A WOMAN WORTH HAVING
A Treatment for an Adventure Story
COMMENTS: A “treatment” like the following document is the description of a story rather than the story itself. It is used as a sales tool when an author is attempting to present an idea for which he wishes to be paid, by a publisher or a movie studio, to write. In Louis’s case, treatments were almost never intended to be an exact description of the finished work; they were much more like a very early rough draft where he experimented with the potential of different structures and ideas.
“A woman worth having must be fought for or stolen.”
—Arab proverb
Hot and dusty were the crowded streets of Mosul on that afternoon in 1845, but the tall, erect young Englishman who made his way through the crowd was aware of something more than the dust, smells, and flies of the Near East. He was aware of a subtle undercurrent of revolt, of seething unrest. And Henry Layard was fully aware of the reason for that feeling, for during his short stay in the country he had seen much and heard more of the sadistic cruelty of the local governor, Mohammed Pasha.
Layard was a handsome young man, skilled in the arts of diplomacy, which was his profession, and knowing in all the languages and many of the dialects of the Near East. Yet he was a man ridden by a driving urge to find the fabled cities of Nineveh, to uncover the ruins he knew existed in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Nor was this his first trip to Mesopotamia, for he had been here before and had scouted the country carefully while hunting. Near the rivers he had found several huge mounds that seemed geologically out of place, and he had come to believe they were actually heaps of sand and debris blown up and over the ruins of the ancient cities mentioned in the Old Testament.
He was walking now to a meeting with Sir Stratford Canning, British ambassador to the government of Turkey, who was visiting in Mosul from his headquarters in Istanbul.
As he pushed through the crowd, his mind was fraught with anxiety. He needed money to finance his project, and he feared he would neither get it nor receive permission to remain in the country until conditions became calmer than they now were. The slightest wrong move could explode into revolt, and only fear of the bloody vengeance of Mohammed Pasha was keeping the people quiet.
Ahead of him he saw a sedan chair carried by slaves and preceded by two stalwart desert tribesmen. It was an unusual sight, for sedan chairs were rarely seen and almost never in charge of Bedouins; it betokened a person of some importance.
As he drew abreast of the sedan chair there was a sudden outburst in a dark alleyway and a rush of men. In an instant the marketplace had exploded into a fighting, screaming, brawling mob. One of the bearers was knocked to the pavement and the chair fell, turning half over and spilling a very startled, and beautifully robed young woman into the street.
The Bedouins who were her protectors had been separated from her by the fighting, and in an instant, Layard sprang to her side and stood over her, fighting off the brawling Arabs. Quickly as it had begun, the fighting washed past them, and Layard helped the shaken girl to her feet.
“Are you hurt?” He spoke as he helped her up, and he found himself looking into a face covered by a heavy veil but revealing a pair of large and amazingly lovely dark eyes. For an instant she was in his arms, then she stepped back and, to his surprise, thanked him in English!
Before he could ask a question the Bedouins had reached her side and she had moved toward her chair, which had been righted and was awaiting her. She looked back once and thanked him again, but startled out of his lethargy by the prospect of losing a girl he wanted very much to know, he started after her, asking who she was and where she lived.
The girl got into the chair without seeming to hear and then was borne away, leaving him standing in the street. This was not, he remembered unhappily, Paris, London, or Naples. It was a Moslem city where the women did not talk to men other than those of their immediate family and rarely met foreigners or even set eyes on them.
Disappointed, but excited by her touch and the memory of her eyes, he hurried on to keep his appointment with Sir Stratford.
Henry Layard is an Englishman of French parentage, a brilliant scholar, gifted in his command of languages, and a skilled hunter of big game. Yet his greatest interest is in antiquities. For a long time many people had believed the great cities of the ancient east, Babylon and Nineveh, to be mere fantasies of the imagination, like the Arabian Nights. Herodotus, who wrote many of the legends, had also written of other things too fantastic to be believed, and most of the scholars of the time either doubted the cities had ever existed or doubted their size and importance. When other students had been concerned with boating or cricket, young Layard had been studying Arabic, perfecting himself for just this task. With his dark, strongly boned features and his tall, lean build, Layard could, and in fact had, passed for an Arab himself.
Sir Stratford Canning was a tall, white-haired man of great dignity, and Layard was his personal friend and protégé. Far more than Layard realized, Sir Stratford shared his enthusiasm, but he doubted the time was favorable for such an endeavor as Layard had in mind. He knew this was reputed to be the home of the oldest civilizations on earth, older even than Egypt. The idea that fantastic cities, filled with the treasures of centuries, might lie beneath the sands had been rumored since the discoveries of Botta, but these wild theories were not discussed by sober men of science. Still, Sir Stratford knew Layard’s enthusiasms and what to expect of this conference, though he had not made up his mind as to his reply.
