Return to the Marshes

by Gavin Young

  A man is making coffee – the women are busy cooking behind the partition and you hear conversation there and the clash of pans and the crying of babies. The man sits cross-legged by the fire in the middle of the floor near the door. He has made the fire by igniting the end of a slim bundle of dry weeds with a cigarette-lighter and piling thin, biscuit-like pats of buffalo-dung around the burning reeds. He may add a drop or two of paraffin to encourage the flames. He puts a skillet on this fire and throws into it a handful of coffee beans. He keeps shaking the skillet and stirring the beans until they are roasted. He tips them into a metal mortar and begins to pound them with a brass pestle. The coffee is poured from a pot with a long, curved spout like a beak. At humble Bu Mugheifat you would only expect to see one such pot, not very large. In a sheikh’s mudhif there would be an array of pots ranging from an immense, portly king-pot, 3 feet high, called a gum-gum, to a rank of pawnlike pots only 9 inches high called dalla.

  A small reed structure with a white flag attached to a reed wand floating over it was the village store. Tea, coffee, spices, tobacco in tins, onions, needles, cucumbers, dates were to be found here. Perhaps mantles, too, for the pressure lamps; perhaps combs, mirrors, sugar in big cones, and salt and pepper. If the shop did not stock these goods, the villagers’ infrequent visits to the markets outside the Marshes would supply them. Or now and again a peripatetic pedlar paddled a small mashhuf, his floating shop, through the village. Their other requirements they could supply themselves – reeds for houses, matting, and fuel; reeds for ropes and baskets; rushes for fodder. They provided their own food, too, in the main: milk and curds came from their buffaloes, fish from the lagoons, rice and wheat flour from the local cultivators.

  Even in the 1950s it was not realistic to classify Madan simply as people who bred buffaloes, fished the Marshes and had no other activities. Their neighbouring tribes, the Albu Mohammed, for instance, were cultivators of land as well as buffalo-owners; the Feraigat were undoubtedly Madan but owned some rice fields as well as breeding buffaloes. Apart from those two categories, there were others who owned no cultivation whatsoever, only a few buffaloes: these poor people, too, were Madan.

  All Marsh women wear ornaments, often of delicate or well-worked design. Some of these bracelets, anklets, rings and head-decorations are silver and are made by the Sabaeans, or Subba, whose religion is nearer Manichaeism than anything else (although often they are mistakenly called Christians of St John). Layard has an interesting account of them from his journey in 1840: ‘Met a Sabaean (or Mandean) – or Christian of St John – an ancient sect. They went from encampment to encampment making and repairing the gold and silver ornaments worn by the women. A useful people, well treated by Arabs, but shamefully oppressed by the Turkish and Persian authorities, both to compel them to embrace Mohammedanism and to extort money from them.’ The sect, in Layard’s time, was thus reduced to about three or four hundred families speaking Arabic, writing Aramaic or Mandean and retaining their ancient faith. They lived in Basra and alongside the Shatt al Arab, in Qurna, Amara and Suq-esh-Shiukh. They are a handsome people and customarily heavily bearded. In those days, Muslims would not eat with them, leave alone marry into them. Last year in Baghdad I heard of a Muslim boy who had just become engaged to a Sabaean girl: both were students at Baghdad University.

  I acquired a tarada of my own, almost as big as Wilfred’s and with the same number of large iron-bossed nails studding its flanks – the nails that proclaim the craft is a tarada‚ not simply a grand mashhuf. Sometimes Wilfred and I joined forces to travel together. I took on Hasan bin Muhaisin, Ajram and Hafadh as canoe-men and added Chethir, another young Feraigi. Yasin went off to be married and Wilfred acquired a new crew including two cheerful and self-contained young men called Amara and Sabaiti; the first almost too perfectly and classically Arab in the features to be credible, the latter big-eyed, stubby and irrepressibly good-humoured – a neo-Sumerian, I thought.

