Page 79 - The Tigris Expedition

CHAPTER 3

in

Zero hour. All flags up.
‘Arc wc ready?’
‘Ready!’
‘OK! Let go!’
We had invited no one, but the Garden of Eden was packed with
spectators who seemed as curious as we were to sec the reed-ship
enter the river. The atmosphere was that of a big theatre with the
rumbling of countless voices that came to a sudden silence as we set
to work with two small hand-jerks we had borrowed to pull the
heavy vessel into the river Tigris.
The silence was broken by the roar of thousands of jubilant
! voices as the lofty reed colossus began to move and then to slide
. along the metal rails. Slower than a turtle, she moved in jerks
towards the gap in the broken wall, with the flowing river below.
There would not have been room for an apple to fall to the
ground in Adam’s peaceful garden, the way the spectators now
pressed forward for a better look, and the Iraqi police who had
come along to protect the high officials from Baghdad were in
difficulties to save the dignitaries, expedition members and work-
men from being pushed beneath the advancing Sumerian curiosity.
Even the river was full of Arabs and foreigners in mashhufs,
balams, police boats and motor launches.
It was a great relief to see the monster moving out of our own
home-made wooden jig and on to the improvised steel beams
which an engineer from the upstream paper-mill had kindly welded
together as rails to the water’s edge. The corn-coloured vessel still
carried blood marks on the bow that rose proudly like a swan’s
neck, but covered by red human handprints after the recent naming
ceremony.
68
i