Page 32 - The Tigris Expedition

In Search of the Beginnings
came silently in, saluted in the name of Allah and sat down in the
shade by the reed columns.
‘The berdi has to be cut in August.’
The old man broke the silence by repeating the sentence I had
now heard everywhere in the marshes.
‘Why?’ I asked, repeating a question I had asked a hundred times.
By now I knew the answer all too well: if cut in any other month the
reeds would absorb water and lose buoyancy. Only if cut in August
would berdi float for a long time. Some said for a year. Some said
two, three, or even four years. Some said they did not know why
they cut in August; it was the custom.
‘In August there is something inside the stalk that keeps water
away,’ said the old man. ‘We have to harvest our reeds then and let
them dry for two or three weeks before we use them.’
The first time I had heard this statement was on the banks of
Shatt-al-Arab at the village of Gurmat Ali, between the marshes
and the gulf. It was my first visit to Iraq after my two experiments
with Egyptian-type papyrus ships, and I had been quite astonished
at seeing half a dozen huge reed rafts moored like floating wharfs
along the river bank. I had measured one that was 112 feet long, 16.5
feet wide and about 10 feet deep. One third of the depth was below
the river surface. I jumped on board this raft and had tea with a
marshman who lived on it in a tiny makeshift shelter, also made of
reeds. A patch of mud on the reed floor prevented the huge raft
from catching fire, as all he burned to heat his pot were short bits of
the same dry reeds. I asked how long Matug had lived on his big
reed-raft. Matug had lived on his gave for only two months so far.
He had spent one of them floating it down from Sueb in the
marshes. And how far had it sunk into the water in that time?
Nothing, he said. Matug had cut his reeds in August. He had come
here to sell the reeds of his gare to a small factory that made them
into cardboard for modern building insulation.
Two months! After one month on our papyrus ships our reeds
were already completely waterlogged and for the rest of the voyage
we had floated with our deck at surface level and the waves
breaking over all cargo not kept high above the reed bundles.

3. The boat is still to the Marsh Arabs what the camel once was to
their neighbours.
4. Old and new cultures meet at the edges of the marshes. Women
bring berdi reeds for our reed-ship.
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