  There were days of travel and hours of Thesiger’s doctoring. The Madan hardly ever saw a doctor in those times. Thesiger did what he could with a big medicine-chest, a hypodermic syringe, some training and infinite patience. At every village we were surrounded, almost overwhelmed, by what seemed like the entire local population, jostling, shouting, thrusting small children and babies towards Thesiger as he crouched, in the dim heat of a hut at evening or on a sun-drenched buffalo-platform humming with flies, injecting penicillin, handing out aspirins and cures for dysentery, constipation or eczema, and antiseptics, ointments and bandages for the hideous gashes caused by wild pigs, circumcising the infants, fending off the over-importunate.

  Here, Amara came fully into his own. He fetched and carried indefatigably; competent, compassionate, handing over plaster and scissors, arranging for hot water, carefully counting out the pills from their bottles, keeping an eye open for theft. Occasionally in the heat of a minor operation, Thesiger’s voice rose above the human hubbub. ‘Amara, where’s the iodine, damn and blast it! Oh you bloody boy!’ But afterwards there were no hard feelings, because Amara loved Thesiger.

  Dysentery was endemic in the Marshes then. So was bilharzia. Its parasites infiltrate into the bloodstream and thence throughout the body and particularly into the pelvic region causing havoc and great pain. I remember seeing men with bursting, oozing sores, caused by the non-venereal version of syphilis called yaws, that I found too appalling to look at for very long but which responded miraculously to the penicillin injections. There was hookworm, too, and a great many eye afflictions, and tuberculosis, and gun-shot wounds and reed slashes and a variety of other horrors. I, too, began to take medicines with me. I could not do as much as Thesiger. But even the basic things were welcome and I could return the tribesmen’s hospitality by doctoring, and by shooting the terrible pigs.

  The days with Thesiger went by. My first visit to the Marshes ended. After a few weeks I returned for another spell without him.

  9 Two Marriages, and a Decision

  Presently, Ajram was married at Bu Mugheifat, but this did not stop him travelling with me. When his first son was born, he made me go with him to his tiny house, took the baby in its pink-swaddling clothes from its mother and thrust it, screaming, into my arms.

  ‘Here,’ Ajram said. ‘This is your nephew.’

  ‘What will you call him?’

  ‘We call him Kharaibat,’ Ajram grinned. ‘Mister Kharaibat, because of you!’

  ‘He’s going to be a good singer by the sound of him.’ But Mister Kharaibat died quite soon. Ajram went on to have several more sons, some of whom died and some of whom lived. He was very poor then: only one buffalo stood at his door. It was not very big, but too big to enter the little house.

  The ups and down of Ajram’s existence were shared with his wife. She was a typical woman of the Marshes. The life of a Marsh woman is a segregated one and, at the same time, remarkably free. In a guest-house, their place is the other side of the mat screen which divides it. They will not intrude into the men’s side except to carry in a dish of food or to bring a sick baby to be treated. Of course, in their own homes they can roam wherever they like – it is theirs as much as their husband’s.

  The women are certainly not the down-trodden slaves, despised, ignored and over-worked that, I suppose, many Europeans imagine them to be. They work, it is true: but so do the men; work is the lot of every human being in the Marshes. You see women punting canoes to the market. You see them sitting on the platforms outside their houses, chatting happily, shouting jokes to passing male villagers, and even an occasional obscene remark which the men will reply to with a laugh. Umm Warid, Sahain’s wife and the mother of his eldest son, Warid, talks to me quite naturally – it is like talking to any mother in London. If there are no strangers there, she crosses into the men’s part of Sahain’s house, and sits with us for a time gossiping and laughing. She has an exceptionally strong, fine face; not, as I write, any longer beautiful (I remember her beauty those years ago when her brother-in-l
aw Hafadh showed her to me with a proud nudge of his elbow), but strong, and firm-mouthed with clear, shrewd, honest eyes. When Sahain is there, too, you can see that, out of tradition – but also, I think, out of a genuine love and respect – she gives him gladly the leading role in the house; one could hardly expect her to do anything else. But he allows her her say, too. And she has it, boldly giving sound advice, outspokenly chiding a tribesman who has said something silly or unkind; ending a session of talk with a brusque ‘Well, dinner is ready now!’ I go and sit with her sometimes as she and her daughters knead bread and pluck a fowl at the back door of Sahain’s house. We talk of Warid’s future, of places I have seen, or how to cook a heron (boil it for forty-eight hours) or breast of cormorant (she knows my opinion: have nothing to do with it).

