and drain workers, who now must deploy ladders for the most

trivial task at depth. Now all they’d have to do is lie on the ground, and the head is

already descending like a lantern on a bendy pole into the depths, observes what there

is to be seen, smells the upwelling gases. For everything – nose, ears, eyes – is gathered

together in the immersible head.

A disadvantage would arise only for those prone to sore throats, such as little

children. The discomfort would increase with the length of throat, and the usual soup

spoon would hardly suffice for the doctor to see down it at the ah-saying stage.

Let us consider also the masses of linen and flannel that would be consumed by a

standard poultice. And how could we gargle. The camel doesn’t gargle, and suffers

from bad breath in consequence.

You can see how right we were to point out with such prescience that human life

would proceed quite differently with a neck like that.

Conrad came across one such beast. It was kneeling in a caravanserai outside

Baghdad, being made ready for a journey. It lay with its head turned towards Conrad,

but Conrad couldn’t be sure it was looking at him. When the Arabs who had been

saddling it went back into the shed to fetch more baggage for other beasts, and peace

and quiet now surrounded the camel by whose head Conrad was squatting, a

mysterious confidence began to connect the two. Conrad addressed the ship of the

desert: “Greetings, great beast. I propose to have myself conveyed by you to some

place or other. I am not afraid. You won’t be any worse than a goffle.”

The ship kept silent. Its split upper lip twitched, its nostrils flared and closed.

He repeated: “Greetings, great beast. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Now the beast answered: “Call me by my name.”

He said: “Ship of the desert, camel!”

It lowered its head mulishly, kept silent.

Conrad asked: “Was that the wrong name?” Only after a long petulant silence did

the ship turn its head, spat: “Indeed,” and growled: “As far as I am concerned you can

call me Camelus dromedarius, single-humped camel, Western Asia, Africa, useful

domesticated animal, bred by the Arabs in twenty distinct varieties, dromedary in

Babylonian Exile Part Three

110

Greek, from dromo, fast runner.” Closed its mouth, turned contemptuously away, and

left the impudent to their impudence.

“And what are you called really? What name should I use?” The camel hesitated a

while. It studied Conrad with its eyes. At last, softly and bashfully, it said: “Camilla.”

Conrad showed no surprise at this information, which raised him in the ship of the

desert’s estimation.

She looked away over the sun-bright yard, the Arabs were busy arguing in the shed,

she became talkative: “I know what you want. You can place your confidence in me, I

have a comfortable gait. I have no wish to be disrespected. But never call me a camel! I

am not one at all! We are a dreadfully persecuted community. They have debased us,

this I concede, but then they place the blame on us. If they didn’t need us as much as

they need bread, they would already have exterminated us. We are ancient, old as the

hills. We lived on the Earth way before humans came along. We are descended from a

prehistoric creature the size of a hare, with four fingers, I forget its name. In those

days we lived in North America. Now – but you can see for yourself.”

She lowered her head, the lips quivered violently, the nostrils flared and closed,

just like ours, Conrad thought, and the eyes were swimming in tears.

Conrad’s astonishment grew. “You lived in America? Where is that?”

“Our species was widespread there in the eras called Eocene and Miocene. In the

Pliocene era they migrated to southern India. It’s all documented. The North

American species of our family forms a closed set and can be traced farther back to

very ancient types with separated metapodia and a complete set of teeth.”

“Oh god,” exclaimed Conrad, “is this all true?” The ship of the desert affirmed it:

“As true as I lie here. I have informed myself of everything. They try to conceal it, but

it is so. We have a sub-family called Leptotragulus, its radius and ulna were separated,

four-toed front feet, all metapodia separated, and then the sub-family Poebrotherium,

two-toed hind foot, lateral metapodia attested only by stumps, a sub-family Protolabis

with fused ulna and radius, two-toed feet, principal metapodia enlarged to a comb.

And then the Camelinae, dentition reduced to a greater or lesser degree, they walk on

two-toed feet. We branch off from them.”

