Page 33 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
Matug even told me that in the previous year he had to sit for nine
months on his gare before he could sell it, as the factory was full.
The seemingly unsinkablc gare gave me no rest. We had har­
vested the reeds for both Ra I and Ra II in December to have the
ships ready built for departure in the spring. Why had my experi­
enced Buduma reed-boat builders from Lake Chad not told me that
we had cut the reeds in the wrong season? And why had the
Ethiopian monks at Lake Tana, who harvested the reeds for me,
said in reply to my express inquiry that any month was equally
good for cutting reeds for boat building? The answer was simple.
The African reed-boats on Lake Chad and Lake Tana were only
used for a day or two at a time, after which they were either beached
or carried ashore, and had no chance to become waterlogged. The
Madans of Iraq, however, spent their lives on top of their reeds.
At once it became clear to me that the Marsh Arabs could still
teach me lessons not taught in any faculty, nor found in any
scholarly books. A police car gave me a lift to Qurna, where the
rivers met, and from there the Sheriff drove me on a narrow dirt
road to the ferry-point across from Madina, a major town on solid
sand built up by the Euphrates some fifteen miles inside the
marshes. I was housed by the Sheikh and served a breakfast I shall
never forget: coffee, tea, fresh milk, yogurt, eggs, lamb, chicken,
fish, figs, dates, Arab bread, white bread, pastries, compotes. I
could hardly stagger down to the banks and press myself into the
straight mashhuf the Sheikh had waiting to take me to Om-el-
Shuekh, further inside the marshes.
My proud hosts in Madina had shown me their willingness to
share everything they had, but they could not give me what I had
come for: information about reed-boats. They had all seen gare,
such as I had myself seen down the river, but these were just loose
cross-piles of berdi temporarily stacked on top of each other to
facilitate their transport to the paper mill. The only real boats they
knew inside the marshes were the various types of wooden
mashhuf: tarada, mataur and zaima, all coated with asphalt, and the
broader halam used for the transport of mats and canes. Reed-boats
belonged to the past. I had to talk to some really old men to learn
about them.
Thus the Sheikh sent me to Om-el-Shuekh, where lived the
oldest man they knew. He was said to be a hundred years old.
I did not expect much memory from a man of that age, and was
no more optimistic when the reed screens opened and we silently
slid forward to his bank. Both ashore and reflected in the water I
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