Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir. Agatha Christie

      AGATHA CHRISTIE MALLOWAN

      Come, Tell Me How You Live

      With an Introduction

      by Jacquetta Hawkes

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by

      William Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1946

      Copyright © Agatha Christie Mallowan 1946

      Agatha Christie® copyright © Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.

       www.agathachristie.com

      A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

      Cover photograph© Christie Archive Trust 2015

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

      Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008129460

      Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780007487202

      Version: 2017-04-11

      To my husband, Max Mallowan; to the Colonel, Bumps, Mac and Guilford, this meandering chronicle is affectionately dedicated

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Introduction

       A-Sitting on a Tell

       Foreword

       CHAPTER 1: Partant Pour la Syrie

       CHAPTER 2: A Surveying Trip

       CHAPTER 3: The Habur and the Jaghjagha

      

       CHAPTER 4: First Season at Chagar Bazar

      

       CHAPTER 5: Fin de Saison

      

       CHAPTER 6: Journey’s End

      

       CHAPTER 7: Life at Chagar Bazar

      

       CHAPTER 8: Chagar and Brak

      

       CHAPTER 9: Arrival of Mac

      

       CHAPTER 10: The Trail to Raqqa

      

       CHAPTER 11: Good-Bye to Brak

      

       CHAPTER 12: ’Ain el ’Arus

       Epilogue

       Plate Section

       Back Ads

       Footnotes

       Index

       Also by Agatha Christie Mysteries

       About the Publisher

       Introduction

      There are books that one reads with a persistent inner smile which from time to time becomes visible and occasionally audible. Come, Tell Me How You Live is one of them, and to read it is pure pleasure.

      It was in 1930 that a happy chance had brought a young archaeologist, Max Mallowan, together with Agatha Christie, then already a well-known author. Visiting Baghdad, she had met Leonard and Katharine Woolley and accepted their invitation to stay with them at Ur where they had been digging for several seasons. Max, their assistant, was charged to escort Agatha homeward, sight-seeing on the way. Thus agreeably thrown together they were to be married before the end of the year and so to enter their long and extraordinarily creative union.

      Agatha did not see her own renown as any bar to sharing in her husband’s work. From the first she took a full part in every one of Max’s excavations in Syria and Iraq, enduring discomforts and finding comedy in all such disasters as an archaeologist is heir to. Inevitably her personal acquaintance, who knew nothing of the mysteries of digging in foreign lands, asked her what this strange life was like—and she determined to answer their questions in