Conrad let her speak on uninterrupted. Camilla said: “Today you see me for the

first time. I shall tell you my dentition formula: 1133/3123. We have no gall bladder,

which makes us docile. Among all mammals we are distinguished by our oval blood

corpuscles.”

Conrad acknowledged this with a nod, which comforted the troubled vessel.

“We have become accustomed to conditions. There was nothing else for it if we

wanted to avoid extinction.”

So many emigrants, thought Conrad, looking closely at the big grey animal. Yes,

she did indeed look ancient with her wonderful neck and hump. She’d suffered a fate

Babylonian Exile Part Three

111

and now dwelled in a strange world. So this was an ending, when you go extinct. He

looked around the yard. The Arabs were still arguing, maybe they were about to make

a mistake and load him up instead of the camel.

He brought his head close to the camel’s (eugh, he had to admit the beast’s breath

stank atrociously): “What torments you most about your existence, dear creature?”

“The contempt.”

“Yet you are called Camilla?”

“Yes. Camel is Camilla for short. I am called Camilla after the daughter of King

Metabus of the Volscian town of Privarum. Camilla’s father, the king, was driven out

by the Volscians, but they were rescued by a miracle and became devotees of the

ancient goddess Diana. Hence the name Camilla, attendant at sacrifices. Our ancestral

mother was raised in the wilderness by woodcutters, and suckled by a mare. For the

woodcutter’s wife was already in her dotage. So Camilla grew up a modern virgin,

Virgil reports of her in his heroic epic The Aeneid, XI/535. She intervened in the war

between Aeneas and Turnus, performed great deeds, but in the end she was killed by a

hero, a certain Aruns, not Aron, who was himself killed shortly after. By an arrow, on

Diana’s orders.”

Having thus spoken, Camilla grew silent and thoughtful. Conrad joined her in

contemplation. He said: “And then? And you?” She asked: “Why?”

“I mean, you’re descended from her. Who was she married to?”

Mistrustful, nostrils retracted and the halves of the upper lip twitching up and

down, Camilla scrutinised her visitor. She had never considered this point. Conrad

realised that after all she was weak in the head. The camel, in a haughty drawl : “It will

probably have been Aruns himself.”

“The one who killed her?”

“Of course, that’s the obvious solution...”

“Anyway,” after a considerable time lost in thought, “anyway, the ancients who tell

of our virgin and ancestral mother were struck by the resemblance of her fate with

that of Harpalyka.”

Conrad wrung his hands. “So much learning, Camilla!”

The grey personage nodded sadly: “Were you of such a noble lineage as I and had

you fallen so low, you would understand it all. What saves us and keeps us in existence?

Only faith, keeping hold of that which we are. In my free time I have never shied from

any cost or trouble or journey to keep up to date on everything.” (Conrad, what are

you thinking?) “Big, revered, feared we strutted through the Eocene, Pliocene,

Pleistocene, now we are loaded up by descendants of tree-monkeys, whose form, no

offence meant, you yourself have adopted. Opportunism, dear friend, fashion! It could

also have turned out otherwise, one does not float with the tide.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

112

Conrad sat glumly thinking of his intentions regarding Babylon. What was being

revealed to him here! To keep the conversation going, he asked: “You spend a lot of

time on learned investigations.”

“I discovered that Camilla was our ancestral mother. Then I stumbled on

Harpalyka, who was related to her. Harpalis was an archon on Delos around 210. You

can read about him in Homolle, Archive de l’intendance sacrée á Delos. From one of

the widely distributed and noble clan of Harpalis, related by blood to Camilla, we have

the blistering plaster and a remedy for the four-day fever. Galen himself could not

avoid mentioning it. Then a Macedonian, on whom Alexander the Great conferred the

satrapy of India.”

Conrad shrank to a nothing when he heard this. Who was this person?

