Page 302 - The Tigris Expedition

in Search of Meluhha
In the Indus Valley and old
crowd, except beautiful girls below the age °
crones with green stones dangling from nose~ . but their
The flies were everywhere in abnormal quanmie ’ see as we
numbers seemed modest compared with what we a few
reached that part of the little village beside the sea. ,• i
open yards or sandy fields fenced in with woven, ma S’
palm-leaf mats, but if we stretched on tip-toe we cou peep o
the fence and witness a barbaric sight. Right under my nose was a
man standing knee-deep in a mud-hole in the ground, trampling
upon fish bodies as large as himself, while everywhere around him
lay colossal sharks’ heads gaping and staring in all directions. An old
man was standing among the heads with a bucket, pouring water
into the hole where the youngster was eagerly stamping on the
beheaded sharks in the muddy water. And when he had trampled
enough he dragged the bodies out of the soup and threw them on
the ground, which was everywhere covered with soiled fillets, fins
and heads. Most of the heads were of sharks and giant rays whose
evil little eyes and great grinning jaws dominated the scene.
Another barefoot boy moved around with a long rake, sorting out
or turning over smaller fillets, raking them about into orderly rows
and piles as if they were hay. In the midst of it all stood a
long-legged camel with two huge baskets which were slowly filled
to the brim by two men sorting out dry, sand-crusted fillets , one
apparently selling and the other buying.
On all my sea voyages we had occasionally eaten shark, and it is a
good meal if slices are soaked overnight in water to extract the
ammonia from the cells. The shark is a primitive fish without
organs to eliminate the urine, which thus enters its own blood. We
now understood what these men were doing: they were pressing
and washing the ammonia out of the giant shark fillets before they
were dried and exported to distant markets. The camel driver was
buying it as a delicacy for his own tribe somewhere in the Makran
desert or beyond, and two dhows were anchored off the village
beach, waiting for their loads. ‘Colombo’ the villagers had said as
they pointed to the dhows, and this was confirmed by the school­
master. Many hands were to share the profits from these sand-
encrusted shark fillets before they were masticated in Sri Lanka to
the south of India. This direct oversea trade with distant Ceylon by
small boat seemed to rest on old traditions, and made much
impression on me.
We had seen many sharks in our wake on the way to Ormara, but
tew as large as most of these. There must have been an almos

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