He was torn between what he considered sane and sober reasoning, his duty to his young friend, and his friend’s interests, as well as his own. Diplomat he might be, but beneath it, as with many of the greatest diplomats, there was a romantic strain, and had he been a few years younger…
Layard talked of the mounds, of the broken bits of marble mingled with the sands, of the fragments of pottery. He drew upon the stories of Daniel, of the Tower of Babel, of the conquests of Alexander.
“Fables!” Sir Stratford objected. “It is all too indefinite! If the cities had ever existed they would still be occupied!”
“Some things remain.” Layard was positive. He had crossed the area, and he told of what he had seen and heard: the legends of cities buried in the sands; a great image of white stone, winged and mighty.
Finally, Sir Stratford agrees to finance him to a limited degree, deliberately making the amount a mere sixty pounds in hopes Layard would give up. Layard accepts eagerly and Sir Stratford admits himself defeated. Then Layard tells him of his exciting meeting in the bazaar.
The ambassador laughs. “I’m surprised she didn’t agree to meet you. That must have been old Hakim’s daughter, and from all I hear there’s not a conventional bone in her body.”
Layard learns the girl was probably Alissa, the only child of Hakim, of the Hadida tribe, from the wild deserts of southern Arabia, the land reputed to have been the home of the Queen of Sheba. Old Hakim was sheik of one of the most powerful desert tribes in Arabia, the master of ten thousand horsemen. Without a son, Hakim had reared his daughter with an amount of freedom considered disgraceful by other Moslems. She had ridden to battle with him as a child, had hunted with him, and she went about Arabia and the Near East, guarded by a handful of tribesmen and the knowledge of her father’s power.
Layard leaves Sir Stratford with a parting warning from the older man that he must at all costs avoid the attention of Mohammed Pasha. If the governor learned of Layard’s presence he would most certainly forbid any digging and might imprison him on some pretext. Stratford further warns him of the troubled state of political affairs.
All this Layard knows only too well. He has not mingled with the camel drivers and merchants for nothing. He knows the gossip, and knows that the Pasha has spies everywhere.
Mohammed Pasha was a short, squat man, possessed of a macabre sense of humor and a sadistic streak that made him relish the utmost in cruelty. If he suspects a man might begin plotting against him, that man could at any time be condemned to torture and death. Pockmarked, with an ear missing, and with queer, jerky movements and a hoarse, bellowing voice, the Pasha is as repulsive in person as his policies are to the populace.
Not satisfied with burdening his people with taxes to an extent almost unimaginable, even in the Near East, Mohammed Pasha had his own spies incite his people to riot or rebellion so these could be put down with cruelty and bloodshed. This retinue of spies, forming a network all over the country, allowed almost any conversation to be reported to him at once.
Layard knew this, so when he went again to the Tigris he went as a hunter of wild boar, a casual British sportsman, armed with several heavy rifles and a pig spear. And so he returns to the area of his interest, and makes an inspection of the mound where he has chosen to dig.
Here he finds himself blocked, not by Mohammed Pasha, but by Sheik Awad, the half-brigand, half-friendly sheik who controls the area. Awad flatly refuses to allow digging. Layard is stalemated, and suddenly a new factor enters the situation. A lavish caravan appears, tents are spread, the black tents of the desert Bedouins, the tents of the daughter of Hakim!
Unknown to him, Alissa has him spied upon by one of his own men, and she has followed him here. He tries to see her, and is refused admittance, yet when he sees Awad again, the way is suddenly opened for him, and he is permitted to hire laborers. Alissa has interceded for him without his knowledge.
Although he has seen her but twice (she passes near him riding a magnificent stallion) he is half in love with her. He wishes to meet her, but she refuses. Disconsolate, he seeks the advice of the slave girls at the well, but they will not talk to him. Yet on the following night there is another girl among them, and as she turns away with her jar of water she gives him a long, slow look. He follows and talks to her, she flirts with him, teases him, but assures him that if she, the slave of a powerful princess, is not supposed to talk to him, how can he expect to see Alissa the daughter of Hakim?
She taunts him with being an infidel, an eater of pig meat, and they meet again, and then again. She taunts him with being fickle. Who is it he is in love with? The daughter of the Hadida? Or the slave girl?
Layard is himself in a state of utter confusion. He will not admit he is in love with the slave girl, but he finds himself making excuses to see her. Meanwhile, the digging goes on.
A wall is uncovered and on it are amazing reliefs, and some pottery is found: a small jar covered with gold leaf, some broken tablets. All are dusted and preserved with the greatest of care.
