Page 21 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

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Bridges *

Mkm, John Van Hah

IIK (/iris' School in Basrah stands at the head of a bridge. All
the fool traffic between two busy parts of town goes over thii
Tbridge, across the creek, and many and varied are the types you
can see passing over it. Black-veiled Moslem ladies, with dusky
servants carrying small children on their shoulders; husky coolie women
with swinging turquoise jewelry and ready repartee; lawyers and client!
going to the law courts just around the comer; turbaned mullahs oq
their way to the mosque; Kurdish water carriers with their water skini
on their muscular shoulders; Persian merchants and their clerks; Arab
land owners on their way to inspect this year’s date crop. And at morn*
ing, noon, and afternoon, a stream of school girls coming and going.
In the days when the mission had medical work in Basrah, there was
no bridge between the hospital compound and the main road, so a ferry,
boat was kept in constant readiness, day and night, to ferry people back
and forth. Patients, their friends, hospital helpers and missionaries, all
went to and fro across the creek in one of the picturesque Basrak
“bellums,” which are like a cross between a canoe and a gondola.
Today' there are many well built modern bridges across the cretk,
capable of bearing huge hre engines or Royal Air Force lorries, as wdl
as the motor busses which ply between Basrah and Amarah, dusty
luggage-laden Fords coming in from Zobeir and the desert and Kuwait
beyond the desert, and the latest model Chevrolets, Buicks, and Fords.
Sometimes they have to wait till a Hock of sheep has got safely aero*
the bridge, guided by their shepherd's curious little resonant call; or fo
a string of deliberate and disdainful camels to pass by.

I - .. •
I •• v.

ESS WITH A WOMK.VS PKAYbR Mfc.fc.TIN0 GROUP
MRS. VAN

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