The Foreign Service Journal, November 2005

ing in the crowd, a hasty word, or an angry look to have started a confla- gration from which the imagination turns in horror.” Meanwhile, Dodd reached the Kurds, who were exchanging fire with Muslim irregulars outside the city. They acceded to his request to stop the firing and, to demonstrate their friendship, produced two ears they had just cut off of the irregulars. (Back in the governor’s yard, Dr. Packard was bandaging the victims’ bleeding ear stumps.) In a reversal of the original sequence, Muller’s car led the pro- cession, with the Christian refugees following on foot. The consul’s car was to bring up the rear. Sardar-i- Fateh rode with Muller, a rifle at the ready. Two men with rifles rode on the left running board and one on the right. Several other armed men walked alongside. Understandably, the aged, the sick and the wounded also wanted to climb aboard. To lighten the car’s load, the sardar dis- mounted and walked. Muller com- mented: “I was obliged to be hard- hearted in the matter of refusing to let the poor people put their babies and their loads and their sick on the car. … My only passenger for most of the way was a poor little crippled boy whom I had invited to sit beside me and another little waif who tucked himself away between the tool box and the mud guard and whom I could not bring myself to throw off. ” A line of soldiers and horsemen at the governor’s gate dispersed the crowd. As other horsemen cleared a way through the streets, a long line of soldiers ensured the passage. Several miles from the city, Muller, not seeing the consul’s car, stopped and waited. Ultimately, the carts appeared and, with them, Paddock and Ferguson. Dodd and Packard stayed behind to await the return of the cars to carry the most seriously wounded. Muller drove on ahead to the lake landing to oversee arrangements for the embarkation. The road was at times under water and at other times N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 61 Patience is a virtue, particularly in the Middle East, and Gordon Paddock amply demonstrated that quality.