A CHAPTER OF DISCORD
MY NEW HOME WAS A ROOM IN THE HOUSE OF ElIAS, THE
Carpenter, and his wife Najla. It was on the western
side of the Tigris, with five windows looking across the
river towards the old British Residency, now the Air
Vice-Marshal's house, and die houses of South Gate: they
stand along the dingy river shore in a tawny line above
blank walls when the river is low; but their doors are
flush with the swollen waters when they rise in spring.
My house stood among palm groves and litde Arab
mud hovels on the opposite bank. Tops of palm trees
showed over its walls from gardens* behind it. It had
two lower rooms for summer, and two upper ones with
windows to catch the sun; and across the yard were dark
alcoves and passages where Najla squatted over the cooking
with a primus and a brazier on the ground. She had long
hennaed plaits, and a face still beautiful, though she thought
no more about it: her two children whom she served like
a slave, her husband when he came from the town in the
evening, Asma the Kurdish sheepdog, and the chickens,
kept her busy: and she soon added me to all these whom
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