We took turns at using the few shovels available, and the British cameramen stretched cables to the rest-house roof terrace to beam hght from their lamps in our direction. David, a young Jewish assistant in the group, confided to me his last night's dream: he had seen a whole herd of sheep come on board and devour our reed ship in revenge for their sacrificed relatives. Gatae and the Marsh Arabs also had their comment: six sheep were not enough for such a big vessel, we should have sacrificed a bull.
These pessimistic observations were hardly uttered before the rumble and strong headlights of a huge Russian truck made us drop the shovels. The unexpected visitor bumped in through the gate over broken timber and twisted rails and took up a position as if to push us all into the river. Two husky Russian drivers jumped out and, with Yuri as interpreter, we explained that though we needed a push, our ship was as brittle as crisp bread until in contact with
the water. They then helped us rig up thick reed fenders extended in front of their tall engine housing on wooden beams taken from the abandoned scaflFold, thus saving the heavy truck from being launched with the ship. Suddenly in the dark the informal and most unconventional launching began with a steady thrust from the truck. The vessel moved and sank slowly into a porridge of thick mud where we had dug. As mud and broken timber floated away with the current we held the ship on tight ropes and made her fast to a floating reed-bundle mole we had prepared beside the rest-house terrace. In the hght from the truck's headlamps we had seen the twisted sledge and rails all following the vessel into the river. The Russians saluted and left. We had to wait for dayhght to judge the damage. Tigris did not seem to float with a perfectly even wa-terline all around. It seemed to tilt shghtly toward the portside bow.
As dayhght broke we were all on the spot. Our new ship looked magnificent. Bigger and stronger than any of the two Ras, she rode very high on the river, and above the turbid water there was not a scratch. But another fear was confirmed: in spite of the precision of our craftsmen and the perfect symmetry of all the curvatures, the ship seemed to he shghtly deeper in the bow than in the stem, although not more than we could probably adjust when we stored the cargo. Someone suggested that this tilt was due to quick water absorption, for the bow had been launched hours before the stem! This pessimistic suggestion was rejected as an ominous joke. It could be, however, that part of the reed bundles under the bow had been ripped off by the broken sledge.
Detlef and Gherman swam under Tigris with goggles and seemed gone an eternity before they came up with their reports. Visibihty was nil in the muddy water, but they could feel that the steel and timber of the launching frame were still stuck to the bundles beneath the bow. No wonder there was a tilt. Fumbling with their hands, they could feel that a thick reed bundle tied to the bow as a temporary fender had been tied to the sledge as well. With a knife they cut this bumper free, and as the jumble of steel and wood sank to the bottom the bow of the vessel tipped into balance. Feeling their way all along the ship's bottom they were both left with the impression that every loop of the spiral lashings was still intact. The ship was undamaged. Jointly the thousands of berdi reeds remained afloat and had won the battle with modem steel that lay twisted on the bottom of the river.
Our two dissected test bundles had shown us that modem river pollution was harder on reeds than twisted metal, and we were in a hurry to get into clean salt water. But it took two weeks to rig and load the vessel. On the lawn in front of the rest house our marsh-men had prefabricated two huts of green kassab cane from the marshes. The glossy canes were braided in a decorative local pattern and tied to a framework of bamboo. The huts were tall enough for us to sit but not to stand upright under the vaulted cane ceiling. The largest measured about four yards by three and had barely space for eight men to sleep outstretched on the floor. The smaller was only half that size and intended for three men and camera equipment.
Both cabins were carried aboard, ready made, and tied to widely spaced planks which in turn were lashed across the main bundles. The main cabin was set aft with a windowhke door opening on either long wall facing the sea. The little cabin was set forward and crosswise to the first, with a single similar door opening, one meter square, facing the central deck and the main cabin behind. A roof platform, fenced by low bamboo uprights, added an upper terrace to either cabin. With some imagination, in a world of fish and waves, the reed-deck space between these two golden-green jungle dwellings appeared Hke a tiny village square. The huts were only intended as sleeping quarters and retreats in bad weather. Our daily hving quarters was the open space between them.