“Harpalyka, our great relative, our dearly beloved, had a Thracian king for a father,

whom you may have encountered here and there under the name Amymonii,

sometimes also Amymnei, Amymni.” Conrad, deeply shaken, declared that he had a

vague recollection, he’d encountered various names, he’d wondered about the rapid

changes, were they connected somehow to police investigations.

“You are on the right track. This Thracian king lost his consort, and wanted to

make his daughter, our dear Harpalyka, his successor. He had her raised on the milk

of mares and wild beasts. The child thrived.”

“Astonishing.”

“Even as a girl she was skilled with weaponry. Her father was a bit too colourful

with the strictness, one day the Volscians, his subjects, did away with him, like this.”

Camilla made a throat-cutting gesture. “For there is a limit to a tyrant’s might11.

Harpalyka, my relative, was still around. She had to flee to the woods, the forests and

mountains and keep herself alive with thievery. Everyone knew her short skirts and

long wild hair, for she could not cut her own hair. But her lifestyle and the mare’s milk

had not suppressed her womanly nature. The sole purpose of even her most audacious

thefts was to obtain scissors. It was her undoing. The country folk, being bone-headed,

hid their scissors and combs in order to draw her into a trap. It is alas true that with

this crude calculation the peasantry achieved its goal. If she had made it to a different

environment, they would have tamed her. But the vengeful peasants, all for a few hens,

eggs, little billy goats. For what can one girl eat all by herself? Mostly she will be

vegetarian, raw stuff, and how does that weigh in the scales of a large estate!”

“There will have been some smallholders too.”

“Indeed. Petty smallholders. Pennypinchers. People without a world. Later, of

course, but first I’ll carry on to the end of the tale. They set it up as nicely as they could,

and our young relative promptly fell into the trap. The peasants brought elegant

young ladies out from the town, mannequins, let them stroll up and down their village

11 Schiller, William Tell Act 2 scene 2.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

113

streets, just imagine, the cunning dastardly peasants, and between dungheaps and

chicken coops those elegant ladies, who by the way aroused the peasant yokels no end.”

“Why didn’t they send out strong young handsome peasant lads as bait?”

“They did. Sat in the forest, in a secluded meadow, somewhere, and weren’t at all

disinclined to go off and join her. But what state was she in, our relative, the coiffure,

the nails, skin care. They set nets as if for wolves, perfumed water, oh how Harpalyka

missed her perfumed water.”

“Do you miss it too?” Conrad asked, his nose catching a topnote of Camilla’s

fearsomely horrendous breath.

“I do not think of myself, dear visitor. I live only for the past. The Upper, Middle

and Lower Eocene and Pliocene are my homeland. Here I simply bide a while.”

“How did your relative’s story end?”

“In a hair net. Her life was ended with scissors. Nowadays – you’ll laugh – in these

parts she is deemed the patron saint of – barbers.”

“Your noble lineage has had to endure a lot.”

Conrad asks the oracle about himself

Camilla now said nothing more. Conrad squatted alone by her side. He marvelled at

the grey learned being. But he was terrified of her. He asked hesitantly: “Would you

tell me one thing more?”

She opened her mouth: “There’s a dreadful story about Harpalyka.”

“I’ve just heard it.”

“Another one.”

“Spare me. I can’t bear any more.”

The mighty beast snorted rage and spittle: “We bear and suffer so much! No one

should evade the truth!” And she went on in a fury, menacing professor at the lectern:

“We have another Harpalyka in the line of our ancestors, also related to the Camilla

after whom they have named us! This Harpalyka was a noble Greek lady, daughter of

the ruler Clymenes. The previous Thracian Harpalyka I told of earlier had already died

from a hint of love. Now this one. Clymenes, her own father, loved the beautiful girl

and secretly made her his consort. Grey antiquity, ash-grey antiquity. He loved her,

doted on her, she had to endure it. Then a certain Astor appeared at the royal court, a

good young man, he made eyes at her and although he was not exactly to her taste she

pretended to love him and betrothed herself to him. She boldly informed her father of

the betrothal, he said nothing, Astor came along, the father had to say yes, and a few

days later the groom departed with his bride. But only now, when he was all alone, did

Clymenes seethe.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

114

“How do you keep hold of all those names,” Conrad wondered.

