Twins' Jinn

WE MARRIED AN ENGLISHMAN--Ruth & Helen Hoffman--Carrick & Evans ($2.75).

Identical twins, handsome Minnesota-born Ruth and Helen Hoffman have been inseparable painters, travelers and lovers of cats. So when in 1935 Ruth decided to marry an English construction engineer in Iraq named Brooks, Helen went along. We Married an Englishman, a much more proper book than it sounds, is their good-humored, comically illustrated account of the two years they spent in a tiny village 300 miles south of Bagdad, where Ruth's fiance was building an air base.

Their first months were a struggle to build a dining room and studio, whose modernistic design drove native workmen crazy. They visited sheiks, harems (a disappointment), native officials (most of them later assassinated), and the 24-year-old King of Iraq, a motoring enthusiast who had a Mercedes done in phosphorescent paint. Their collection of native lore ran to such curiosa as the law forbidding mermaids in the River Tigris (which ran through their yard) to marry human beings. They particularly liked Iraq love lore of the Arabian Nights sort.

But mainly they wrestled with the Iraq servant problem (they had 15, costing a total of $153 a month). When they imported garden seed from England, the gardener threw out everything except onion seed, because he didn't like lettuce and such stuff. When a houseboy was married, they were put to much bother to provide a special room, because young Mohammed didn't want the customary wedding-night snoopers hanging around his door. One servant had a mania for jabbing people with forks. Household provisions disappeared as by magic. When a discharged servant was told he had been satisfactory only the first six months, he insisted on references to cover that period. When the servant problem got bad enough, Ruth and Helen really came to believe in evil jinn.

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