  If someone paddles me slowly through the village, it is like a stroll down a familiar village street in England. The women are out-of-doors, pounding reeds for matting, pounding coffee, washing babies, chasing dogs out of the food store, shouting instructions to children poling away into the reeds. Their voices ring dear across the clear expanses of water.

  ‘Good morning!’

  ‘Good morning. How are you?’

  ‘Good morning, Umm Shibil!’ I call back. ‘How’s Haji’s back today? Has Khanjar gone to school yet, Arafa? Saddam’s diarrhoea is still bad? – all right, I’ll bring some pills in a little while. Umm Hasan, tell your son Wawi we shall start out to look for geese just before sunset. He should come to Sahain’s in good time or he’ll be left behind.’

  It is not easy to generalize a woman’s life. It is so varied and contradictory in its social implications. Women tend the kitchens; they take fodder to the water-buffaloes but do not milk them; they look after the children. Fairly regularly, small, toddling infants stagger near the edge of an island and fall into the water. Then, all the women in the immediate neighbourhood shout and yell warnings in a deafeningly shrill hullabaloo, and the mother and her larger daughters rush to the rescue.

  From the age of about six, the boys and girls are trusted to take their own small canoes out into the reeds like grown-ups; and they go for the day, cutting reeds or seeing that the buffaloes do not stray too far, singing in the undergrowth, and when older, no doubt, experimenting with sex. (The sex life of Marsh boys and girls is much the same as that of anyone else. It starts with a good deal of masturbation; continues with slap-and-tickle in the reeds – very discreet, this, because of the dire tribal penalites for ‘going too far’ – and culminates in early marriage, at about the age of twenty-three for a boy, and between fourteen and about eighteen for a girl. Apart from that, there is the occasional transvestite and effeminate dancing-boy. But the open eccentrics are rare.)

  Traveller after traveller has commented on the beauty of the Marsh girls. They are as extraordinary as ever. Here they do not wear veils permanently stifling and hiding their beauty. But they are shy and diffident before strangers, turning quietly away and twitching a corner of their headcloths across mouth and nose. In the home, they are a powerful influence: they abandon reticence there. In times of war, the tribal women have always been the ones to rouse reluctant warriors to battle with blood-curdling ululations and blood-stirring war-cries. They are the ones who consult with other mothers in whispered cabal when a marriage is in the offing: is the girl suitable, chaste, responsible, a good cook? Is the boy healthy, a good worker or a slacker, a thief? These important matters are thrashed out by the mothers in conclave. The counsel of the older women is sought by the men, heard respectfully, and often acted upon. Women are not only considered to be good at producing heirs, warriors and workers, and providing the evening meal. They are a back-parlour power in the land of the Marshes.

  The Marshes were not always bathed in sunshine. There were misty dawns, chill and ghostly grey as the beginning of the Sumerian world. Cold winds whined down the reed waterways no longer beautiful with tiny flowers, but dull and unfriendly. Sheets of rain hissed across the water. At this time, the giant lagoons seemed turned to lead. They were suddenly very dangerous. One moment you were in flat water with low ripples sipping at the gunwales; a minute later you could be rowing for dear life to the shore, with a raging wind throwing black waves into the tarada. Every year people are drowned on these lagoons, and sometimes whole wedding parties have been engulfed.

  I was plunged one night into the icy fury of a full Marsh gale. I had separated from Thesiger. With my usual canoe-men, I had been to Basra so that a doctor there could look at Chethir’s throat. He complained of pain and I could see two or three nasty whitish spots deep in his gullet; though strong in arms and legs he looked delicate and I did not want to leave things to chance. After an injection or two he felt better and we rejoined our tarada where I had left it with Haji Hamaid, the master boat-builder of Huwair, where all the Marsh mashhufs are built. While we were with the Haji a messenger arrived from Awaidiya, the village of Jasim bin Faris, the sheikh of the Fartus. The Fartus grew rice and were Madan. ‘Come at once’, Jasim’s message said. ‘Nasaif’s wedding is to be tomorrow.’