“He stole the bride away from the bridegroom, on some pretext or other. He’s

supposed to have said, for example, that the groom had had his way with her before

the marriage, an utterly cynical piece of effrontery. Once he was back in the palace

with Harpalyka he went so far as to make her his consort quite openly. What to do?

What can one do against a tyrant? One can do nothing.”

“What did she do?”

Camilla smiled: “You’ll laugh. She transformed herself into a little bird. Those were

such times. Once upon a time. Grey antiquity. Let anyone try now to turn herself into

a little bird, even the littlest. Impossible. You stay what you are.

“That’s true.”

“You look around in the forest, come across a lovely peacock, or a horse, and want

to become a peacock or a horse. Forbidden. No one is allowed to do that. Competition.”

Camilla lowered her head in acquiescence, the smile stayed with her. “It’s all the

same to me. I know who I am. I found a back door, but I’m not allowed to tell you

what it is.” And Camilla gave a smug shake of the head.

“Oh please.”

“Psst. We can indeed transform ourselves, but invisibly! I tell you we can do it,

invisibly!”

“Tell me how.”

“You must think it! Then it happens! In thought you can be whatever you want!

I’ve been going through the world for the longest time with this hump, these calluses,

and no one knows who I really am!” Camilla gave a ringing laugh: “Even you didn’t

notice, ha?” And heaved great gusts of her revolting breath.

Conrad recoiled. That was the back door. The front door stank abominably. He

excused himself, stood up, went into the caravanserai. George was sitting with three

Arabs who were meant to be loading up the camels, playing cards in one of the cool

cellars. He wanted his master to join them, but couldn’t help noticing that Conrad was

a little distracted. Ah how Conrad was tormented by Camilla’s revelations! And before

long Conrad went out once again, despite the blazing sunlight, into the yard where

grey Camilla was ensconced.

Her head lay in dreamy calm on the hot sandy ground. He felt impelled to ask her

how matters stood with him. He squatted beside her, waited for the learned creature

to sniff and notice him. When she didn’t speak he ventured an opening: “Camilla.”

“My son?”

“Camilla, may I ask you a question?”

“Ask away!”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

115

“Do you know – Babylon?”

She answered contemptuously: “No.”

“Think.”

“Of course I know about Babylon. You mean Babyle, city of the Odrysians. It’s a

misprint for Kabyle.”

“No, think, Camilla, the great holy city of Babylon.”

“Oh, that one. The big city. Swollen-headed. The Hebrews mention it.”

Conrad, unpleasantly affected, insisted: “What do you know about it?”

“This city grew up before the confusion of tongues. They built an enormous tower,

in the process whereof the confusion of tongues arose, which interfered with the

construction and the works were put on hold.”

“And?”

“The labourers will have found work somewhere else.” Really she knew no more.

She seemed to have no interest in Babylon.

Timidly he asked: “Do you know – Conrad?”

“Who doesn’t know him. A scoundrel, as is written in the book. We asked earlier:

what can one do against tyrants. There you have Conrad, and you know. Tyrants must

be left to their own devices. Then they’ll drive everything into the ground. Conrad is

the classic example. A fat pig. The cause of his own downfall.”

Conrad stood up trembling. Icy cold waves ran through him. He couldn’t speak.

Behind him Camilla said: “He must wander about the Earth. Make propaganda for

himself. All that sort of stuff. Abdicated god in human form. Dreamer, empty-headed.

Doesn’t have the nerve to join us. We would show him what’s what.”

How Conrad responds to the oracle, and how he nevertheless mounts her hump and rides off to Babylon

Conrad stumbled across the yard. He dragged George away from the game, forced him

to sit together in a storeroom that stank of goatskins. George had to spend a long time

puzzling out the cause of his master’s facial expressions. What’s wrong with Conrad,

for Heaven’s sake? Must be heatstroke.

