A Dweller in Mesopotamia | Page 8

bump whenever the bank is encountered. The progress is slow and there is often a good deal of waiting, for in the region between Ezra's tomb (above Kurna) and Amara there is not room for two steamers thus encumbered to pass with safety. These waters are known as the Narrows. Signal stations are placed at various intervals, and a signal is made to clear the way, generally for the down-river boat, the up-river craft, which, with the stream against them, will not have to turn round in stopping, tying up to the bank. This manoeuvre is done in a few minutes. The steamer that is to stop runs alongside the bank and natives with stakes jump out and drive them into the marsh ground. She moors to these until the other vessel has passed downwards.
The sketch facing page 30 was done from a steamer bound up-river, which had tied up under these conditions. The paddler coming down has a lighter on each side of her as the one sketched on page 38. She will come down toward the leading marks shown on the right-hand side of the picture, and then slide along the bank, using the lighter on the port side as a fender. Then she will leave the bank and shoot across to the other side of the river, taking the next turn with her starboard lighter.
This drawing will serve to show the general nature of most Mesopotamian river scenery, dead flat, with nothing or little to relieve the monotony, a great expanse of muddy waters and featureless dust, with just a suggestion in one direction of a low line of blue--very faint. It tells of the far-away Persian mountains and of snow.
The great feature of the Narrows, however, and one which all our dwellers in Mesopotamia will remember vividly as long as they live, is the egg-sellers from the Marsh Arab villages on the banks. Although a steamer proceeding up-river may be kicking up a great fuss in the water and apparently thumping along at a great rate, it is, in reality, making only about four knots on the land. Consequently, when it sidles into the bank, with one of its lighters touching the marsh, the natives who are selling things can keep up, and a running--literally running--fire of bargaining is maintained between the ship's company and the Arabs.
They are all women who do the selling--weird figures in black carrying baskets of eggs and occasionally chicken. Gesticulating, shouting, shrieking, they rush along beside the up-going steamer and keep even with it. In the middle of a bargain the steamer may edge away until a great gulf is fixed between the bargainers. Sometimes it will slide along the other bank and a fresh company of yelling Amazons will try and open up negotiations for eggs while the frenzied and now almost demented sellers left behind rend their clothes and shout imprecations at their rivals. Another turn of the current, however, and the vessel again nears the shore of the original runners and the deal is finished.
[Illustration: The Sirens of the Narrows.]
One girl kept up for miles and at last sold her basket of eggs. She got a very good price for them, but apparently she wanted her basket back again. The buyer insisted that the basket was included, and the seller shrieked frantically that it was not. She kept up with us for some miles, making imploring gestures, kneeling down with her arms outstretched as though she was begging for her life, and yelling at the top of her voice, tears streaming down her cheeks. The basket would be worth twopence or less and she had made many shillings on the deal. Finally, a soldier good-naturedly threw it to her and it fell in the water about three feet from the shore. She hurled herself upon it waist deep in the water and seized it, then waved her arms and leaped about in a dance of ecstatic triumph that would have made her fortune at the Hippodrome.
Another feature of the Narrows is the reed villages. This, of course, does not exclusively belong to this region, but it is here, when tied up to the bank, that the best opportunity of a close view is taken.
That houses can be built in practically no time and out of almost anything has been abundantly claimed at home by numerous enterprising firms by ocular demonstration at the Building Trades and Ideal Home Exhibitions. Cement guns and climbing scaffolding, we are assured, will raise crops of mansions at a prodigious pace, and the housing problem is all but solved. If we have not noticed many new houses it is not for want of inventors. Yet the best of these efforts is elaborately cumbersome compared with housing schemes on these flat lands bordering the Tigris