Meanwhile, the spies of Mohammed Pasha have reported the digging by the strange Englishman. The Pasha believes he is searching for treasure. He sends soldiers, and Layard is ordered to stop. Yet the Pasha knows now that the young man is the friend of the ambassador, and that he will have other friends in Istanbul. To protect himself he tells Layard that he is digging in a Moslem cemetery, that he is desecrating graves.
While Layard sleeps the soldiers carry stones and place them about to make it appear that the words of the Pasha are true: that this is, indeed, a graveyard.
Again, hopeful of assistance, Layard goes to see the daughter of Hakim, but again Alissa refuses to meet with him. So he leaves and goes to Mosul, determined to face the Pasha and demand an explanation, and also to get, if it is at all possible, permission to continue his digging.
At Mosul he finds the city wildly excited. A rumor is out that the Pasha is dying, that he left the palace in his carriage and was stricken suddenly, then rushed back to the palace, and now word is out that he is either dying or dead. Soon the wails of the mourners are heard, and a friend of Layard’s rushes to him, overjoyed at the news. Layard is suspicious and holds back.
A huge crowd has gathered outside the palace and they are dancing and laughing, shouting for joy at the death of the tyrant. Suddenly, the Pasha appears on a balcony. He begins to roar with laughter as his soldiers rise suddenly and fire into the mob. Men fall, screaming and dying, and then other soldiers rush forward and those men still alive are made prisoners, their property to be confiscated, themselves to be tortured and killed.
Revolted at the bloody spectacle, Layard nevertheless persists in his purpose. He goes to the palace, and the Pasha, in a vast good humor, admits him. The Pasha is suddenly sly. This man may have powerful friends—he suggests that if Layard is searching for gold, that he can tell him and that something can be arranged.
The Pasha is by turns tyrannical and obsequious. Layard suggests he will have nothing to do but return to Istanbul and report to his friends there that the Pasha will not allow him to continue. Disturbed, the Pasha finally allows him to return and continue digging. Secretly, he plans to let Layard find the gold he believes he is searching for, and then to murder him.
On his return Alissa arranges a meeting for him with a Turkish official from the Ottoman capital who is traveling incognito. Layard explains the situation, and takes the Turk through the ruins he has uncovered. An educated, cultured man, the Turk is entranced, and Layard gives him several presents, a vase and some polished tile, to take back to the sultan in Istanbul.
Attempting to thank Alissa, Layard is cut coldly off. Her act was mere courtesy, such as would be extended to any honest man. She understands what he is about, and wants to help; that does not mean that she can permit any friendly overtures from an infidel.
Furthermore, she advises him, she understands he is carrying on an affair with one of her slave girls, that he is arranging clandestine meetings. Just what are his intentions toward this girl? Does he not know that he is upsetting her? Disturbing her heart?
She tricks him and teases him, asks him if he believes any slave girl is as beautiful as she? He hesitates, flounders, then says he cannot say, he has never seen her with her veil off. She seizes upon this: Then he has seen the slave girl’s face? She has removed her veil for him? He defends the girl, says it was his fault, and she leads him on, berates him, and finally sends him away, angry and confused. She knows how he feels and is vastly amused.
Then the stone carving of a huge Winged Bull is discovered with great excitement by the diggers. They rush to him, and the spies, believing the treasure discovered, and that only gold could induce such excitement, report to the Pasha. Soldiers appear from nowhere and both he and the girl (the slave girl, as she seems to be) are made prisoners. They are to be tortured to reveal the hiding place of the gold that the Pasha cannot find.
In the nick of time he escapes with the girl and they get away into the desert. At a lonely oasis they hide, and when they return, accompanied by Bedouins of her tribe, they kill the Pasha’s brutal soldiers and take the Pasha prisoner.
Istanbul appoints a new Pasha who gives Layard permission to excavate as much as he wishes, and Layard visits the old Pasha in a filthy, leaking cell where the onetime tyrant is now cringing and bemoaning his fate.
Layard is summoned then to the black tent of the daughter of Hakim. She accuses him of infidelity again, of pretending to be in love with her and all the while carrying on with the slave girl. She forces him to admit that he has found the girl lovely, that she is exciting. She accuses him of loving two women—he says he can love but one. She demands that he leave and see neither of them again. He refuses and, angered, he seizes her. Her veil comes loose and he sees the princess and the slave are as one.
Furious, she sends him away.
That night the great Winged Bull, the statue that he is sending back to the British Museum (where it can be seen today), is at last taken from the hole. Upon a huge wooden cart surrounded by workmen, the Winged Bull starts to move away.
And then a slave girl comes to him and, kneeling, hands him a note. It is from Alissa. The girl speaks in a low voice. “Alissa sends to her master a message of love.”
“Love?” He is angry now. “Why, that—!”