Now he came out in a cheery tone: “We shall not go travelling. I am not Camilla.”

“Who’s that?”

“A bovid. Not me. I’m not that, you understand. You won’t make me do that. I

shan’t wander through the world like a romantic bovid and acquire calluses on my feet,

and a hump just so others can plonk themselves on it.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Babylonian Exile Part Three

116

“No need. They want to turn me into horned bovid.” Conrad sobbed on George’s

shoulder. “Make me content with my rags. I’m a scoundrel, a beast of burden that they

load up, a Bactrian, a camel, and should call myself Camilla! I shall not go to Babylon.”

George still didn’t understand: “Conrad. You didn’t want to forget. You wanted to

gather the threads in your hand.”

Conrad interrupted bitterly: “We want to forget everything. Everything. To the

letter. You must remove it all from my head.”

What had happened here? Conrad stood up, took the other by the hand and pulled

him to his feet, led him to the deathly quiet blazing yard up to a prone seemingly

sleeping half-saddled camel. Conrad hissed at the creature: “Camilla!” It didn’t move.

“Camilla!” She didn’t move. “You see, she’s so stubborn. I knew it. She knows now who

I am. This is Camilla, George. Not a camel, mind. Descended from a Greek heroine.

Walked in the Eocene and Pliocene, we’re not fit to be seen alongside her.”

If only you could know what he means. A demon? Conrad bent down to the silent

beast: “Mademoiselle, gracious madam, my name is Conrad. Yes, it really is me! But

you’re mistaken. I tell you only so you can correct your knowledge. I am no scoundrel.

I haven’t gone to the dogs – like you! I don’t live in fantasies! From me you can still

learn something. If I’ve made mistakes, you mustn’t hold it against me. Understand?”

And in a fury dragged George back across the yard. As they went he said: “What a

stinking creature. Airheaded female, disgusting romantic, thinks she’s something.”

And in the goatskin store he screamed: “I’m surrounded by idiots. They give me bad

advice. I’m supposed to wander the earth like a dreamy cow, an example for the stupid.

‘He follows blushing in their footsteps.’12 No, my dear fellow.” And suddenly he flung

his arms about George’s neck: “But tell me, George, that I’m not already like that

stinking camel, an object of ridicule, a monstrosity that calls itself Camilla. You must

not punish me by bringing me to that. Do not wreak that vengeance on me, George.”

A glimmer of light dawned. “What shall we do, Great One?”

“Ah, is that what I am, the Great One?”

Now George was shocked, he freed himself and bowed down on the damp floor.

Conrad put his hands to his face.

After a lengthy period of sitting on goatskins, George asked again: “What shall we

do, Great One?” And now Conrad answered and looked him long and hard in the face:

“We shall tell the people to hurry up with the packing. We shall go to Babylon.”

On the same mighty grey beast the Tylopod, two meters high, three meters long,

devourer of the thorn bushes called saxaul – armed with a tasselled tail, calluses on the

breast and elsewhere – which accounts for its dentition and many other features,

Conrad and George, who was still confused, rode across the desert towards Babylon.

To the right Conrad hung in the saddle, to the left George. An Arab youth walked

12 Schiller: Song of the Bell.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

117

ahead of Camilla. They both felt seasick, but it didn’t matter. It was a short trip. They

reached Al Hillah. They continued north on foot. In good spirits, not stopping and not

seeking out the Doctor, Conrad strode across the rubble field. If we wished to set a

modern text to the tune he was whistling, we would recommend: “Oh dear Augustin,

everything is gone, staff is gone, coat is gone, trousers etc.”13 They marched through to

the village in one go. When they arrived Conrad turned around, stretched out his arms:

“Voilà, sir! You’ve seen it, I cannot offer more. We leave the rest to the archaeologists.

I have full confidence in Professor Köldewey. And now all aboard! Off to Baghdad!”

