Part 6 (2/2)
I made some study of the irrigation work in progress, and picked up a little rudimentary information concerning this problem of the watering of the land, although I lay no claim to technical knowledge on the subject. The chief difficulty does not seem to be that of making the desert blossom as the rose, but that of causing the waste places to be inhabited. What the Babylonians with slave labour could do, modern machinery and science can quite easily achieve; but the difficulty of finding sufficient people to live in this resuscitated Eden will be great. Mesopotamia is not a white man's country. India would appear to be the direction in which to look for colonists, but it is an unfortunate fact that the Arab does not like the Indian and the Indian does not like the Arab. Sooner or later there would be trouble.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A BACKWATER IN EDEN]
In the creeks the water is much clearer than in the river, as it deposits the silt when it flows more placidly than in the turmoil of the main stream. Oranges, bananas, lemons, mulberries abound, and vines trailing from palm to palm in some of the backwaters. In one narrow arm near Basra, a sort of communication trench between two ca.n.a.ls, I saw orange bushes overhanging the water, and, growing with them, some plant with great white bells. I have sketched the effect on page 98, and incidentally show a bellam in which an old Arab is pus.h.i.+ng his way through the overhanging shrubs. On page 105 is a goufa, a type of round wicker boat in vogue two thousand six hundred years ago and still in use. Talk about standardization: here is a craft standardized before the days of Sennacherib! a.s.syrian sculptures in the British Museum show this boat in use exactly as it is to-day, and although we have no records, it probably was in use for ages previously. Noah, possibly, had one as dinghy to the Ark. The goufa is made like a basket and then coated with bitumen. This type of boat gives a touch of fantasy to the scenery of the Tigris and Euphrates, especially when filled with watermelons and paddled by a man whose appearance suggests Abraham attempting the role of Sinbad the Sailor for ”the pictures.”
Of all the things I saw in my travels in Mesopotamia, I think a goufa was about the most satisfactory. It is a delightful shape and a fascinating colour--a sort of milky blue-grey--somewhere between the colour of an elephant and an old lead vase. It satisfies that craving for mystery which we are led to expect when we travel to the East. When we first see a goufa we do not know quite what it is. It may be something to do with magic.
Another curiosity of the Upper Tigris is the raft of light wood and air-inflated skins which comes down from the north to Samara and Baghdad. On this section of the river there are many shallows, sometimes caused by traces of old rubble weirs. Consequently any kind of craft which drew more than a few inches would be always in trouble. These rafts, made of light saplings lashed together, are rendered buoyant by being packed underneath with goat-skins inflated with air. Thus they require only a very slight depth of water to float them, and they are sufficiently tough to stand b.u.mping and sc.r.a.ping over shoals and shallows.
The men who manoeuvre these strange craft have some sort of tent or shelter to protect them from the sun, and they row with huge paddles.
This rowing is sufficient to keep some sort of steering way on the raft, enough to enable it to get from one bank of the river to the other as it floats down.
Wood is scarce in the Baghdad region, and the material of these rafts is sold together with the cargo on its arrival at its destination. The crew proceed back by road to Diarbekr or some up-river town to bring down another raft.
The glamour of the East is felt mostly in the West. In an atmosphere of fog and wet streets, sun-baked plains with endless caravans and belts of date-palms by Tigris' sh.o.r.e seem the most delightful of prospects.
Memory and imagination, those two artists of never-failing skill, leave out of the picture all dust and squalor--and insects! Yet to those who are sojourning by the Waters of Babylon or resting in sight of the golden towers of Khadamain romance and mystery would seem to dwell in a glimpse of Waterloo Bridge, with ghostly barges gliding silently by a thousand lamps, or in the grey cliffs of houses that make looming vistas down a London street.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”High, eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit Of vegetable gold;”--_Paradise Lost, IV._]
Of all places in the world, Baghdad, the city of Haroun-al-Raschid, is the one around which cling the romantic ideas of the enchanted East.
For this reason ”Chu Chin Chow” will probably be still running in ten years' time. It is a play which has become almost a symbol of Eastern romance. In Mesopotamia I observed that it was a standard of comparison.
”Like 'Chu Chin Chow'” or ”quite the Oscar Asche touch” were expressions frequently heard among our men who were describing something picturesque they had seen.
Now I may as well confess before I go any further, that I have not seen ”Chu Chin Chow.” I have never been able to get in. During the war, leave in London was an opportunist affair, with no notice in advance to allow for advance booking, and so I never succeeded in my quest of the glamour of the East--on the stage. But war, which brought with it so many disadvantages brought also many opportunities. Although I was unable to get into His Majesty's Theatre, I succeeded in getting into Baghdad.
I found streets through which beggars and British officers, camels and Ford cars jostled each other, often in vain attempts to get on. You can imagine the state of things on a busy morning. By day there is so much more rubbish and dirt to take the romance away from the picturesque, but at night, especially by moonlight, the quaint streets of old Baghdad do give an element of mystery and adventure that the Arabian Nights and the stage lead us to expect.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PUFFING BILLY ON THE TIGRIS]
I came upon a wonderful group of buildings by the banks of the Tigris.
It appears to have been a disused mosque. The minarets are shorn of their tops, and look like huge candlesticks. A dark pa.s.sage, vaulted like the aisle of a cathedral, led down to covered bazaars.
Again, at Basra, the House of Sinbad in Ashar Creek has quite the effect of a wonderfully staged production. The huge, high-prowed mahailas, the crazy wooden galleries skirting the river, the quaint, squat minaret appearing over the flat roofs, and the dim light of lamps reflected in the still water made a picture at twilight that it would be difficult to beat for mystery and romance. A man in black with a fire of brushwood in the bow of a mahaila added a touch of magic to the scene.
I don't know in the least what he was doing with this pillar of fire, but it was extraordinarily effective, and it made you feel you were getting your money's worth out of the show.
Or, again, for mystery and romance, here is another scene on the Tigris between Amara and Kut.
The evening is still. No breeze stirs the sliding surface of the river.
On every side immeasurable plains stretch from horizon to horizon, ”dim tracts and vast, robed in the l.u.s.trous gloom of leaden-coloured even,”
save where the misty blue ridge of the Persian mountains links heaven to earth, gleaming with a ghostly chain of snow beneath a rose-flushed sky.
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