Page 78 - The Tigris Expedition

In the Garden of Eden
They accepted and guaranteed with a double handshake to have
the wall down by noon the day before the launching. They even
gladly agreed to half pay if the wall was not down on time. They
came as promised, and asked to borrow our picks, but an hour later
I saw their broad backs as they calmly walked away. Shaker came
running and said they refused to do the job because the wall was too
hard. I hurried to catch up with them and told them that since they
had made the wall they should be able to knock it down. But they
explained that they could build, but they lacked the tools to destroy.
Goodbye.
I tried the Arab wall with a pickaxe and it only threw up sparks. I
blessed the Danish cement factory downstream that had made it
possible for these men to mix a concrete harder than mountain rock.
Norman jumped out of bed, his eyes still red with fever. He was a
Commander in the US Navy Reserve all right, but in his daily life
he was a New York building contractor. With Shaker he drove to
the village smith and had iron wedges and a huge sledge-hammer
made, and in no time fever-bitten men tumbled out of the resthousc
and took turns with the heavy sledgehammer; even the British
and Arab cameramen joined in Operation Jericho. And the wall
crumbled to provide a gap as wide as we needed.
The road was open into the river. The river ran into the long gulf
that opened into the Indian Ocean, an ocean I had never been at
grips with. A gateway to unknown adventures stood agape in the
Garden of Eden, and Noah’s Ark lay ready to float as new rain
clouds gathered on the horizon.

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