This was also the place where we hoisted the colorful sail on its bipod mast. As on all reed sailing vessels of the Old and the New World, the yardarm holding the sail had to be hoisted on a double mast with its straddling legs resting one on each of the twin bundles. There was no hold for a mast along the center line where the thick bundles barely met, so the thirty-three-foot ash masts were set into large wooden "shoes" lashed on top of the bundles. Masts and shoes were held together by wooden "knees" made from branches naturally curved at right angles. Such small but important details were copied from Egyptian frescoes and tomb models. Following these prototypes the straddle mast was drilled where its legs met at the top to pass the halyard hoisting the yardarm. Crossbars held the two legs together and formed a convenient ladder to the top.
If the reeds kept afloat our life for months ahead would revolve aroimd this ladder between the two cabins. In the space between
the ladder and the forward cabin we sewed nicely polished scafifold planks together with rope to form a long table with two benches, set crosswise to the vessel. Behind the ladder the roof and side walls of the main cabin were extended three feet forward to form an open alcove to serve as galley. This small shelter could hold four Primus stoves and all our pots and pans.
On the last day tons of food and water were carried aboard and stored under table and benches, along the cabin walls and down in the deep angular trench that ran from bow to stem between the two big bundles. Clothing and personal property were stored together with film and vulnerable equipment in asphalt-coated boxes set together to form a sort of raised floor in the main cabin. This floor was our conunon bed.
Tigris was shipshape and ready to sail the moment the two huge rudder oars were lashed astern, one on either side. A wooden steering platform, or "bridge," three feet wide and three feet above deck, followed the rear wall of the main cabin from side to side and permitted the two helmsmen to see over the roof. The sail, however, would inevitably hmit their vision. The oar shafts slanted to the rear and were rotated on their axes by crosswise tillers near the upper end to make the blade turn hke a rudder. The shafts were held by tight loops both at deck level and up on the raihng of the bridge.
Tigris was ready to sail.
"Let go the moorings! Hoist the saill"
I was filled with reHef and pleasure as I shouted the orders and waved to the incredible new crowd of spectators that had once more gathered in the Garden of Eden. They must have come by intuition. After our experience of the launching we had told nobody of our intended departure, saying only that we would sail the moment we were ready.
"Hoist the sail!" I shouted again, this time in desperation. Seconds counted. The riverbanks on the other side were too close to permit hesitation. The moorings were gone and we were already moving as victim of the current, but the sail that should have given us steering control was still down. The only response to my cry were hundreds of Arabs ashore shouting unintelligible words and pointing into the air. I looked up, and there in the mast top, just where the yardarm was to go, hung our dear Mexican friend Gherman, almost
upside down, with his inseparable movie camera perpetuating the great moment. Round and jovial but incredibly agile he almost fell from the mast as I sent up to him an uninteUigible roar which in decent language would read: "Please come down very, very fast, dear Gherman, and let us have room to hoist our sail, otherwise you may be shaken d
own on the bank the moment we make one more crash landing."
In a second Gherman and the sail exchanged places. The current already had us in its grip, but the wind fiUed the sail and we took control of the situation. Norman was in charge of the sail, Detlef was hidden somewhere in front of the forward cabin awaiting orders to raise or lower the guara, our wooden centerboard, and Carlo and I were on the bridge with one rudder oar each. It was grand to see the banks of the Garden of Eden and the rest house move away. It had been a great place, but it was high time to get into the ocean. To Adam's tree, farewelll Farewell Ah, Mohammed, Gatae, Kais, Shaker, Ramsey and all our other Iraqi friends. You are disappearing now as a forest of waving arms, but we will often recall you in the days to come, among the waves.
