Page 15 - The Tigris Expedition
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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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