The Broadcast.
A few weeks after my arrival in Baghdad I was asked to do
a broadoast on the short-wave network. It was quite a routine
thing for foreign teachers to be asked, but I still felt it as an
2 terrific honour. I had never broadcast before, and the thought
of aotually sitting in front of a miorophone with my voice going
all over the world, or at least over thousands of miles cf it, was
exciting to me, even though it was difficult to imagine an yone list-
ening. Perhaps there were a few amateurs here an d therek a dozen
or fifty, dotted about the world, who might listen! But it wasn't
the numbers that counted; it was the thought of my voice travelling
nysteriously through the air, to be picked up if need be in London.
Also I could write to people in England and say S imply, as if it
happened to me every day, I'm broadcasting on the short-wave
network at such-and-such a time next week, if you want to listen.'
4 The young man from the radio who came to see me during a break
in the lessons was rather yellow-faced, plump and shy, with a certain
lethargy and heaviness that seemed to hold him back from speech and
thought all the time. He smiled and then withdrew the smile in an
abashed way. I was introduced to him by another teacher, and the
three df us sat together in the recreationaroom. At first he was
too shy to ask me, and left it to the teacher. And I, feeling
too honoured to speak, tried to hide my excitement in case he
suddenly withdrew the offer. What subject would I like to talk on?
I shrugged and asked what subject he thought Wo uld be best. He
shrugged too, and there was si lence. He seemed very ill-at-ease.
The other teacher was getting impatient---it took very little to
make him impatient. "Vell, decide something," he said, as if to
two children. He himself had broadcast many times, and wrote out


a broadcast in a few minutes, with a, complete indifference to the
honour involved, which I thought was marvellous. He did ererything
with this magical swiftness, his brain teeming with words and 1deas,
of which. a broadcast seemed a tiny particle, thrown off in a moment.
But I knew that if I got down to writing oneI would spend hours on
it, going over it again and again until it made hardly any sense at
all and lay before me without a touch of folly in it, nothing easy
or unsupervised to give it interest; it would be clipped down to
the economical mindmum - because of my sense of the honour being
bestowed on me. What an insult to the radio station just to talk,
like a person, like me; not on your life, one must give them some-
thing so Worked-on and reliable that 1t stood before them like a
piece of sculpture---stone; but of course stone was very chill to
the touch! And all the other teacher had to do was to sit down and
write out a few pages in exactly the same magical way as he talked
to me; ;; and it was finished. I envied that so much, and resolved
to try and do the same.
The subjeot was decided on, after a few minutes; ; I was to do
what every other teacher had done before me, describe my sensations
on coming to Baghdad for the first time. Very well, that sounded
easy enough; all I had to do was to give a truthful account of What
I had felt in the first few moments of seeing the city. In order
to capture that magical ease of my fellow-teacher I must be natural
and strictly truthful; there must be no little excursions, no
revery; in that way I wouldn't get into difficulties and begin
writing the themes for a dozen or so possible other broadcasts,
but kéep to one theme A my immediate sensations on coming into the
city; for once in my life I would do something simple and easy,
not bog myself down in torturing thoughts that by the end got the
better of me and made me forget what the original theme had be en.


Also, they paid well for these broadcasts. If I could do it well
and without a lot of trouble Icould make quite a bit extra, and
have that affluent feeling of money C oming in irresistibly, even
against my will, with a flow of its own, as if my fingers had gold
in them; that was how my fellow-teacher seemed to work; he didn't
bother to pick up his cheques from the radio station for weeks some-
times; apparently, the radio station was very s) low in paying; he
let the flow look after itself. He was a person with a kind of
Eastern magnificence, though he was English; I loved sittirg in one
of the river-side hotels with him in the evening listening to his
talk; it seemed that the magical element of the city was in him
too. He'd been there some years and already spoke good Arabio;
he had nothing to do with Embassy people, and prided himself on
never going to a British Embassy dinner, and on having only Arab
friends; he gave Arab-nationalist speeches to his classes, al ways
with the magical element that came into his otl her talk, into his
broadoasts, end even---for me---into the way he walked up the stairs
to his classroom in the morning, as if everything was an excitement
for him. His impatience and irritation were enjoyable, too; I
decided to set about my broadcastr with a similar hurried and rest
less prolificity, if I could; perhaps in that way I would prevent
myself trying to bore too many tunnels in too many directions,
through territory nohody had asked me to explore.
On the way back to the hotel that morning I thought about
it, trying to find a possible opening; at the same ti me I tried
not to think about it too hard, since I had agreed with myself not
to go at it heavily this time. Also,mif I thought about it like
this too long all the pleasure vould go---the pl easure of do ing
something light that would come naturally off the tips of my