We were gaining speed. We were heading for the other bank of the Tigris. Carlo and I turned the clumsy oars over and I yeUed to Detlef to lower the forward guara. The vessel obeyed beautifully and we passed the green point of land where the twin rivers meet and become the Shatt-al-Arab. Behind us lay the Garden of Eden Rest House with its cluster of palms and trees; to its right was the Tigris and to its left the Euphrates opened into view with the Basra road bridge that had prevented us from building the reed ship among our friends up there in the marshes, since our mast would not have passed beneath it.
"Hurrah, we're sailingl" It was Norman's voice, full of joy and vitality for the first time since his violent fever. Nearly all the men had barely recovered, but every one was dead set on getting away and all eyes were bright with energy and excitement. The sail reaUy invited rejoicing as it drew its breath and pulled ahead of the wind. For the first time we saw unfolded the tanned Egyptian canvas on which our Iraqi art student Rashad had painted a huge reddish sun rising behind a terracotta-colored Mesopotamian pyramid.
The date palms flanking the river must have signaled our arrival, for people lined the banks shouting and waving, and as we
moved on more and more spectators emerged from huts and villages of reed and mud brick. Everywhere men and boys began to run with us along the riverbanks as far as they could keep up with our speed. But we sailed faster than they could move on the uneven terrain, and passed with great speed through a changing landscape of barren wasteland and palm plantations. Everywhere, however, people seemed informed and some even shouted our names. There were high spirits on board. We would pass the downriver cities and industrial areas and reach the gulf in a few days. A motor-driven balam with ten Arabs reputed to know the river came along to pilot us through the hectic traffic and other modem obstacles in the lower part of the river. They had just disappeared around a very sharp right-hand bend when I noticed that our ship was out of control.
Carlo was a mountain chmber and like me had never sailed on a river. Not familiar with local banks and shallows, and with pilots who ran around as they pleased, we chose to keep an equal distance from both banks. But at this bend the river seemed to end straight ahead of us in green grassy banks that attracted the current like a magnet. No matter how much we turned the rudder oars and adjusted sail and guara, we were pulled sideways fast and forcibly toward the turf. We turned with the river and followed the bend, but ever closer to the banks, where another gathering of men and boys awaited us and ran enthusiastically along in our company until they started to scream and yell as they saw the reed ship skidding too close to the shore.
The current ran at its fastest at this outer edge of the curve and we swept along so close to the shore that the broad blade of the portside rudder oar began to dig up mud. All hands not fighting the land with our long punting poles joined Yuri and Carlo in trying to pull up the colossal portside rudder oar before it broke imder almost forty tons of pressure from ship and cargo. But the oar was too heavy to hft and jammed in the double rope loops. At any moment we could expect a deafening crash from the shaft, which was as thick as a telephone pole.
We were now rushing along so close to land that the Arabs running with us ashore tried to push us away with bare hands while the oar blade began cutting up sohd dirt along the edge of the turf. But we sailed faster than anyone could push while running, and neither they nor we on board with punting poles could do much to
prevent what looked like disaster. For hundreds of yards we followed the curve of the river like a fast and highly efiFective plow, turning up the fat earth that would have been the envy of any farmer. At every second we expected the oar to break, but Norman and his master carpenter had done an amazing job. The oar held; instead the whole steering bridge to which it was fastened began to yield. With a horrible creaking and squeaking from rope and wood it began to lose shape. Carlo and I were ready to jump the moment the rope lashings burst and the bridge, perhaps the whole stem, was torn apart. Our pilots in the motor balam were on their way back, and some jumped ashore to help their running compatriots to push. But before they had gained a good grip, Norman got a new angle on the twisted sail and we rushed away from the portside riverbank hke a bird taking off from a freshly ridged potato field.
