Jesus the bartender

In the novel They Came to Baghdad, Jesus is the Christian name of the bartender working at the Tio Hotel. The hotel proprietor Marcus Tio ordered a gin and orange from him for Victoria Jones. Although she demurred, Marcus said she would like it as it is quite weak--it would turn out not to be weak at all. Later Marcus ordered a sidecar for her.

Just as the Tio Hotel is based on the actual Zia Hotel in Baghdad, Jesus is based on an actual and apparently famous bartender who actually worked at the Zia. Archie Roosevelt, a U.S. intelligence officer was in Baghdad in 1944 and records that he stayed at the Zia and met "the bartender, known to all visitors by the name of Jesus." A friend and local contact told him that Jesus was a Chaldean, like most restaurant and hotel workers because the Arabs would not do this kind of work. Jesus, like the other Chaldeans, came from Tell Keif and other Christian villages north of Mosul.

The real bartender Jesus is also mentioned in other accounts of Baghdad life in the 1950s. Kenneth F. Vernon, a U.S. official for the Bureau of Reclamation, recounts an incident when Michael Zia (the Marcus Tio prototype) was entertaining a British lord and yelled, "Jesus, bring the lord a drink!" to the surprise of all present. A similar event occurs in They Came to Baghdad with Victoria Jones being the person who is startled. Willie Snow Ethridge also met Jesus and notes that he is one of the most renowned characters in Baghdad. He is renowned "not only because his name is so incongruous with his profession, but because he is usually brutally frank, stubborn, and even insulting to his customers." This particular feature did not show up in Christie's character.