Book: A Dweller in Mesopotamia

D >> Donald Maxwell >> A Dweller in Mesopotamia




[Illustration: HOSPITAL HULKS AT BASRA]

In spite, however, of these drawbacks and disappointments, to those who
would find Venetian character by the waters of Mesopotamia, there are
two features in Basra that do undoubtedly bring Venice to mind--the
boats and the canals. The bellam is a long, flat-bottomed boat not
unlike a punt but narrowing at each end to a point, the stem and
stern-post alike ending in a high curved piece suggestive of a gondola.
These craft are propelled by two men standing one at each end like
gondoliers and punting the boat along by poles. If the water is too deep
to bottom it they sit and propel the boat with paddles.

The canals of Basra are multitudinous. They are artificially dug and are
really more canals than creeks, although they are always called creeks.
Ashar Creek is the most important of these waterways. It is generally
packed with craft from big mahailas, the type of vessel shown in the
sketch facing page 16, to the ubiquitous bellam. Old Basra lies up here.
As I approached it one evening, with the sun going down, it looked most
gorgeous. Palms and gardens on the right and the buildings of the town
on the left, and boats approaching, dream-like In the sunset glow. I
have sketched the effect roughly in the line drawing on page 21.

Some of the regions up these creeks are extremely beautiful. For once
there was nothing disappointing even in comparison--although
comparisons, as we have seen, are odious--with Venetian waterways. For
once we have something that can surpass in beauty anything that Venice
can show. Basra can boast no architecture, but Nature, coming to her
assistance, can produce, between sunshine and water, vistas of
orange-laden trees overtopped with palms and all reflected in the still
canal. I have known seven kinds of fruit to overhang the banks of one
creek at the same time.

[Illustration: Sunset, Old Basra.]

I hired a bellam manned by two fearsome-looking pirates and explored
unending waterways in and around Basra. The main thoroughfares run at
right angles to the river, but there are numerous narrow branches
communicating from one to the other, in some places forming a network of
little channels. Some of these were beautiful beyond description. The
tide is felt in all these waters, and sometimes, during a spring tide,
the effect of some of these date palm plantations, with the ground just
covered, is strange. Hundreds of palms seem to be growing up out of a
lake, and the glades reflected in the still water is dream-like and
enchanting, recalling Tennyson's nocturne--

"Until another night in night
I enter'd, from the clearer light,
Imbower'd vaults of piller'd palm."

The pirates were quite jolly fellows who pointed out various things to
me as being worthy of interest. By this time the natives have got up, in
a most superficial way, the things which they think will interest the
Englishman. Every group of palm trees more than twenty in number is
pointed out as the Garden of Eden, every bump of ground more than six
feet high is the mount on which the Ark rested, and every building more
than fifty years old is the one undoubted and authentic residence of
Sinbad the Sailor. An old house in Mesopotamia in which Sinbad the
Sailor had _not_ lived would be equivalent to one of England's ancient
country mansions in which Queen Elizabeth had never slept. The fact that
Sinbad the Sailor is a literary creation doesn't discourage the Arabs in
the least.

During this voyage of mine by bellam through the multitudinous creeks of
Basra a remarkable thing happened. Under the circumstances it was a
providential happening. _I ran into Brown_.

[Illustration: ".... THE SOLEMN PALMS WERE RANGED ABOVE, UNWOO'D OF
SUMMER WIND"--_Recollections of the Arabian Nights_]

Now I do not expect the readers of some previous notes of my sketching
escapades[1] to believe this. It is almost too wonderful that a
chronicler of travels in desperate need of some comic relief to save his
book from dulness would be so lucky as to pick up such excellent copy as
Brown, without previous intrigue. Nevertheless I do solemnly state that
I had not the slightest idea where Brown was doing his bit in the war. I
had last heard of him in France in the Naval Division. That we should
both have travelled half across the world to meet with a crash in a
backwater at Basra was one of the strangest freaks of fortune I have
come across.

My two pirates were poling along quite merrily when we took a right
angle turn in fine style. It is evident that the low foliage had hidden
the side channel into which we shot, and they had not seen what became
evident too late, a motor-boat at right angles across the creek,
apparently stuck fast.