There was barely time to draw a deep breath of rehef on the wobbly steering platform before we looked to the other bank and saw a solid forest of gray palm trunks coming rushing toward us. We had the green fringes of the leaves almost above our heads when quick maneuvers with sail and oars helped us shoot back toward the naked banks we had just been plowing. The motor balam now followed us from side to side like a drunken companion, trying to get in between us and the banks to serve as a fender. But it was always on the wrong side. Suddenly it turned around and disappeared upstream. It was gone for two hours before we learned on its return that they had been away looking for four men they had left ashore and forgotten upriver at the place where they had been running along the banks to push.
In the meantime we had become masters of the situation. We began to know our new vessel. We were as alert to the invisible drag toward the outer bends as to the threatening shallows built up along the inner. Soon the Shatt-al-Arab began to float straight and even as an autostrada. Few houses. No traffic. A man with a ragged piece of canvas on a makeshift reed raft sailed downstream at half our speed. Our huge and all too heavy rudder oars now hammered back and forth like colossal sledgehammers, and with each bang the bridge shook and squeaked and cracked; we clung to the cabin roof, which still seemed the firmer part of the structiu"e.
The motor balam guided us past large herds of black water buffaloes in the shallows beside Beit Wafi, a large and decorative reed-house village in marked contrast to the no less picturesque
Arab adobe houses of homemade bricks or sun-baked mud. Brick kihis, as in the days of Abraham, were still functioning all down this section of the river and oflFered a spectacular sight. They rose Hke pyramids over the plain, and when operating could be mistaken for active volcanic cones, sending out vast coliunns of smoke from burning reeds and canes.
The influence of the high tide in the gulf could be noted more than a hundred miles up the river. As the rising sea blocked the outlet of the Shatt-al-Arab, the river water dammed up and even began to flow in the reverse direction. In the late afternoon the surface around us became as motionless as a lake, and before it began to flow the other way we asked our pilots to show us a safe anchorage for the night. They recommended the west bank near Shafi village, where we furled sail and threw out our two small anchors on their ropes. Our experienced river companions knew that anchors would come loose when the river began running the other way, and they thrust pimt poles into the muddy bottom to keep us in one spot hke the fenced-in floating islands in the marshes.
It was a great evening. Our first on board. The sun set red behind the smoking brick kilns and we felt as if we were in ancient Sumer. In fact we were. A cold wind began as the sim went down and suddenly we could feel the current beginning to drag upriver. The boys lit the kerosene lamps and looked into the water as if they expected Mohammed's beer cans to come back from America. While in action upriver, we had eaten only biscuit, but now Carlo got a Primus going, and we all gathered
on the benches along the deck table with our individual mealtime bags, from which we fished out bowls and forks ready for the steaming spaghetti. Exquisite. Buonissimo. Wunderbar. Kharoshii. Deilig. Carlo received his well-deserved praise in many languages. The men were hungry and tired. But for the first time for many days we had a chance to relax.
The last days before sailing had been worse than a madhouse. Neither garden fence nor guards had been able to keep the curious crowds away. We just had to get away. We would have time to adjust the jumble of cargo on board when we were alone and at peace on the long voyage down the calm river.
Only now, as we had anchored and fenced ourselves in with stakes far from the Garden of Eden, could we really relax and begin
to enjoy the crazy comedy of the two weeks between launching and departure. Only now could I really lean back in comfort against the mast leg with a cup of hot Arab tea and take a closer look at the strange mixture of men I had assembled around me for this adventure.
There was—and I did get a surprise—a husky Russian carpenter who should not have been there at alll He had himself been caught by no less surprise when we almost in despair had suddenly pushed oflF to escape from the maddening crowds and started our voyage down the river. He had been aft volunteering to assist in lashing the last crosspole to the steering bridge. Dimitri was a good man and, now that he was with us, he could help repair the bridge. Yuri, interpreting for him, said Dimitri was happy to travel as far as Basra, where he had to report back to work. He crawled to bed on the cabin roof in a sleeping bag originally intended for an Indian dhow sailor.
The Tigris Expedition Page 9
