A Dweller in Mesopotamia | Page 5

on. Then knock handle off a
round-bottomed saucepan, very sooty, and place on your head. Dirty
your face and you might walk about Abadan without attracting notice.
I daresay if I knew something technical about the refining of oil I
should not find these works so fascinating. There is always a glamour
about a thing only half understood. Probably the retorts and boilers and
all the apparatus here are of the very latest pattern, yet so strangely
unlike modern machinery do they seem that I find myself wondering if
I have gone back into some previous age and unearthed strange things
of prehistoric antiquity. These solemn-looking turbaned Indians might
be tending the first uncouth monsters of engineering--the antediluvians
of machinery. These serried ranks of tall iron funnels, these rude
furnaces fed by crawling snakes of piping, these roaring domes of fire
might be crude steam engines evolved by Titans when the world was
young.
[Illustration]

II
THE VENICE OF THE EAST.

[Illustration: In Ashar creek.]
[Illustration]

THE VENICE OF THE EAST
Before the war, when Mesopotamia was a more distant land than it is
to-day, Basra was often referred to as the Venice of the East. Few
travellers were in a position to test the accuracy of the comparison, and
so it aroused little comment. No Venetians had returned from Basra
burning with indignation and filled with a desire to get even with the
writer who first thought of the parallel, probably because no Venetian
had ever been there.
A few simple souls, who had delighted in the mediæval splendours of
Venice, dreamed of a Venice still more romantic--a Venice with all her
glories of art tinged with the glamour and witchery of the Arabian
Nights, a Venice whose blue waterways reflected stately palms and
golden minarets. Other souls, like myself, less simple and sufficiently
salted to know that these Turnerian dreams are generally the magical
accidents of changing light and seldom the result of any intrinsic
interest in the places themselves--even they had a grievance when they
saw the real Basra. Was this the Venice of the East, this squalid place
beside soup-coloured waters? Was this the city that reveals the past
splendours of Haroun Alraschid as Venice reveals the golden age of
Titian and the Doges?
The first general impression of Basra is that of an unending series of
quays along a river not unlike the Thames at Tilbury. The British India
boats and other transports lying in the stream or berthed at the wharves
might be at Gravesend and the grey-painted County Council "penny
steamboats" at their moorings in the river look very much as they
looked in the reach below Charing Cross Bridge.
Another thing which makes the contrast between Venice and Basra
rather a painful one is the complete and noticeable absence of anything

of the slightest architectural interest in this Eastern (alleged)
counterpart of the Bride of the Adriatic. Whereas in Venice the
antiquarian can revel in examples of many centuries of diverse
domestic architecture from ducal palace to humble fisherman's
dwelling on an obscure "back street" canal, in Basra there abounds a
great deal of rickety rubbish that never had any interest in itself and
which depends for its effect on the flattering gilding of the sun and the
intangible glamour of Eastern twilight. In fact Basra might be described
from an architectural point of view as a great heap of insanitary and
ill-built rubbish which can look collectively extraordinarily picturesque.
I have seen bits on Ashar Creek (as for instance the wooden
old-tin-and-straw-mat-covered buildings shown in the centre of the
sketch in the heading to this chapter) look most romantic and beautiful.
Yet they will not bear any close inspection, without revealing
themselves as monuments of slovenliness and dirt.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL HULKS AT BASRA]
In spite, however, of these drawbacks and disappointments, to those
who would find Venetian character by the waters of Mesopotamia,
there are two features in Basra that do undoubtedly bring Venice to
mind--the boats and the canals. The bellam is a long, flat-bottomed
boat not unlike a punt but narrowing at each end to a point, the stem
and stern-post alike ending in a high curved piece suggestive of a
gondola. These craft are propelled by two men standing one at each end
like gondoliers and punting the boat along by poles. If the water is too
deep to bottom it they sit and propel the boat with paddles.
The canals of Basra are multitudinous. They are artificially dug and are
really more canals than creeks, although they are always called creeks.
Ashar Creek is the most important of these waterways. It is generally
packed with craft from big mahailas, the type of vessel shown in the
sketch facing page 16, to the ubiquitous bellam. Old Basra lies