I had just time to observe two naval officers and the native coxswain
struggling with poles to turn the boat round, or free it from its
unserviceable position with regard to the bank when the prow of my
bellam took a flying leap over the motor-boat, precipitating my two
boatmen into the water, and sending me by means of a somersault into the
launch. Somewhat stunned I lay gazing up at a piece of blue sky in which
I could discern the green leaves of palm trees.

When in the midst of this blue dome above I beheld Brown perched on the
top of a palm tree exhibiting with a look of blank astonishment on his
face, waving an arm as if in a kind of bewildered greeting, I gave up
the struggle for existence and became resigned to my fate. Without doubt
Brown, whom I had last heard of in France, had been killed and was now
doing his best to welcome me into a happier and better world.

It would be quite like Brown to try and outdo the ordinarily accepted
symbolism of bearing a palm branch by attempting to wave a whole palm
tree, for this he seemed most undoubtedly to be doing, embracing its
trunk and swaying from side to side.

Subsequently, when things had sorted themselves out in my mind, and when
I found I was still in the land of the living I realized that he was
attempting to descend to earth. He was no less astonished than I.

After baling out the bellam and restoring order in the launch we found
that the casualties were nil, and proceeded to compare notes. Brown, it
appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and
France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of
Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the _Dalhousie_ stationed at
Basra. His occupation, when I came across him in this unexpected way,
was that of a leader of an expedition in a motor-boat with two R.N.
victims to find a new route to somewhere or other which could not
possibly be approached by water.

His enthusiasm had been so infectious that he had persuaded these
gallant and guileless officers to go with him, and was, at the moment of
my arrival, attempting to get a better geographical idea of the
surrounding country by climbing a palm tree and shouting directions to
the unfortunate occupants of the boat below, who were hopelessly stuck.
The sudden impact of the bellam, uncomfortable as it was for all
concerned, succeeded where they had failed, in getting them off the mud.

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF SINBAD THE SAILOR, BASRA]

An old-world touch is given to the waters of Basra by the high-sterned
dhows anchored in the river. Above Ashar Creek the scenery of the banks
with its wharves and big steamers is not particularly characteristic of
the East. Some of it might be by the Thames at Tilbury Docks. But by
Khora Creek and in the lower reaches of the river at Basra, these
old-world ships, with their quaint lines and steep, naked masts, are
more in keeping with our recollections of Sinbad the Sailor, or perhaps
of the days of the Merchant Venturers of our own Elizabethan days.

It is to be supposed that the type of ship that has survived in the East
to the present day, like the mahaila and the goufa, is very much
unchanged like everything else, and tells us faithfully what sort of
ships there were in these waters some two thousand years ago or more. If
this surmise be a correct one, then we can trace the poop tower of the
_Great Harry_ and the square windows and super-imposed galleries of the
_Victory's_ stern to this common ancestor. I wish I had been able to get
an elevation of the details of one of these more ornate sterns. It would
be interesting to compare the work with that in the ships of the Middle
Ages and see if there is a definite development of type from East to
West via the Mediterranean.

We passed down Ashar Creek just after sunset, and the house of Sinbad,
with its picturesque surroundings, thoroughly looked the part. The tower
of the mosque stood out against a lemon-coloured sky, and wandering
wisps of purple smoke curled up from countless hearths.

Some giant mahailas, nearly obliterated the crooked little galleries
that overlook the creek, and a few boats glided silently down towards
the open river. Lights began to appear and stars studded the darkening
sky. Faint sounds of chanting music floated across the water and all the
world was still.

[Illustration: Dhows Basra.]




III

SINBAD THE SOLDIER

[Illustration: Monitor "Moth" at Basra.]

[Illustration]




SINBAD THE SOLDIER

After a few days among the waterways of Mesopotamia one can get hardened
against surprises. The most amazing and outrageous types of craft soon
meet the eye as commonplaces of river life. Things that would make a
Thames waterman sign the pledge proceed up and down without arousing any
comment. Noah's ark, with its full complement, could ply for hire
between Basra and Baghdad, and the lion's roaring would be accepted as
the necessary accompaniment of a somewhat old type of machinery
resuscitated for the war.

