Page 64 - The Tigris Expedition

In the Garden of Eden
the job like them, I would try to get them across the Atlantic for a
third time, this time to Iraq.
It would be preferable to launch and even be out of the entire gulf
area before the winter rains began, so the Titicaca Indians were
needed as soon as possible after the reeds cut in August had dried.
But September was still burning hot in the lowland marshes of
southern Iraq, while the Aymara Indians lived in the cold, thin air of
their stormy lake 12,000 feet above sea level, with the snow
remaining on the highest neighbouring peaks all the year round.
For them such a sudden change of climate could be disastrous, so I
had to delay their arrival until the September heat was over, though
it would still be necessary at both ends to modify the climatic shock.
From their barren island in the mountain lake the Indians were
escorted by their interpreter on a journey down into the Bolivian
jungle at the sources of the Amazon. There they all ate and slept and
got used to the heat for two weeks before they flew from La Paz to
Baghdad with my Mexican friend Gherman Carrasco, who was
later to join the expedition.
On the Iraqi side the Ministry of Information had generously
offered to install air conditioning in one of the two rooms we had
prepared for the Indians in the upper part of the rcsthouse. The
cage-like apparatus was torn loose from a window downstairs and
soon became to me a nightmare. For days it just hung there as dead
and useless as if the canary had escaped; then it was suddenly Filled
with wild and snarling tigers, while sometimes it began to shudder
like a roaring helicopter failing to take off, until the miracle
happened and the ugly monster began to spew an Arctic breeze into
the empty room just as the Indians arrived.
But by this time the peaceful river-house had within a few days
become like an overcrowded seaside resort, if not a madhouse.
Loaded front and back with cameras and tripods, a five-man Arab
television team from Baghdad had tumbled through the door and
begun at once to shoot at us from every corner. They needed
Shaker’s room and he squeezed in with the manager and the
engineer. They were hardly unpacked before a five-man British
television team, sent by the bbc, conquered the house with 103
cases, boxes, crates and bags that filled all the stairs and corridors
until their Arab colleagues kindly left them Shaker s room an
moved into the attic beside the ‘helicopter room’, which was
keeping for the Aymaras. The next to arrive was a gentle, so t-
spoken young Arab who spoke flawless English as he lntnx uce
himself: Rashad Nazir Sail111’ art student from Baghdad, rccom

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