Page 26 - The Tigris Expedition

In Search of the Beginnings

hangars, with walls and roof arching in perfect symmetry from side
to side, usually with one end open. Some have both ends open, like a
railway tunnel. No wood, no metal goes into these big structures. A
skeleton of thick, arching bundles of cane is covered with reed mats
lashed on with bulrush fibres.
In its elegant perfection, the architecture is as impressive as the
result is astonishingly beautiful, each dwelling recalling a little
temple with its golden-grey vault outlined majestically against a
perpetually cloudless sky extending from the surrounding desert.
Some arc mirrored in the water together with the blue sky.
This was pure Sumerian architecture. The industrious people
who first handed the art of writing down to our ancestors had lived
in such houses. In their regular cities they had built walls from
enduring bricks, but in the marshes they had constructed their
houses entirely from reeds. They are realistically illustrated in
Sumerian art five thousand years old, carved in stone and incised on
seals, just as their present boats are identical in line to the small
models in silver or asphalt-covered reeds, found as Sumerian
temple offerings. Both have proved themselves perfectly adapted to
the environment and to local needs.
As we jumped ‘ashore’ the ground under our feet swayed like a
hammock and my friend, unprepared for this, tottered and grabbed
for an arm. We were walking on a floating mattress of reeds. The
few steps from the water’s edge to the tunnel-like entrance to the
big house brought us on to a thicker, more solid foundation. A
middle-aged man welcomed me with both hands and then touched
his chest close to his heart: ‘Salam alaikum, peace be with you!’
I was back among friends. This was where I had been five years
earlier when I had met an old man I could never forget. This was his
son.
‘Friend, how are you? How is your family?’
‘Praise be to God. And you? Your children? And your old father?’
‘He is alive, praise be to God. But he is in hospital in Basra. He is
more than a hundred years old now.’
I was sorry, for in a way it was this old man who had brought me
back to the marshes. Another old man with a long white beard
appeared in the cool shade of the reed tunnel and for a while we all
continued in Arab fashion, asking each other how we felt and how
each member of the family felt, praising Allah for his generosity to
our households. We slipped off our shoes and sat down in polite,
traditional silence on the clean oriental mats on the floor, our hosts
with their legs folded under the long gowns once they had stuffed
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