fingers, and yer earn me money; why did I want to rob myself of
that sensation?. So I forced it out of my mind, or tried to. But
I was excited. Would I be nervous when I broadcast?
As soon as lunch was over I leaped upstairs to me room and got
to work. It had already ogcurred to me that perhaps the best way
of approaching the subject was to compare Baghdad wit th another city,
a quite different city, a Europe an one perhaps. I'd been to
Vienna about a month before: what about making a comparison with
Vienna? So I set to work. I reminded myself that perfect truth-
fulness, or rather perfect fidelity to the facts, and even to the
chronology of my sensations, was the thing; I would maintain an
air of natural ease, and not disperse myself into ideas that I would
later find too complicated to disentangle and too interesting to cut
out. My room overlooked rooftops and I had a comfortable armchair
with a little table in front of it; I set myself down to work with
a pleasant sense of excitement. The thing took me a few minutes---
the rough draft; for I didn't allow myself to think of writing out
the final broadoast at once; there had first to be the rough draft.
I made the C omparison with Vienna. I compared Vienna to a
museum, a kind of historical museum of toweringi imperial monu-
ments which dwarfed the modern citizen, whereas Baghdad thronged
with things that visibly and obviously had been made by men's hands--
everything from the ramshackle one-st@or'y buildings on either side
of the main street to the uneven cobbles underfoot, and the robes
hese.
and seils. Nothing towered above one and intimidated onex
The air was loud with cries. It was like being swept into a hot,
deafening, brilliant arena of ---people; the still, watchful
monuments of our European world, that made us feel like dwarfs,
weren't there; with the dirt and noise, the donkeys and mules who
pushed past people on the pavements, the tumbledownroofs and the


muddy holes in the road, the rags of the beggars and the blaring
radios from every café, there was also a new dignity into which one
entered, of a world made to fit men, to fit their dreams, not of a
monument made above and beyond them, so that a real întimate dignity
no longer showed in their flesh; these people in the streets of
Baghdad had it still showing in their black eyes and in the way they
walked; and the noisy, sparkling street was like a dream I'd often
had but had never hoped to actually wake into one day. I tried to
put the matter baldly, as befitted a broadcast, and went thopugh the
draft cutting out sentences that seemed to rely too strongly on my
own feelings; and I didn't grasp the comparison I was trying to
make as neatly as I would have liked. But at least it was si mple.
That at least I oould make sure of. Every sentence and phrase must
have a limpid, di sarming touch of simplicity; one broadcast, one
theme ; and the theme was a comparison between the European city
xhExa which was a 'monument' or 'museum' high above the men who
actually walked its streets, and the Arab city where the people who
were
walked the streets
were the city---mxxt what the city
was. Sinfle
When tea arrived I had finished it. That wasn't surprising
as I al ways did my first drafts quickly. It was only the doubts
afterwards
and self-examinations Xaxxemutax that cost the Work. As it
happened, my fellow-teacher called in onp me in the evening and I
showed it to him. To my surprise he said it was fine, though a
C 1 little stylistic for a broadcast. We would take it along to the
radio station that evening, and perhaps do the recording there and
then; for most of the broadcasts were pre-reacorded. There was
also a chance that I could do alive broadcast; sometimes one was
vacant until the last minute. Our young friend was at the studios
every evening, and he would take the talk into the talks-director
for ta final 0.K.'


So that was that, and after dinner we went off in the fellow-
teacher's car, an old Citroen with wide wings, dusty and noisy,
with the same magical air as its omer. We drove to the outskirts,
through muddy, yellow lanes wi th palm trees, in the warmish, autumn-
al air, until we reached the long, squat sheds of the radio station,
where there were masts and cancrete walls and an air of science
quite different from the city. * But there were still palm trees,
and ths studios inside had a less intimidating look than the outside
led one.to expect. We passed a studio where a string trio wa's
rehearsing with serious, matter-Bf-fact expressions on their faces,
before a miorophone; there was the noise of atmospheric from a
loudspeaker, and the sound of friendly, shouting voices from one of
the control-rooms. Here, too, nothing towered above one; there
wasn't the muffled, ordered, smooth-walled isolation I expected in
a broadcasting studio; the corridors had no carpets, and the walls
were rough, without distemper, their plaster orumbling like dried
mud. We were greeted by the young man, who took my talk and asked
us with a smile to wait in one of the waiting rooms, where there
were those tubular-steel chairs that had enere been the ultra-modern
style ta the Thirties. Yes, the young man said, a broadcast was
that
due in about fifteen minutes; I could take thts one. I nearly
jumped out of my skin. Feathers started in my belly and I could
hardly stop my hands from shaking.
We waited quite a long time. Ten minutes or so. It was
perilously ne ar broadcasting time. Then the young man returned,
with a troubled look on his face. He had my talk in his hand.
It wouldn't do at all, he said. The director had just read it
and thought it was 'dis sgraceful', and he certainly wouldn't allow
it to be broadcast.
What was disgraceful about it? we asked..


