Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 211.djvu/11

1922.] our intrusion on their peace, we could see nothing ourselves but the thick walls of gossab. This reed furnishes the marsh Arab with his household fuel, and with the material from which he weaves mats to build his house, or to sell, through some such intermediary as Haji Rikkan, to the ordinary tribesman or town-dweller.

Now we felt the fresh breeze again in our faces, for we left the sheltering gossab and came out before a wide stretch of bardi: good grazing for the buffaloes this, and useful too for making ropes, and for placing against the walls of the frail reed huts to keep out the piercing winds of winter. The channel ran straight ahead, as far as the eye could see, as though it had been cut by the hand of man; and I learned some time later that it was indeed a remnant, the sole fragment left through the centuries, of one of the great irrigation canals which of old made Mesopotamia a fertile land. The little launch made her way with difficulty here, for the weeds were thick. Masses of pink-flowered "jat," a delicacy highly prized by the buffaloes, clustered round the stems of the reeds, and the surface of the water was completely covered by a tiny white flower, like wild strawberry blossom, which made so thick a carpet of bloom as to hide even its own leaves from sight. Here and there floated placidly the flat dull green leaves of the water-lily, its disappointing little flowers hardly visible.

Now we passed the first group of the small islands, "ishans" as they are called, on which the marsh Arabs live. They were deserted; only a few mud-ovens, round and smoke-blackened, showed that not long ago they had been busy centres of life. Small wonder is it that, living in such remote fastnesses in home so easily and quickly moved, the Ma'adan felt safe to raid and rob without fear of reprisals from Government.

The bardi began to give place to mardi, which, in spite of the similarity of the names, is totally unlike its humbler brother. For the mardi is the giant of the marshes, towering above one's head to a height of fifteen or twenty feet, and provides the marsh Arab with the long stout poles with which he propels his mashhuf.

Suddenly breaking through the gloom of these silent, stately monarch of the "Hor," we came upon a wide open sea, blue as the Mediterranean, and covered with "white horses." The wind, which we had not felt in the shelter of the mardi, was here a thorough-going gale, and Haji Rikkan was doubtful about crossing.

"Even danaks, Sahiv," he said, "are sometimes overturned in such a wind."

I reassured him as to the seaworthiness of our craft, and though it was clear that he had grave misgivings, he re