Page 181 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
moment Khalifa brought his discouraging news, I had a crazy plan
ready. I dug into the box under my mattress and counted my
dwindling supply of cash. Barely sufficient to risk sending Dctlcf
back to Germany with the dissected sail. The Hamburg sailmaker
could put it together again. It was he who had made it. And he could
also make us the big dhow-sail I had hoped to have made in Iraq.
Norman, our sailing expert, begged to have it as big as the
Southampton University test had suggested. Only then could we
do justice to our ship. Taking off to look with Bibby at Dilmun
archaeology, I gave Norman carte blanche to design the sail. With
him were Detlcf and two old pearl divers, former dhow-sailors,
brought by Khalifa to give us advice.
Waiting for Dctlef to come back we remained for more than three
weeks on Bahrain. Tigris rose and sank with the tide, up and down
the lofty wall of the concrete mole. We even swung madly to and
fro as the tanker harbour was not protected. The Emir and dig­
nitaries from all Arab nations inaugurated the world’s largest
drydock with a supertanker entering a lock a few yards from our
side. Modern mariners gazed down upon us in wonder from Texaco
Japan, a vessel of325,000 tons. They shook their heads at the idea of
going into the Indian Ocean in a haystack like ours, but I felt dizzy
and unsafe as we clambered up the endless gangway hanging down
the monstrous iron wall of their island-size tanker.
We got the same friendly treatment in Bahrain as we had
experienced in Iraq, although the leaders of these two Arab nations
were not on speaking terms. They represented opposite political
systems. From the day I heard of the prison island I never missed a
chance of trying to get there. Gherman commented that usually the
difficulty was not to get in but to get out of a place like that. He had a
whole assortment of criminal suggestions of how to get inside, all
' according to how long I would like to remain there.
In the meantime Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Khalifa, the Minister of
Education, gave an unforgettable Arab dinner for the expedition.
And the son of the Emir and heir to the Emirate, Sheikh Hammad,
invited Bibby and me to the palace and gave me an ebony walking
stick with handle of pure gold, seen by Bibby as a peaceful modern
substitute for the sword once donated by Arab rulers. And on the
last day before Detlef’s return I got the great news. The Comman­
der of the prison colony, Major Smith, would personally fetch me
with the police boat on the pier of Budayia village on the north­
west coast by sunrise next morning. Khalifa would take me there.
Bibby had unfortunately already flown back to Europe. I was
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