Today I will not take you into the intricacies of cosmic physics. Still, a little information will help; when we are able to understand deeply Albert Einstein’s words, “Everything in life is vibration,” we can conclude that all that exists in the universe is constantly in motion. Even objects that appear to be stationary are, in fact, vibrating, oscillating, and resonating at various frequencies. Resonance is a type of motion characterized by oscillation between two states. Something interesting happens when different vibrating things come together. They will often start, after a little while, to vibrate together at the same frequency. This mysterious “synchronizing up” sometimes results in a phenomenon called Spontaneous Self-Organization. Consequently, the Space-Time theory is able to coordinate everything that manifests itself in your life to match up with the vibration of your thoughts and creativity. These features of the life force locations in Syria fundamentally influence the life of the Syrian nation.
Could Agatha Christie have been unconsciously attracted to the way things vibrate in Syria?
This question was raised when I read about the period of Agatha Christie’s life during which she settled for a while in the north of Syria where the oldest traces of humanity date back a million years and evidence of the emergence of many influential civilizations in human history is present in the area to this day. It was a perfect setting to inspire Christie, whose novels are filled with fascinating characters, excitement, and mystery that entice readers around the globe to dive into the pages of her books. Many amateur sleuths have found themselves trying to figure out the villain in her more than 60 novels and often fail to discover the true identity of the murderer until Christie herself reveals it to be a random character in the story at the very end.
Between 1935 and 1937, Christie visited several Syrian cities with her second husband Max Mallowan, a prominent British archaeologist who specialized in ancient Middle Eastern history during several excavation trips in the Syrian al-Jazeera region in the northeast of the country. The couple had spent their honeymoon in 1930 in the village of Ain al-Arous on the banks of the Balikh River, spending time in the beautiful forests and wonderful archaeological hills of northeastern Syria.
The towns, rivers, and hills of al-Jazeera – full of secrets, mystery, and magic – inspired the British writer with ideas for her novels, among them the town of Tel Halaf, about which she said:
“This quiet town near the Khabour River in Ras al-Ayn region spreads an indelible joy in my memory; I did not believe that a day would come when I could visit this place. In fact, it is a charming and magical area… This is the Khabour River, which flows into the Euphrates… How beautiful it is! And it surrounds the foot of the hill and embraces it.”
Agatha Christie also had a lot of passion for the city of Aleppo, which was a source of inspiration for several of her novels. While in Aleppo she stayed at the Baron Hotel, a frequent destination for many famous figures, and it was there that she wrote her famous detective novel Murder on the Orient Express.
One example of the impact that Christie’s time spent in Syria and Iraq had on her writing is found in these lines from the book, “We found a woman in the well. They brought her on a piece of burlap, like a gigantic lump of mud.”
Alas, Christie was not describing the murdered carcass of her novel’s latest victim, and the inspectors tasked with identifying the woman’s body were neither Belgian inspector Mr. Hercule Poirot, nor the wealthy English widow Ms. Jane Marple (the most famous heroes of her novels). Rather, the murdered woman was an artifact called the IVORY MASK recovered during an archaeological excavation, which is now called the Mona Lisa of Nimrud (aka Mona Lisa of the East). It was discovered in 1952 during excavations that were taking place in the ancient Assyrian capital of Kaleh (located in Iraq) known today as Nimrud. (Prior to the Sykes-Picot Agreement this area had been a part of Syria.)
Christie’s husband, Max Mallowan, had led the team of excavators, and the investigators, in this case, were not police officers, but archaeologists. Christie had been helping her husband collect, clean, and store the finds from the excavations. More than 20 years earlier Christie had fallen in love with him, and archeology, among the traces of the Syrian and Mesopotamian civilizations.
Eventually, the two visits of Agatha Christie to Syria and Iraq were in conjunction with an active period of archaeological excavations regarding the Paleolithic and the Neolithic eras, especially the beginning of historical times, when man began to settle in locations where areas of enhanced human life forces appeared to be present. Christie was deeply influenced by Syrian civilization, which was evident in the design of her house in Tel Barak (Northern Syria), which her husband, Mr. Mallowan, had built.
In conclusion, it is obvious that something in Syria resonated with Agatha Christie’s creative spirit as is undeniably expressed in many of her written words: “I love that gentle fertile country and its simple people, who know how to laugh and how to enjoy life,” singling out their “dignity, good manners, and great sense of humour”.
I think that if Agatha Christie, the Grand Dame of Murder Mysteries, had been alive, she would have been horrified by the plight of the Syrian people and the destruction that continues to be imposed on their homeland today.
