There is a lot of interest that Agatha Christie continues to arouse today. Despite the fact that this year marks the 46th anniversary of her death, the British author remains on the podium of novelists who have sold the most books of all time —more than two billion copies— as recorded by the Guinness Book of Records. records. But, beyond her detective stories, the life of the great lady of mystery also arouses the curiosity of her followers. Proof of this is the commotion that arose during the eleven days that she remained missing. Although, beyond this morbid anecdote, if there is a facet that has been demanded of her for years, that was none other than that of a traveler.
The writer accompanied her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan, for long periods of time on various excavations in Iraq and Syria. Aware of the curiosity that those distant journeys aroused among her family, Christie herself decided to talk about these experiences in her book Come and tell me how you live. An English writer in the Middle East, rescued by Tusquets and now reaching bookstores.
“This book is an answer. The answer to a question that I am asked very frequently, ”Christie assures at the beginning of her story. This justification is followed by a warning “to avoid disappointment”: “This book is not deep, it will not provide you with interesting considerations about archaeology, there will be no beautiful descriptions of landscapes, nor will it deal with economic problems, nor racial reflections, nor history. It is, in reality, an entertainment…, a booklet full of chores and daily events”.
Agatha never considered that the worldwide fame she already enjoyed in the 1930s was an obstacle to sharing her husband's work. In fact, beyond the opportunity to get to know new cultures, these stays allowed him to find the inspiration that years later would serve him to write works such as Murder in Mesopotamia (1936), Death on the Nile (1936) or Appointment with death ( 1938). In these pages, however, what he was looking for was not a novel in which to turn the reader into a shadowy detective again, but to write a fun and bearable chronicle, while instructive, of his adventures in the Middle East.
The writer even provides details of her luggage, "full of books", and her previous purchases: comfortable clothes, hats, pencils and various fountain pens, since "although in England a pen behaves in an exemplary manner, as soon as you loosen its reins around the desert, he perceives that he is free to go on strike and behaves accordingly, be it spitting ink indiscriminately on me, my clothes, my notebook and everything within reach”. She also carried four wristwatches with her since "the desert is not kind to them" and they used to stop "between eight or nine times a day for periods of twenty minutes."
Christie also takes advantage of this "meeting with the reader" to describe his journey to Istanbul on the Orient Express, the train that inspired one of his most famous novels and that he already considers "an old friend of the family." "It is, without a doubt, my favorite train," she says. "I like the tempo of him, who from an allegro con furore sways and rattles and flails to and fro in his delirious haste to leave Calais and the West."
Once at her destination, the author enjoyed everything she saw, even if it meant giving up some of the luxuries she was used to. They slept in shops, in train stations and even in a police station. The internal journeys were not more bearable either, since a trip that should have lasted two hours could end up lasting until twelve o'clock. But both she and her husband and the rest of the team were happy and could enjoy pleasures like watching the sunrise in the desert and, above all, "having a feeling of freedom."