It’s all up with the heroic plans. Tears well up, the Earth has me again

The vessel was there. They climbed aboard. Insofar as the vessel had sails, they were

hoisted, insofar as she had machinery, it started running, insofar as she was fitted only

with wheels, these began to turn. Conrad and George were in consequence borne

unerringly to Baghdad, the Caliph’s city founded by Abu Jafar Abdallah al-Mansur,

located in the Baghdad Vilayet of the Arab Kingdom of Iraq, terminus for boat traffic

on the River Tigris, now forming an important entrepôt for all the produce of

Mesopotamia and Kurdistan (the trade held entirely in Arab and English hands). And

from the bridge rattling under the tread of humans, animals and wheels they strolled

once again through the city of a hundred mosques, fifty synagogues, and six Christian

churches. But Conrad’s thoughts– George already had forebodings during the journey

– were directed exclusively at a woman in the hotel bar, decisively, defiantly at her, for

of all things in the world he did not wish to be Camilla (but we admit it would have

come to this even without Camilla).

For what had Conrad retained from the disastrous Babylonian-Turkish-Persian

tutorials? A distant glimpse from the fat man’s rooftop onto the silent black nocturnal

Tigris! Two little lights floating side by side. The current carried them on.

It had begun in the Maude Hotel. In the bar an English-speaking lady, no longer

young, had aroused in him an obscure interest. But it was not granted to Conrad to

enjoy the magic of love in Baghdad. A change of plans was perforce joined with a

change of locale.

Of angels and genies one can conceive that they flit like a breath over the Earth.

But whatever has human form leaves traces behind. Conrad and George were

confronted with living traces from their first stay. At the bridge Waldemar was already

waiting. After an effusive welcome to Conrad, Waldemar took George aside for a grave

whispered conversation. This, despite its brevity, resulted in George’s gaunt face also

turning grave. And as they walked, George revealed to the Great One: circumstances

made a change of quarters appear advisable. He’d just heard – incredible but true –

that in their absence the hotel had become fully booked, an invasion of foreigners,

13 Viennese popular tune, composed probably in the 17th C following a plague.

Babylonian Exile Part Three

118

they shouldn’t expose themselves to rejection. And without waiting for Conrad’s

response, he requisitioned one of the dreadful horse-cabs of this once so splendid city,

the three of them ended up in a dark alley at the house of an old Arab, who led them

with lots of fuss and courtesies to a wretched bright blue room. Here they were to stay,

the roof was at their disposal in the evenings.

Criminal activities of Waldemar, the old softy. The dead grey nag drives them out of Baghdad

George, made nervous by Conrad’s angry looks, fled as quickly as he could from the

miserable lodging, together with Waldemar. He hoped Conrad’s anger would abate,

and he had other worries. The grey nag was dead, but now trotted through their souls.

The grey, the grey. Waldemar (as he told George on the long long way to the

caravanserai) had searched for her, but encountered only a cab-owner, who had

actually interrogated him about the creature, and when Waldemar confirmed with joy

that the nag was his, the cab-owner at once grabbed hold of him and it was only his

advanced age that saved him, so the cab-owner assured him, from going this minute

to meet his maker. During the thrashing the man refrained from any explanation of

his forbearance. “And so,” Waldemar reported to the lanky fox, “I took myself off to

my fellow sufferers, the beggars, the invalids, the old men at the bridge, some of them

blind too, and discussed the matter with them, and since I didn’t know the cab-

owner’s name, they pointed me to the proper way to seek justice.”

“Oh,” George’s heart contracted, he wept, “they deceived you. They meant to harm

you and us. There is no justice to be found for us in Vilayet Baghdad.”

Waldemar craved mercy: “They were simple people, they saw what had happened

to me, I was ready to forgive him but they insisted, else he’d give them a thrashing too.”

And so, thrashed black and blue (for brevity’s sake we’ll report it in our own

words), the old bushy-bearded horseless softy turned up outside the Baghdad police

station, the one nearest the bridge, to report his loss. In every police station all around

the world, there sit people who smoke cigars, cigarettes or pipes and cut themselves

off from the rest of the world behind clouds of smoke. They wait for a misfortune to

occur in order to write it down and take action against the perpetrator. They know for

certain that when anyone enters their station something has happened, and

something else will happen to counter it. They neutralise one misfortune with another.

