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.

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 up here. As I approached it one evening, with the sun going down, it looked most gorgeous. Palms and gardens on the right and the buildings of the town on the left, and boats approaching, dream-like In the sunset glow. I have sketched the effect roughly in the line drawing on page 21.

Some of the regions up these creeks are extremely beautiful. For once there was nothing disappointing even in comparison—although comparisons, as we have seen, are odious—with Venetian waterways. For once we have something that can surpass in beauty anything that Venice can show. Basra can boast no architecture, but Nature, coming to her assistance, can produce, between sunshine and water, vistas of orange-laden trees overtopped with palms and all reflected in the still canal. I have known seven kinds of fruit to overhang the banks of one creek at the same time.

I hired a bellam manned by two fearsome-looking pirates and explored unending waterways in and around Basra. The main thoroughfares run at right angles to the river, but there are numerous narrow branches communicating from one to the other, in some places forming a network of little channels. Some of these were beautiful beyond description. The tide is felt in all these waters, and sometimes, during a spring tide, the effect of some of these date palm plantations, with the ground just covered, is strange. Hundreds of palms seem to be growing up out of a lake, and the glades reflected in the still water is dream-like and enchanting, recalling Tennyson's nocturne—

"Until another night in night
I enter'd, from the clearer light,
Imbower'd vaults of piller'd palm."

The pirates were quite jolly fellows who pointed out various things to me as being worthy of interest. By this time the natives have got up, in a most superficial way, the things which they think will interest the Englishman. Every group of palm trees more than twenty in number is pointed out as the Garden of Eden, every bump of ground more than six feet high is the mount on which the Ark rested, and every building more than fifty years old is the one undoubted and authentic residence of Sinbad the Sailor. An old house in Mesopotamia in which Sinbad the Sailor had not lived would be equivalent to one of England's ancient country mansions in which Queen Elizabeth had never slept. The fact that Sinbad the Sailor is a literary creation doesn't discourage the Arabs in the least.

During this voyage of mine by bellam through the multitudinous creeks of Basra a remarkable thing happened. Under the circumstances it was a providential happening. I ran into Brown.

Now I do not expect the readers of some previous notes of my sketching escapades[1] to believe this. It is almost too wonderful that a chronicler of travels in desperate need of some comic relief to save his book from dulness would be so lucky as to pick up such excellent copy as Brown, without previous intrigue. Nevertheless I do solemnly state that I had not the slightest idea where Brown was doing his bit in the war. I had last heard of him in France in the Naval Division. That we should both have travelled half across the world to meet with a crash in a backwater at Basra was one of the strangest freaks of fortune I have come across.

My two pirates were poling along quite merrily when we took a right angle turn in fine style. It is evident that the low foliage had hidden the side channel into which we shot, and they had not seen what became evident too late, a motor-boat at right angles across the creek, apparently stuck fast.

I had just time to observe two naval officers and the native coxswain struggling with poles to turn the boat round, or free it from its unserviceable position with regard to the bank when the prow of my bellam took a flying leap over the motor-boat, precipitating my two boatmen into the water, and sending me by means of a somersault into the launch. Somewhat stunned I lay gazing up at a piece of blue sky in which I could discern the green leaves of palm trees.

When in the midst of this blue dome above I beheld Brown perched on the top of a palm tree exhibiting with a look of blank astonishment on his face, waving an arm as if in a kind of bewildered greeting, I gave up the struggle for existence and became resigned to my fate. Without doubt Brown, whom I had last heard of in France, had been killed and was now doing his best to welcome me into a happier and better world.

It would be quite like Brown to try and outdo the ordinarily accepted symbolism of bearing a palm branch by attempting to wave a whole palm tree, for this he seemed most undoubtedly to be doing, embracing its trunk and swaying from side to side.

Subsequently, when things had sorted themselves out in my mind, and when I found I was still in the land of the living I realized that he was attempting to descend to earth. He was no less astonished than I.

After baling out the bellam and restoring order in the launch we found that the casualties were nil, and proceeded to compare notes. Brown, it appeared, had joined the Naval Division, been to Antwerp, Gallipoli and France, and then been transferred for gunnery duties to the rivers of Mesopotamia, and was now Lieut. R.N.V.R. in the Dalhousie stationed at Basra. His occupation, when I came across him in this unexpected way, was that of a leader of an expedition in a motor-boat with two R.N. victims to find a new route to somewhere or other which could not possibly be approached by water.

His enthusiasm had been so infectious that he had persuaded these gallant and guileless officers to go with him, and was, at the moment of my arrival, attempting to get a better geographical idea of the surrounding country by climbing a palm tree and shouting directions to the unfortunate occupants of the boat below, who were hopelessly stuck. The sudden impact of the bellam, uncomfortable as it was for all concerned, succeeded where they had failed, in getting them off the mud.

An old-world touch is given to the waters of Basra by the high-sterned dhows anchored in the river. Above Ashar Creek the scenery of the banks with its wharves and big steamers is not particularly characteristic of the East. Some of it might be by the Thames at Tilbury Docks. But by Khora Creek and in the lower reaches of the river at Basra, these old-world ships, with their quaint lines and steep, naked masts, are more in keeping with our recollections of Sinbad the Sailor, or perhaps of the days of the Merchant Venturers of our own Elizabethan days.

It is to be supposed that the type of ship that has survived in the East to the present day, like the mahaila and the goufa, is very much unchanged like everything else, and tells us faithfully what sort of ships there were in these waters some two thousand years ago or more. If this surmise be a correct one, then we can trace the poop tower of the Great Harry and the square windows and super-imposed galleries of the Victory's stern to this common ancestor. I wish I had been able to get an elevation of the details of one of these more ornate sterns. It would be interesting to compare the work with that in the ships of the Middle Ages and see if there is a definite development of type from East to West via the Mediterranean.

We passed down Ashar Creek just after sunset, and the house of Sinbad, with its picturesque surroundings, thoroughly looked the part. The tower of the mosque stood out against a lemon-coloured sky, and wandering wisps of purple smoke curled up from countless hearths.

Some giant mahailas, nearly obliterated the crooked little galleries that overlook the creek, and a few boats glided silently down towards the open river. Lights began to appear and stars studded the darkening sky. Faint sounds of chanting music floated across the water and all the world was still.