The girl on her knee giggles, and he wheels around to stare at her. She stands erect and throws off the dark cloak, revealing herself as the daughter of Hakim—truly a woman worth having.
They stand together, watching the Winged Bull drawn away to the chanting of the workmen and the creaking of the great cart.
COMMENTS: Although modern, scientific archeology has both merit and morality in the real world, the swashbuckling adventurers/grave robbers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have great appeal as the heroes of stories. Austen Henry Layard was a real person, a world traveler, archeologist, and diplomat who published nearly a dozen accounts of his discoveries and expeditions. Here is Louis’s introduction to the character taken from some of the notes pertaining to this project:
Layard was a member of a French family that settled in England. He was born in Paris in 1817, lived in Italy for a short time with his father. Studied law. As a young man, an adventurer at heart, he traveled in the Near East, where he became impressed by the vast mounds which seemed geologically incongruous. He believed they covered ancient buried cities, known at that time only through the Old Testament and Herodotus. After long efforts he convinced Sir Stratford Canning and received limited financing, and at twenty-eight, in 1845, he began the excavations that were to write new chapters in world history.
Like those other archaeologists Lawrence of Arabia (later famed as soldier and author) and Belzoni (who was a strongman in a London music hall before going to Egypt), Layard was first and always an adventurer of romantic nature.
A highly abbreviated and romanticized version of Layard’s adventures in the Near and Middle East, this treatment, I believe, dates back to the 1950s. The subject matter and style suggest it might have been intended as a potential sale to a motion-picture company, but since we have no contract to back up that suspicion, it is impossible to be sure. The following character breakdown offers a bit more detail about how some of the characters might be used:
CAST OF CHARACTERS
HENRY LAYARD…………Englishman of French ancestry. Tall, handsome, energetic. Skilled linguist, amateur archaeologist destined to become one of the great names in the field. Obsessed with the idea of excavating the mounds along the Tigris, he refuses to be delayed by either the machinations of the local governor or the civil unrest prevailing. Sharp, intelligent, and courageous, he doesn’t allow his interest in the dead past to interfere with his interest in the living female.
ALISSA………………The daughter of Hakim, sheik of the powerful Hadida clan of southern Arabia. A girl with a mind of her own, who knows what she wants and how to get it but not above having some fun in the process. A beautiful and sexy wench with brains and education and more freedom than Moslem women are usually allowed. The kind of a girl to walk beside a man, not behind him.
MOHAMMED PASHA……… The kind of a man who would pull the legs off flies in private. One ear and one eye missing, pockmarked face, short, jerky, ugly, sly, cunning, tyrannical, and obsequious. His main interest is sadistic cruelty—and money.
SHEIK AWAD……………A soiled, thieving brigand with a sense of humor, plenty of courage, no conscience, but he catches some of Layard’s enthusiasm for uncovering the buried city of Nimrud. Willing to take orders from Alissa because he knows where his bread is buttered and the Hadida clan are notoriously lacking in sympathy for opposition to the daughter of Hakim.
SIR STRATFORD CANNING…Layard’s friend and superior. Dignified, and shrewd. Interested as Layard is in the antiquities of the land between the rivers.
IDRISI PASHA…………Turkish official who comes incognito to camp of Alissa. A man of intelligence and enthusiasm, secretive yet the counterpoint to the depravity of Mohammed Pasha.
ISMET & MAHMOUD………Gun-bearers and assistants of Layard. Ismet a conniving boy, Mahmoud a giant in strength.
RAMIS………………The name Alissa assumes when she poses as the slave girl of her own retinue. So she can see Layard more often.
While some of these characters are fictional and typical of Hollywood stereotypes of that era, Mohammed Keritli Oglu, Pasha of Mosul, is actually reported to have been even more odious than the way he is presented here. When traveling, he was known to tax villagers for the wear and tear their simple food caused his teeth and there are stories that he actually did, on occasion, allow his death to be reported, and then confiscated the property of all who celebrated his passing!
The Winged Bull was a colossal relief, carved on the sides of a block of stone, rather than an actual three-dimensional statue. It depicted a winged bull with a human head, and it was one of two protecting the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, an Assyrian king.
Whatever this treatment’s intended market, it is unlikely that Louis considered it finished. As a careful read shows, its tense is somewhat unstable. He was used to writing fiction in past tense, but movie treatments are nearly always written in the present. A shorter version was also produced, possibly to coincide with the brief attention span of studio executives. Neither was edited well enough to have been ready for presentation.
True Louis L’Amour fans will note that the title A Woman Worth Having is also a title that Louis considered for one of the sequels to his novel The Walking Drum. This is a single case out of many where Louis switched titles from one project to another when the need arose.