How did it go for our simple sheep, accompanied by two cripples, when he

appeared at the police station? After an hour of sitting around and peering intently

this side and the other side of the smoke barrier – oh abyss, what ocean flier can cross

over it – a finger is pointed at him, something is said that he doesn’t understand, the

two cripples are ejected. Waldemar, now solitary, started to cry, the officer settled into

his chair, his bottom sent roots down into the wood, he rested his elbows on the desk,

in his right hand was a pen with which he scooped liquid ink from the jar placed in

Babylonian Exile Part Three

119

front of him, he had a big white sheet of paper spread out. Now he emitted some

sounds into the air ahead of him. Perhaps he was hungry, perhaps he was not sitting

comfortably, but they were in fact questions directed at Waldemar. He intended, from

his legally accountable fundament, to throw a web of dreadful questions over

Waldemar, in order to entrap him and then with all the means of modern criminology

to set the law rattling at the present misfortune.

Waldemar malfunctioned in a surprising manner. In response to repeated

wheezes, grunts and hissing he too said something. The officer puffed more smoke, his

fundament shifted. They spoke, but in different languages. After a few minutes a roar

erupted from the side of the disappointed officer. Then another. Then he climbed

down from his pedestal, stepped past Waldemar, opened the door and with a third

roar summoned back the two cripples lurking outside. There followed a dreadful

jibber jabber. It all ended with a fourth roar.

Already the rotund public servant, whose low salary impelled him to give

expression to his mighty power, had returned to his seat, where he tapped insistently

on the desk with the back of his pen and directed obscure words at Waldemar. There

was a matter of papers. The dear friends interpreted for him. Waldemar smiled meekly.

We can report that Waldemar admitted to being a big sheep and servant of a

Great One, the two assistants named him: Khan Ibn Kurmani, which name, to

Waldemar’s satisfaction, deeply startled the official. In any case he jumped up with

unexpected alacrity, searched through his card index, found something, and

disappeared into an adjoining room, came back out smiling broadly and – let them all

go. At the door, to which he accompanied the trio, he explained as he shoo’d them off:

it would all be followed up.

Waldemar was followed. They were seeking – our Conrad. Since he was not at the

hotel, they hoped to find him via Waldemar. Why did they seek him? Ah, let no hopes

be raised that cannot be fulfilled. Greatly should Conrad rue the awakening of hopes

for Babylonian treasure. Nadji, when they failed to appear for the second tutorial, had

made enquiries at the hotel. He had already prepared a couple more barbed verses in

Turkish for the next lesson. They weren’t at the hotel, not there, oh horror! For they’d

gone off with Camilla to Babylon. They meant to cheat him of his share of the treasure.

Off he ran, the ground sinking under him, to the police with a sealed affidavit. He

raised a complaint, justice, justice, justice! No one understood. Deception was afoot.

Enquiries were made of the Persian Consulate. Khan Ibn Kurmani? Quite unknown. A

confidence trickster. Had Nadji been tricked? Of course! Tears, tears! His last savings!

And he cursed the foreigner with words that are said of a prince in hell: “Seize him

and drag him to the centre of Hell, and over his head pour boiling water to torment

him and say to him: Taste that, you mighty man of noble honour!”14 A manhunt

ensued.

14 Sura 44 Al-Dukhan [47-49]

Babylonian Exile Part Three

120

This, with many digressions here and there, did Waldemar relate to the lanky fox.

Everywhere someone was following him, skulking, a police informer, the others

recognised him.

Whereat George, and we too, drew the necessary conclusion: the Baghdad chapter

is at an end. The very next day all three departed, and we put down our pen.

Obituary for Baghdad

Obituary:

Beautiful city! Nothing more of you!

To begin with such promise, and end like this.

~~~