Being the literary person that I am, to offset my fears about basically being on survival mode for eight weeks, I read up on the life of Agatha Christie. Already a very famous mystery writer, she met her future husband, Max Mallowan, while she was traveling in Turkey, where he was digging at Ur, a site thought to be the capital of Mesopotamian civilization. He worked there from 1925 to 1931; they were married in 1930. It was then that her books started taking on Egyptian and Middle Eastern themes, as he later dug in Aswan, Egypt, among other places. I particularly loved the pictures I had seen of her sitting under an umbrella in a comfy camp chair out of the fullness of the desert sun, all dressed up in a long white Victorian dress, writing witty thoughts in her journal (this part I am conjuring). Interestingly, rumor has it that she would order everyone around to get her this and get her that. She was already so famous that everybody was intimidated by her, and so jumped at her every request! Also, keep in mind that archaeology was done very differently back in the late 1800s and early 20th Century. Then, it was much more of a treasure hunt, and the European archaeologists oversaw the digging, which was done by the local men (not themselves, of course, as they didn't want to get dirty unless something spectacular was discovered, for which they would then take all the credit!), and so with all the mystery and adventure that had surrounded the archaeologists of those early days, combined with the Indiana Jones of the movies, who wouldn't prefer the myth to the reality? Of course, I too, prefer myth, and so I easily pictured my own husband beckoning me to come look at what amazing find he had uncovered, and then me scurrying over to gaze in wonderment, agreeing with him that this would, indeed, secure for him a better, more prestigious university position! (Whoah! Cut! I must have been making a Victorian movie in my head. Reality check, please!) Back to Max, he was a Professor of West Asiatic Archaeology and the Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq for a couple of decades, and while they were happily married for the first several years, she unfortunately had to endure Max's many affairs (which didn't keep him from being knighted), most notably his affair with Barbara Parker, whom he married (get this!) only a year after Agatha died (in 1976). He died a year later, so he only got Babs for a short little while (I'm happy to say!). I was paying more attention to what Agatha Christie had said about liking to be married to an archaeologist, saying, that the older things got the more he liked them! Ha! (He was also 14 years younger than her, and, again, she was probably desperately hoping this would indeed be true!) I wondered if maybe she traveled with him, not so much as fodder for her imagination, but more to keep her eye on him! I already knew that my own J had fallen for a girl or two while away for summers at Abila, as only a year before a letter had been sent to my house (by mistake?) pleading for J to understand that she was already engaged to another guy! (This had caused another blow up between us, but still I married him amyway. And my J never promised faithfulness, only loyalty.) Ultimately, though, I had to prepare for the reality of things, not the way I dreamed them up, but the way they would be. And so I prepared my packing list for the items we would need to take with us for our eight week stay in Jordan. This was the late 20th Century, after all, and archaeology had changed.
