Page 104 - The Tigris Expedition

problems Begin

awake, and one by one we dozed off with a nig t watc o
At 2.30 a.m. I woke as I heard water gurgling and swirling. 1
poked my head through the opening and the night watch showed
me with his flashlight that the chocolate-coloured water was gush
ing up-river, splashing past the portside rudder blade under my
nose. It was as if we ourselves were shooting downstream through
the rapids of a muddy river, though in reality we were sitting where
we sat last night. But the tide was rushing in from the gulf at a
frightening speed. Now, either we would surely be buried or else
torn loose. We launched the dinghy again and Detlef and Asbjorn
rowed out and dropped both our anchors in the deepest part of
the river; then we on board pulled on the anchor ropes to try to drag
ourselves into deeper water.
For nine hours we had been stuck on the mud banks, when at last
the undermining effect of the incoming tide, combined with our
own struggles, began to have effect. At 3.30 a.m. the bow was
slowly turning away from land. To help this movement we kept
pulling in all rope-slack to the anchor, while we yelled to awaken
our sleeping pilots. I would have preferred to pay them off, but
somewhere around the next bend was Iran’s large modern city of
Abadan, and we would probably have to take a tow between oil
tankers and refineries. By five o’clock we were able to lower the
rudder oars into position and hoist our sail against a starlit sky. A
huge bright halo surrounded the moon, which had been full two
nights earlier.
We had hardly rounded the first great bends before we saw the
silhouette of Abadan against a dawn sky. Tall smoke stacks, radio
towers, a whole city of lofty oil tanks. A feeble wind turned against
us and a faint current still ran against the bow, so we lowered the sail
and let the balam tow us as fast as possible through the worst
pollution we had ever seen. From a paradise of a kind our golden
ship had suddenly found herself in a modern inferno. The surface
between the big ships and the modern dock installations was neither
sea nor river water, but a thick soup of black crude oil and floating
refuse. In the cleanest spots it shone and reflected rainbow colours
as the sun rose behind the industrial fog. Sumerians would have
been horrified to see the environment modern man prefers. Even
the lower half of all the green berdi lining the undeveloped banks on
the Iraqi side was black from tar or oil, clearly showing the leve o
high tide. The air smelt of oil. We were ashamed of our proud vessel
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