I have seen boats jostling each other cheek by jowl that might have been
taking part in a pageant entitled "Ships in All the Ages." There were
Thornycroft motor-boats and Sennacharib goufas, mahailas and Thames
steamboats, an oil-fuel gunboat and a stern paddler that could have come
out of a woodcut of the first steamboat on the Clyde--and all these in
the same reach. I travelled in this last extraordinary vessel for a
short time. She was in charge of a sergeant of the Inland Water
Transport, with an Indian pilot and miscellaneous crew, and my
adventurous cruise called to mind both the travels of Ulysses and the
Hunting of the Snark.

The sergeant could not speak Hindustani and the pilot could not speak a
word of English. Mistakes of the most frantic nature were common,
especially when we were being whirled round and round by the stream at a
difficult corner. In the midst of controversy unrelieved by any glimmer
of understanding on the part of anybody present we would slide
gracefully into a state of rest on a mudbank or bump violently against
the shore. Luckily, it seemed as easy to get off the mudbank as to get
on it, and we finally got into positions we wanted to for making
sketches of various points. The pantomimic violence of the sergeant,
together with diagrams in my sketch-book, were ultimately successful.

[Illustration: A BEND IN "THE NARROWS" OF THE TIGRIS]

Nearly all the Tigris steamers proceeding up river have loaded
lighters on each side of them. These act as fenders at the corners and
take the bump whenever the bank is encountered. The progress is slow and
there is often a good deal of waiting, for in the region between Ezra's
tomb (above Kurna) and Amara there is not room for two steamers thus
encumbered to pass with safety. These waters are known as the Narrows.
Signal stations are placed at various intervals, and a signal is made to
clear the way, generally for the down-river boat, the up-river craft,
which, with the stream against them, will not have to turn round in
stopping, tying up to the bank. This manoeuvre is done in a few
minutes. The steamer that is to stop runs alongside the bank and natives
with stakes jump out and drive them into the marsh ground. She moors to
these until the other vessel has passed downwards.

The sketch facing page 30 was done from a steamer bound
up-river, which had tied up under these conditions. The paddler coming
down has a lighter on each side of her as the one sketched on page 38.
She will come down toward the leading marks shown on the
right-hand side of the picture, and then slide along the bank,
using the lighter on the port side as a fender. Then she will leave the
bank and shoot across to the other side of the river, taking the next
turn with her starboard lighter.

This drawing will serve to show the general nature of most Mesopotamian
river scenery, dead flat, with nothing or little to relieve the
monotony, a great expanse of muddy waters and featureless dust, with
just a suggestion in one direction of a low line of blue--very faint.
It tells of the far-away Persian mountains and of snow.

The great feature of the Narrows, however, and one which all our
dwellers in Mesopotamia will remember vividly as long as they live, is
the egg-sellers from the Marsh Arab villages on the banks. Although a
steamer proceeding up-river may be kicking up a great fuss in the water
and apparently thumping along at a great rate, it is, in reality, making
only about four knots on the land. Consequently, when it sidles into the
bank, with one of its lighters touching the marsh, the natives who are
selling things can keep up, and a running--literally running--fire of
bargaining is maintained between the ship's company and the Arabs.

They are all women who do the selling--weird figures in black carrying
baskets of eggs and occasionally chicken. Gesticulating, shouting,
shrieking, they rush along beside the up-going steamer and keep even
with it. In the middle of a bargain the steamer may edge away until a
great gulf is fixed between the bargainers. Sometimes it will slide
along the other bank and a fresh company of yelling Amazons will try and
open up negotiations for eggs while the frenzied and now almost demented
sellers left behind rend their clothes and shout imprecations at their
rivals. Another turn of the current, however, and the vessel again nears
the shore of the original runners and the deal is finished.

[Illustration: The Sirens of the Narrows.]

One girl kept up for miles and at last sold her basket of eggs. She got
a very good price for them, but apparently she wanted her basket back
again. The buyer insisted that the basket was included, and the seller
shrieked frantically that it was not. She kept up with us for some
miles, making imploring gestures, kneeling down with her arms
outstretched as though she was begging for her life, and yelling at the
top of her voice, tears streaming down her cheeks. The basket would be
worth twopence or less and she had made many shillings on the deal.
Finally, a soldier good-naturedly threw it to her and it fell in the
water about three feet from the shore. She hurled herself upon it waist
deep in the water and seized it, then waved her arms and leaped about in
a dance of ecstatic triumph that would have made her fortune at the
Hippodrome.

