Page 178 - The Tigris Expedition

To Dilmun, the Land of Noah
My interest in that island was fired and I felt an irresistible urge to

I went straight to my new acquaintance, the friendly Minister of
Information, and decided to attack this bastion from every possi c
angle. In the meantime there were more urgent problems to solve.
We had come to Bahrain with a huge hole in our bow. Little was
visible above waterline, but Gherman came up horrified from a dive
and told us there was room for himself inside the cavity. The ropes
were not broken but hung in loose loops and the inner bundles were
exposed. We had to repair the hole, otherwise there was nothing
to stop the continuous loss of reeds until the whole ship came
apart.
We carried a modest quantity of spare reeds with us for minor
repairs, and we could also use some of the berdi fenders to fill the
hole. But it would still not be enough. What could we use? If we
stuffed wood or other hard materials into the hole they would gnaw
on the reeds and wriggle loose in violent seas. We had to look for
something suitable in the meagre vegetation still growing on the
island.
I had an idea and started skimming through a copy of Bibby’s
book which was part of the Tigris library. In it he had a line drawing
of a bundle-boat with sail and double rudder-oars astern, resem­
bling those of Failaka. It was the caption I was looking for: ‘These
boats, about 15 feet long and made of bundles of reeds, are used by
fishermen of Bahrain. They are buoyant but not, of course, water­
tight (and are therefore technically rafts). Similar boats of papyrus
reeds were in use in Egypt over 4000 years ago.’
I ran to Bibby. Nobody else I talked to had seen anything but
tankers, yachts and motor vessels on Bahrain. Bibby clearly recalled
having seen the craft he sketched and mentioned in his book.
Together we drove across the island, past cemeteries with tens of
thousands of mounds I had not seen before, and reached the tiny
fishing village of Malakiya near the south-west coast. Women and
children with gold teeth, jingling with jewellery, came out of small
cement houses in colourful draperies, pointing out the trail to the
sea. Bibby recalled having seen nicer and healthier houses of woven
date-palm stalks when he was there a few years earlier. Plastic and
modern refuse tossed about reflected sudden wealth, as did the
half-eaten food thrown away to the benefit of buzzing clouds of
flies. Our Arab driver assured us that these people had now so much
money that their main problem was to find ways ofspending it. We
left our car at the fine motor road where no horses or donkeys had

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