Page 15 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
of undefined species, but venerated by modest candles and sol­
emnly fenced in as a very simple sanctuary. Old men from the
nearby town ofQurna sometimes come here to sit and meditate. A
placard with text in Arabic and English tells the rare passer-by that
this was the abode of Adam and Eve. Abraham, it says, had come
here to pray. Indeed, according to the scriptures, Abraham was
born at Ur, a few hours away.
The long-lost branches of this aged tree certainly had never
carried apples. And Abraham had probably never venerated that
pleasant riverside spot, since the ground level has risen an estimated
six metres in the last few millennia and must have altered the
original water-course. Nevertheless, the meeting place of the two
rivers, the whole locality, merits the humble meditation of the
passer-by, for something began in these surroundings. Something
of importance to you and me and most of mankind.
As I moved with my luggage into the rcsthouse and leaned over
the terrace fence to watch the silent rings made by fish as they broke
the surface, the sun slipped away behind me and drew a red curtain
over the sky, causing the black silhouettes of date palms on the
other side to be reflected for a while in a river that seemed as if
turned to blood.
There was adventure in the air. How could it be otherwise? Here
was the homeland of the Thousand and One Nights, of Aladdin’s
Lamp, the Flying Carpet, and Sindbad the Sailor. Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves belonged to these riverbanks. Downstream, the
waters drifted past Sindbad Island, named after the great yarn­
spinning sailor of Arab folk-tales. Upstream it had its source near
the foot of the soaring cone of Mount Ararat, where Hebrew
records have it that Noah grounded his ark. Near the banks, modest
road signs still point to time-honoured ghost cities like Babylon and
Nineveh, whose Biblical brick walls still seem to shake off rubble
and dust in their attempt to reach the sky. Jetliners roar into timeless
Baghdad, where modern cranes and concrete buildings crowd
between golden domes and minarets.
Located, as it were, to the east of the West and to the west of the
East, people of all types and buildings of all epochs blend naturally
in this Arab republic known today as Iraq. Mesopotamia, the ‘Land
between the rivers’, was the descriptive name the conquering
Greeks once gave to this same territory which men of antiquity had
regarded with awe, wonder and admiration and knew under many
different names. Best known and first among them was Sumer;
subsequent were Babylonia and Assyria. Since the generation of
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