Another feature of the Narrows is the reed villages. This, of course,
does not exclusively belong to this region, but it is here, when tied up
to the bank, that the best opportunity of a close view is taken.

That houses can be built in practically no time and out of almost
anything has been abundantly claimed at home by numerous enterprising
firms by ocular demonstration at the Building Trades and Ideal Home
Exhibitions. Cement guns and climbing scaffolding, we are assured, will
raise crops of mansions at a prodigious pace, and the housing problem is
all but solved. If we have not noticed many new houses it is not for
want of inventors. Yet the best of these efforts is elaborately
cumbersome compared with housing schemes on these flat lands bordering
the Tigris and Euphrates. Not only has the Marsh Arab evolved a style
of dwelling that can be built in a night, but he can boast of a device
still more alluring in its naivity and utility--the _Portable Village!_

[Illustration: A MARSH ARAB REED VILLAGE]

I once made a sketch of a Marsh Arabs' village at evening (reproduced
facing p. 34), and on returning thither on the following morning to
verify certain details, I found it had gone! I succeeded in tracking it
down again by the afternoon, about ten miles from its former situation,
and found the mayor (or whatever the Marsh-Mesopotamian equivalent may
be) inspecting the finishing touches being made to the borough. Of
course it is frightfully muddling, all this moving about of villages, to
the stranger who is not keeping a sharp look-out and marking well such
impromptu geographical activity.

Along the shores of the rivers of Mesopotamia and in the innumerable
lagoons and backwaters that abound can be found large areas of tall
reeds, ranging from quite slight rushes to canes twenty feet high. It is
with such material the Marsh Arab builds. The long rods he bends into
arches like croquet hoops. On this skeleton, not unlike the ribs of a
boat turned upside down, he stretches large mats woven out of rushes. At
the ends he builds up a straight wall of reed straw bound up in flat
sheaves. An opening is left for an entrance, a mat, sometimes of
coloured material, doing duty for a door.

So much for the principal and removable part of the village. However,
the town planner will add to this by improvising mud enclosures for
animals, and an occasional wall and "tower." The mud is mixed with cut
grass and reeds, quickly drying into a hard substance, and sufficiently
permanent for anything that such a temporary village requires.

In the bright sunlight of the Mesopotamian plains, and probably also on
account of their prominence at a distance over the flat land, some of
these mud buildings look quite imposing. I remember once approaching a
city with ramparts, towers, and formidable walls which, on close
inspection, turned out to be a small mud enclosure of the most decrepit
kind.

Great changes have been made in the rule of the waterways of
Mesopotamia. Sinbad the Sailor has given place to Sinbad the Soldier,
the Inland Water Transport.

We have learnt, as we were advised to do in regard to the things of
Mesopotamia, to think amphibiously.

[Illustration: Noah's Ark, 1919.]




IV

THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST

[Illustration: Upward bound on the Tigris.]

[Illustration]




THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST


The story of Mesopotamia is a story of irrigation. "It is not
improbable," writes Sir William Willcocks, the great irrigationist,
"that the wisdom of ancient Chaldea had its foundations in the necessity
of a deep mastery of hydraulics and meteorology, to enable the ancient
settlers to turn what was partially a desert and partially a swamp into
fields of world-famed fertility." The civilizations of Babylon and
Assyria owed their very life to the science of watering the land, and
even in the later times of Haroun Alraschid their great systems had been
well maintained. It is said of Maimun, the son and successor of this
monarch, that he exclaimed, as he saw Egypt spread out before him,
"Cursed be Pharaoh who said in his pride, 'Am I not Pharaoh, King of
Egypt?' If he had seen Chaldea he would have said it with humility."

Allowing for a certain amount of patriotic exaggeration, the exclamation
at least shows at what a high degree of excellence the irrigation system
of Mesopotamia was maintained in the 10th century A.D. Yet
Mesopotamia is to-day a desert except for the regions in the immediate
vicinity of the rivers. You can go westwards from Baghdad to the
Euphrates, and every mile or so you will have to cross earthworks, not
unlike irregular railway embankments, showing a vast system of
irrigation channels both great and small. But there is not a drop of
water near and not a tree and no sign of any life. How came the change
and how can such a network of channels have ceased to work entirely?

