Friday 10 April 2015

Agatha Christie-Mallowan, Syria I am reading 'Come Tell Me How You Live' by Agatha Christie Mallowan.

I am reading 'Come Tell Me How You Live' by Agatha Christie Mallowan.

In 1930 Agatha Christies married Max Mallowan a young archaeologist. According to the foreword by Jacquetta Hawkes 'Agatha did not see her own renown as any bar to sharing in her husband's work. From the first she took full part in every one of Max's excavations in Syria and Iraq.'

After the 2nd World War Agatha wrote: 'My thoughts turning more and more to those days spent in Syria, and at last I have felt impelled to get out my notes and rough diaries and complete what I had begun....For I love that gentle fertile country (Syria) and its simple people, who know how to laugh and enjoy life; who are idle and gay, and who have dignity, good manners, and a great sense of humour, and to whom death is not terrible.

'Inshallah, I shall go there again, and the things that I love shall not have perished from this earth...

Spring 1944.

Yet, seventy years late, moved to tears by her words in the knowledge of recent events in Syria, I ask myself if anything remains of the Syria she knew and loved. 

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