Page 57 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
worries I got the crazy idea of sending a messenger to the same
magic customs people in the harbour city of Basra. Three days later
the indefatigable emissary came back in triumph; he had located the
lost replacements.
i HP and I occupied two of the three nice big bedrooms in the
resthouse, and the many friendly servants were all at our disposal.
Ali and Mohammed were excellent, and even knew some English.
Good Arabian meals were served us alone in an empty restaurant
hall, so large that we planned to build the reed-bundles indoors if
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the heat continued into the next month. We were up the moment
the red desert sun arose across the Tigris, and the morning air and
first shower in the bathroom were refreshingly cool. On the first
morning I lay down in my tub and let it overflow with the coldest
water I could get; until two long brown antennae began to waver
out of the overflow, and two expressionless eyes peeped at me. A
huge cockroach dived out of the hole into my bathwater, followed
by another, and another, and another: they were twenty-two in all.
With this swimming armada I was out of the water in a second and
tried to flush them all down the drain, but they were too big and I
had to scoop them with a glass into the toilet. I woke HP and
suggested he should take a cool bath. I waited a while and then
heard a yell through the wall. ‘You know what happened to me?’ he
asked as we sat down to a grand egg and cheese breakfast on the
i lawn. ‘Yes,* I replied. ‘How many?’
There was plenty of work ahead to prepare the building site for
the arrival of all the groups of helpers: Marsh Arabs, South Ameri­
can Indians, dhow sailors from Bombay, and expedition members
from all continents. The three bedrooms would not suffice, but two
rooms could be made serviceable upstairs under the roof, and
mattresses and camp beds could be put up everywhere.
With HP I began to prepare the ground for the combined jig and
building scaffold. I had the idea of digging two deep and broad
trenches side by side in the garden, so that the boat-builders could
walk underneath the double-body of the vessel when the thick
spiral rope was to be wound around the two final bundles. Half a
dozen Arab workmen from Qurna came with picks and shovels and
they soon began uncovering big, square, yellow Sumerian bricks
which they unperturbedly carried away in baskets on their heads to
dump. My archaeological conscience made me stop the work in the
Garden of Eden immediately, until HP stooped down and picked
up a tiny living tortoise among the debris. Then I too noted
something: between the truly ancient bricks lay the neck sherd of a
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