It tattaokedt Baghdad.
Attacked?
He held the first page out to me, showing me the first few
sentences, as if the director had inspired him fully with his own
indignation.
Where was the attack? I asked.
We watched his finger travel along some of the line S-- a
'I saw a woman sitting on the pavement, her veil drawn across her
face... I saw the cracked roadm the piles of rubble, the broken
pillars, the scaffolding, the walls beginning to fall away, the
filth in the gutters... I felt that this was a city whose people
didn*t carefor outward signs. For me it is only of the religious
man that it can# be said, 'He doesn't need outward signs'. I
don't know why it is, but I instantly felt, This is a city of
religious people.' We say 'London' and 'Paris', and what we mean
are places, but if I say 'Baghdad' to myself I mean what people
do here and what people are here, not what their buildings are,
because the buildings are many of them ramshackle and dirty, many
of them are on the way to falling down, it is a city of ugly sights
and ugly noises, there. is spit all over the pavements, refuse is
thrown into the gutters, people sleep on the pavements, mules and
donkeys go among the pedestrians, peoples walk barefooted in the
hup
streets.' That was insulting to Baghdad, the director had
thought, and certainly he wouldn't allow such a thing to travel
all over the world from Radio Baghdad!
I began to feel indignant, and the young man withdrew a
little when I spoke, holding up his hand with a shy expression as
if to say that he had no part in the quarrel. That was the truth,
I told him. What ought I to have said, could he tell me that?
No, he replied, with his lips shivering ever so sl: ightly,


he couldn't tell me that, he would net ver presume to do so.
What did the director think I ought to say, then?
Well, he believed the director wanted something nice said
about the city; after all, I was a visitor, and naturally if I
was asked to broadcast I couldn't expect to be able just to talk
insults down the microphone e
"But these aren't insults!" I cried. "They're the very
opposite! Why don't you ask the director to read further on,
then he'll find that it all adds up to an appreciation of the city!"
Had the director read further on?
No, he had only read the first page or so.
"Then please take it back to him with my compliments and ask
him to read the whole thing, and then decide whether I'm trying to
insult the city or not!"
He went back, and the other teacher and I discussed it quietly.
Perhaps, he said, it was rather strongly-worded; after all, on
had to remember that this wasn't Paris ar London, it was a small
country struggling to set up some sort of modern, industrial life;
that might seem silly to us but for them clean, gell-paved cities
were an ideal, a test of a country's real value, and dirty cities
were a matter of sheme; one had to realise that if one started
talking at once about the dirt, whatever one said afterwards, and
whatever one's motives were, that at once oonveyed something shame-
ful to them. We couldn'tgo all over the world, especially the
Arab world, behaving as we did at home, with the same kind of free-
dom; they hadn't reached $hat yet; and, vory understandably,
before they indulged in free' comparisons between thamselves and
Vienna or Paris, they wanted som of the social and political
nalm we vere used to from ohildhood.
But I was indignant at this also; I said that whatever the


state of a country, whatever it looked forward to, there was
always the truth, and that truth couldn't be altered; and that if
this wasn't the time for truth, here and now at the radio stat ion,
then it wasn't the time for me to talk either, I would rather clear
A out and neverpome near the place againg because I didn't like un-
free people; freedom was a choice, not a development arranged by
politicians, and these people wére obviously afraid of freedom,
they were sitting in positions which they had won corruptly, by
ramily-influence, this applied to the director sitting in his office
there afraid to talk to me personally, and to the young man who
was his pandar and tout, and of course they were afraid of freedom
because they would be the first people to be pushed out if the truth
were bold! They were probably very well aware that if the truth
about their pirty streetzand their beggars and ramshackle buildings
went all over the world people would begin to Wonder---inside Irag
as well---what the small class of influentialg people were doing
with public money, what they were doing with the profits that came
from the oil-fields, what they were doing for their own people:
of course they didn't want freedom!
My fellow-teacher enjoyed my outbursts much as I enjoyed his,
and he answered quietly, with a little smilem that this was all
very well, and finally he absolutely agreed with me, but here we
were in a radio station due to 'go on the air' (it sounded so
professional, and a sense of the honour returned to me) in a few
minutes, without a talk being ready. Could I write same thing else
quidkly, in place of the first paragraph? No, I was determined
to make them take that talk or nothing!
The young man returned a second time and said that the director
hadn't changed his mind, and 8 uldn't read the whole talk at the
moment because he was too busy.