The reason is to be found in some past neglect of the ancient dams that
kept the water on a high level, so that it could flow by means of
artificial canals at a greater height (and consequently at a slower
rate) than the rivers themselves. The Tigris and Euphrates are rivers
fed by the melting snow in the mountains of Armenia. The hotter the
season and the more necessary a plentiful supply of water, the greater
is the amount brought down. The rivers, however, when they reach the
flat alluvial plain between the region round about Baghdad and the
Persian Gulf, when left to themselves are always bringing down a
deposit and choking themselves up and then breaking out in a new
direction, causing swamps and turning much of the land into useless
marsh. Consequent also upon this silting-up process the banks of the
rivers are higher than the surrounding country, and there is a gentle
drop in the level of the land as it recedes from the river.

[Illustration: MUD HOUSES ON THE TIGRIS]

The object of the ancient irrigationists was to tap the rivers at the
higher part of this plain, and then, by means of great canals, lead the
water where they wanted it. Large reservoirs and lakes for storing
surplus water were made, and thus the uneven delivery of water by the
rivers was checked and a more regular and manageable supply maintained.

The greatest of these ancient channels was the Nahrwan. A regulator, the
ruins which are still traceable in the bed of the Tigris, turned
sufficient water into this high-level river at Dura. It stretched
southwards for about 250 miles along the left bank of the Tigris. It was
the neglect of this canal that led to a fearful catastrophe which must
have been responsible for the death of millions; a catastrophe which
turned some 20,000 square miles of fruitful land, teeming with populous
cities, into a dismal swamp.

The intake from the Tigris of this and other canals evidently silted up,
and thus enormous volumes of water, usually carried off by them in times
of flood, helped to swell this river till, bursting its banks, it
inundated the whole country. The result remains to-day--a vast tract of
swampy land, barren and almost useless, except to a few wandering tribes
of Arabs.

And now the land which sent its Wise Men to the West is looking towards
the West again for aid. If its ancient prosperity is to be restored, if
Chaldea is again to be a granary to the world, it is to the West that it
must turn. Science and machinery shall again make the waste places to be
inhabited and the desert blossom as the rose. Thus shall the wise men
return to them--the Wise Men of the West. In every important
agricultural centre are to be found irrigation officers--the
first-fruits of British occupation.

There was only one subject of conversation in Mesopotamia in the winter
of 1918-1919, and that was the chances of getting back home. There was
very little to do at Basra except watch steamers load up with the more
fortunate candidates for demobilization and give them a send-off. Brown
had no difficulty in getting three weeks' leave to accompany me in some
of my expeditions to gather up such fragments as remained of naval
subjects on the rivers. We determined on a voyage of discovery up the
Euphrates in search of the famous "fly-boats" which had figured so
vividly in the early days of naval river fighting, and which now were
more or less peacefully employed. I had to make many sketches of them
for further use, and succeeded in finding a whole "bag" at Dhibban.

[Illustration: A MAHAILA OF THE INLAND WATER TRANSPORT]

We embarked in an ancient-looking stern paddler named _Shushan_. As
we had to camp out in a somewhat rough-and-ready way, with not a little
discomfort owing to a spell of very cold weather, Brown insisted on
referring to her as _Shushan the Palace_.

She had a tall funnel, like the tug in Turner's _Fighting Temeraire,_
and kicked up a tremendous wash with her paddle, the whole effect being
faintly reminiscent of a hay-making machine. She pushed her way along,
slightly "down by the head," as if she had suddenly thought of something
and was putting on a spurt to make up for lost time. I cannot lay hands
on a sketch of her, but the one reproduced at the head of this chapter
will give some idea of her character. Take away one funnel and place it
amid-ships, reduce her tonnage a little, and you have the _Shushan_ to
the life.

This gallant little curiosity is no late conscripted product of the war.
She is one of the pukka ships of the Navy in Mesopotamia--one of the Old
Contemptibles. Armed with a three-pounder which caused such havoc to her
decks when fired that it is reported the ship had to be turned round
after each round. Two shots in succession in the same direction would
have wrecked the vessel.

A host of amusing stories of her exploits were told us by her C.O., who
was an R.N.V.R. Lieutenant. Some practical joker produced a cylinder
alleged to be in cuneiform writing. A translation of the inscription
proved beyond doubt that the _Shushan_ was used by Nebuchadnezzar as a
royal yacht, and is the last surviving link with the Babylonian navy.

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