Digging the Desert

About the Book

Dodo, nominal Catholic, and his friend Zeke, President of fundamentalist Cherry Hill Christian College in Western Pennsylvania, are offered substantial funds by irascible tycoon Rueben Muffit to acquire and excavate a biblical site.

Rueben is a staunch “born again” Christian and a hypocrite. Earlier he fobbed off his atheist sister Martha, who insists on being called “Athenais,” on CHCC and he now wants his wild niece Sarah to be chief excavator on an archaeological project. Zeke makes Dodo head of a new archaeology department and Dodo arranges for a site in Pakistan.

At Banphore in the sweltering Sind Desert near Karachi Dodo recruits local helpers, the bright and obliging former dancing boy, Saleem, a pair of cheerful Gharochee aborigines, and the sullen and untrustworthy driver Hassan.

Beautiful young Sarah, with whom old Dodo is half in love, gets in a variety of troubles, The night she spends with dashing army major Salahuddin and his efforts to get her to marry him give rise to a belief that she has been carried off by fierce tribal kidnappers. After stirring up Afzal Khan Yusufzai, the local district official, who also has eyes for Sarah, and high Pakistani and American officials unnecessarily, Dodo and Sarah cut and run for the U.S.

After a few months at CHCC, they return to Banphore and find artifacts which indicate that the site in fact had connections with biblical Jerusalem, Alexander the Great, and early migrants to America. Now Sarah is really kidnapped by Baluchi tribal bandits who have a deadly shoot-out with competing Rajputs who have crossed the border from India.

 One effort to rescue her while she is being held in Karachi’s red light district fails at the last moment, but eventually she is liberated unharmed after a spectacular military operation in remote Baluchistan, in which most of the stalwarts we have met earlier take part. She marries Afzal Khan, her liberator, and stays on in Pakistan.

The expedition digs some more at Banphore, after which Dodo returns to CHCC.  Rueben passes out of the picture ingloriously. Dodo, Martha, Zeke, and the “born again” Christians continue their usual highly individualistic activities.

About the Author

James W. Spain, born in Chicago in 1926 not far from the Englewood Rail Yards, grew up during the Great Depression, and was educated at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. He spent most of his life as a career diplomat, serving as U.S. Ambassador in Tanzania, the United Nations, Turkey, and Sri Lanka. He is the author of three books on the Pathans of Pakistan; American Diplomacy in Turkey; a diplomatic memoir, In Those Days ; a book of short stories, Innocents of the Latter Day; and several “Dodo Dillon” tales about the adventures of a retired American diplomat in exotic corners of the world.