A Dweller in Mesopotamia | Page 9

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 and Euphrates. Not only has the Marsh Arab
evolved a style of dwelling that can be built in a night, but he can boast
of a device still more alluring in its naivity and utility--the Portable
Village!
[Illustration: A MARSH ARAB REED VILLAGE]
I once made a sketch of a Marsh Arabs' village at evening (reproduced
facing p. 34), and on returning thither on the following morning to
verify certain details, I found it had gone! I succeeded in tracking it
down again by the afternoon, about ten miles from its former situation,
and found the mayor (or whatever the Marsh-Mesopotamian equivalent
may be) inspecting the finishing touches being made to the borough. Of
course it is frightfully muddling, all this moving about of villages, to
the stranger who is not keeping a sharp look-out and marking well such
impromptu geographical activity.
Along the shores of the rivers of Mesopotamia and in the innumerable
lagoons and backwaters that abound can be found large areas of tall
reeds, ranging from quite slight rushes to canes twenty feet high. It is
with such material the Marsh Arab builds. The long rods he bends into
arches like croquet hoops. On this skeleton, not unlike the ribs of a boat
turned upside down, he stretches large mats woven out of rushes. At the
ends he builds up a straight wall of reed straw bound up in flat sheaves.
An opening is left for an entrance, a mat, sometimes of coloured
material, doing duty for a door.
So much for the principal and removable part of the village. However,
the town planner will add to this by improvising mud enclosures for
animals, and an occasional wall and "tower." The mud is mixed with
cut grass and reeds, quickly drying into a hard substance, and
sufficiently permanent for anything that such a temporary village
requires.
In the bright sunlight of the Mesopotamian plains, and probably also on
account of their prominence at a distance over the flat land, some of
these mud buildings look quite imposing. I remember once approaching
a city with ramparts, towers, and formidable walls which, on close

inspection, turned out to be a small mud enclosure of the most decrepit
kind.
Great changes have been made in the rule of the waterways of
Mesopotamia. Sinbad the Sailor has given place to Sinbad the Soldier,
the Inland Water Transport.
We have learnt, as we were advised to do in regard to the things of
Mesopotamia, to think amphibiously.
[Illustration: Noah's Ark, 1919.]

IV
THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST
[Illustration: Upward bound on the Tigris.]
[Illustration]

THE WISE MEN FROM THE WEST
The story of Mesopotamia is a story of irrigation. "It is not
improbable," writes Sir William Willcocks, the great irrigationist, "that
the wisdom of ancient Chaldea had its foundations in the necessity of a
deep mastery of hydraulics and meteorology, to enable the ancient
settlers to turn what was partially a desert and partially a swamp into
fields of world-famed fertility." The civilizations of Babylon and
Assyria owed their very life to the science of watering the land, and
even in the later times of Haroun Alraschid their great systems had
been well maintained. It is said of Maimûn, the son and successor of
this monarch, that he exclaimed, as he saw Egypt spread out before him,
"Cursed be Pharaoh who said in his pride, 'Am I not Pharaoh, King of
Egypt?' If he had seen Chaldea he would have said it with humility."
Allowing for a certain amount of patriotic exaggeration, the

exclamation at least shows at what a high degree of excellence the
irrigation system of Mesopotamia was maintained