Very well, could I see the director to talk the matter over
with him?
No, he was afraid not, the director was too busy.
That was that, thent I took my talk back and told him that
I had nothing else to offer.
The young man smiled and said. that, after all, there were so
many nice things in the city I could have written about!
Oh, I agreed! But what did he have in mind?
Well, he replied, for instance the King Feisal square; the
city wasn't all dirty and ramshaokle o
S(king Feisal square- was the one tiny part of town, just outside
my hotel, which was Europe an in style, with payements and ordered
buildings : round it, in the form of a crescent, not unlike the en-
tranceto an up-to-date prison.
Wasn't that beautiful? he asked.
I agreed, it was certainly excellent, but it wasn't the truth
about Baghdad, was it?
Why not, he asked, still with a smile, it was there, W asn't
Indeed, it was there, but itwasn't as much there as the fest
of the city! And if I gave it out over the air that here was a
well-paved European city where everybody wore jackets and trousers
and all the buildings along the main street were depertment-stpres,
not only would it be very boring but péople Wouldn't believe me,
and they would also call me a fool for telling them crass and obvious
lies : But if that was what he wanted he should have told me at
the beginning, the first moment he'd seen me, he should have told
me he wanted porpaganda and not a radio talk; and what I meant by
propaganda was a smooth publicity designed to keep certain people
in comfortable and entirely false social positions which otherwise


they would lose if there were freedom:
But since the young man's English was poor I don't bel ieve he
(n word of this,
understood this
mords, much less the dig at himself and the
director. My fellow-teacher was still determined to patch things
up if he could; an d taking the talk in his hand he said, "Suppose
we make a few alterations?" He asked me if I would mind cutting
out a few sentences, and I shrugged in a tired way, intimating that
whatever happaned now wasn't any concern of mine. I still wanted
to sit down in front of the microphone, if only to prove to myself
that I could do such things, that I could perform one acknowledged
public act in this busy world without getting into an awful mess
over it! After all I had a good job; there W as some thing of a
position in that ; why couldn't I extend my status to other things?
But I knew, really, it was hopeless. I lét the other teacher run
his pen t hrough the offending passeges, and I sat there in a passive
state while the young man went back a third time to the director.
But out he came again, and said that the director wasn't interested
in any form of broadcast I might want to make. So that was that.
And there waz a certain relier for me, that unfree people should be
offended by me, and snub me. At the same time I was hurt; and
still indignant. My friend shrugged, and we went back to my hotel.
The talk looked old and grubby now on the table.
Whenever one of the other teachers mentioned that he was going
Siel
to give a radio talk, in the following weeks, I was silent and
ambiguous.
was-alzelief to me that I was still, -so L b speak,
alone, unfletpered-by theestablished pewers by the new status
gue of radio and jonrnalism-andso-forth, At the same - imeit-was
a-serrow;
feould see a hard, sad Journey ehead; antold-bitter-
perhaps, that would test all my powers.
ness, 3 rxgg
* Xmmxkr
Also I mas_getting


into-etruggles at the college, in my Work Igave lessons out
of-hours, orgarised a music-blub, but it was sinter preted as-self-
-assertion, dei ree
e - * + dewnr Yet, en the-surface,
they were agrepable.
The matter of the redietalk was aburning
fregment in a midst of L - thts tintough which + -eet myself held
baekallthe r t ime, unable to say at L thought.
Then,
Buts strangely, almost at the end of my first year, just before
the examinations, the young man from the radio happened to comB to
the college again, and we greeted each other in the recreation-room.
He asked me with exactly the same shy and gracious expression as
before, in his hesitating English, if I wouldn't like to do a broad-
cast, he had been so disappointed the other time, and had expected
me to come again; for himself, he said, the talk would have been
all right, but there were other subjects, such as literature, which
he was sure I would like to talk about; it would be a great help
if I could give him a couple of short talks on any literary subject
I cared to suggest; he had big timetables to fill up, and there
weren't enough talks to make a programme.
So I did it. I went to my room that day and wrote two talks
straight off, one on the role of the animal in romantic writing,
the other on Stendhal. I didn't look at them when I'd finished
them. They were compact and of one theme. They were done in a
few minutes. No rough draft. I didn't really care about them.
By that time, after nearly three terms, I had done enbugh talking
not to want to do much more out of hours, and I'd got used to the
sound of my voice.
The talks were taken at once; since, first, no one would
listen to them, and since, sec ondly, no one at the studio could
understand them, acceptance W as easyo theywere safely historioal
ami Temondite.
Krecorded them without much interest, certainly


without feathers in the tummy; I went alone to the si tudios.
I read them through casually, one after the other for the record-
ing, wa tched by three engineers in the control room, who were
laughing and joking most of the time. I couldn't hear them,
only see their gestures and smiles, like pe ople in a silent film.
Theg theg waved to me when it was over, and the light in the wall
turned green again. And now it was over I had no more sense of
honour than if I'd been giving a lecture at college, as I had a
hundred times now: in both cases one was talking to the air.