  Thesiger had introduced me to Jasim; they were devoted friends. Jasim was extremely popular with his own people and respected throughout the Marshes. A tall, thin figure with a lined, kind face, he must then have been about sixty years old. I had stayed with him often, shooting duck or pig from his modest mudhif, which was very small and looked as if it would topple over sideways. It was always fun staying with Jasim; apart from the shooting there were singing and dancing parties in the evenings and games and stories and laughter. Jasim had been a great warrior. He had fought British soldiers and sheltered other Madan from them – Badr bin Rumaiyidh, ‘the Old Man of the Marshes’, hid with him for a year. He had two sons, Nasaif and Falih; the former slow and strong and hardworking, the latter more fun-loving and quixotic. Nasaif had told me he was soon to be married and he and his father urged me to be there.

  When Jasim’s message reached us we were delighted. We shook the Haji’s hand without delay and Hafadh and Hasan briskly shoved the tarada off into the deep water. We had to get a move on; it was nearly sunset and Jasim lived far away. In the event the journey took a long time. We had only travelled for about an hour when the wild winds from the mountains of Kurdistan swept roaring down on us like an avalanche of icy air. In a trice the setting sun disappeared and blackness descended. Dark clouds streamed low over us. Unidentifiable birds flashed by like dead leaves snatched by the wind. We fled into the reeds for cover. The reed heads frothed and reeled and the wind screamed like a thousand devils through the reed stems, but at least we couldn’t be swamped there. It was terribly cold. We wound the black and white headcloths over our noses and chins so only our eyes showed. I slipped my 7mm Mannlicher-Schönauer rifle into its canvas cover and my companions plugged the muzzles of their rifles and made sure their cloaks protected the cartridges in their cross-belts and the daggers at their waists from flying spray. They had to stop paddling from time to time to blow on their hands or thrust them under their arm-pits for warmth. The wind froze our spirits. It crushed the will to sing, even to talk.

  After a while we came to a group of houses, miles from anywhere. ‘My brother Sahain has a friend here,’ Hafadh said, his lips to my ear. We shouted to the inhabitants for permission to land, yelling ourselves hoarse in the tearing wind. People came out and embraced Hafadh, and presently we took on board a low metal contraption, like a tray on four legs, full of hot coals. This brazier was placed amidships and we cast off again into the storm. Through the night we took it in turns to warm ourselves at it.

  At long last the wind died, the clouds cleared and we saw sharp, cold stars. We still shivered but at least we could see ahead.

  In the Marshes’ heart, one soon learned that the lethal hazards of tribal life were not mere romantic pretence. Since we left Huwair the boys had kept their ears pricked for the slightest sound. Suppose we heard a thrashing noise from the reed-bed – ‘pig,’ Ajram whispered without breaking the strok
e; perhaps a ripple in the water alongside – ‘an otter,’ Chethir would breathe in my ear. But if another sound came, the soft sound they instantly recognized as a paddle, our tarada was suddenly full of tension. Our paddling stopped, cloaks were pushed back to free the shoulders for action, two of the boys eased their rifles up (they were already loaded with one cartridge ready in the breech) and we drifted silently in the darkness, totally alert. Then Ajram would shout:

  ‘Yahu hai? Who’s that?’

  And a deep-throated voice replied:

  ‘Sadiq: friend.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘People of Such-and-Such a tribe going to So-and-So. And you?’

  ‘We are with the Englishman on our way to Jasim bin Faris’s.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Nasaif is to be married. You are with the Englishman – so Ajram is there. I greet your father Haji Hussein, Ajram.’

  ‘God protect you!’ Ajram called back.

  Relieved, the boys laid down their rifles, took up their paddles again, and we moved on. The strangers could have been tribesmen in blood feud with the Feraigat – blood feuds were frequent. If so, we would have needed to get our shots in first to remain alive. Fasl, the paying of compensation for a murder in money, women, or buffaloes, was still the tradition. An atwa, a temporary truce between two feuding parties guaranteed by some respected man like Sayyid Sarwat, was still the common way of staving off open warfare or a rash of vengeance killings. But bloody scrimmages in the reeds were frequent. Added to this, armed bandits sometimes roamed the waterways. Like everybody else, my companions automatically followed the discipline of centuries and were constantly vigilant.