The Tigris Expedition Page 5

  * We had tried, on an earlier occasion, to eat only what people of antiquity could have stored on board their vessels. On the Ra voyage we bought only such food as could be stored in ceramic vessels and baskets, and all our water was kept in jars and goatskin bags. In this way we had svirvived the voyage without any dietary problem, so it was imnecessary to repeat the experiment. Even so, on a reed ship without electricity for a fridge there was a very definite limit to what we could store on deck. Fresh meat, fruits and vegetables would not keep, and even most canned foods would go bad in temperatures such as we could expect before the start and after.

  camera, who should be free to record everything and anything done and said on board. He would have no duties but to film, even if the vessel sank. I agreed. We all signed.

  With reluctance I also went with the BBC representative to the University of Southampton, where a six-foot plastic model of the reed ship had been built according to my own drawings. It was to be tested and filmed in a wind tunnel as well as in the sea. It was beautiful to see the big yellow model bobbing in the waves while the nautical experts from the university pressed buttons for longdistance control that made the rudder oars twist and the httle vessel turn and roll sideways to the waves. It would even cut into the waves when the total area of the oar blades was increased, and achieve a real tack.

  The lesson of the experiment was that the bigger the sail and the more or the bigger the oar blades put into the water, the better the twin-bundled raft-ship tacked into the wind. The final result from the wind-tunnel studies would be mailed to me later. There were only a few shght hitches: the model was made of plastic and not reeds; no one knew how deep the reed ship would sit in the water, nor how fast the changing buoyancy would decrease her original freeboard. Besides, the dehvery of the model had been delayed and by the time we got the answers from the wind tunnel it would be too late to change the measurements of the sails and oars already cut to size to meet the transport deadhne from Hambmrg.

  Just outside Southampton was the beautiful Broadlands estate, the home of Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, where I was expected for lunch. Common interests in the sea and other means of bridge building between nations had made us friends in recent years; his enthusiasm had led the old Sea Lord to make me honorary vice-president of the United World Colleges, of which he was a very active president. As a member of the Royal Family and former Viceroy of India he had friends and contacts all over the world and had succeeded in getting students even from China enrolled at Atlantic College in Wales, one of the units I had recently visited. We were to talk about the idea of involving students from these colleges in my project.

  It was great to be back at Broadlands and enjoy a meal in the bright dining room facing the park and its old giant trees. A tiny tree, barely visible above the grass, I had planted myself on my last visit, in accordance with the admiral's own tradition.

  "Thor, would you believe that you have got me into international trouble?" Lord Mountbatten looked at me sternly as we took our seats at the table in the company of his adjutant and were served melon by a butler in a naval uniform.

  "Of course I believe that," I rephed, laughing to show that of course I did not beheve.

  "You have brought the anger of the Shah upon me," my host continued cahnly.

  I laughed again and enjoyed my cool melon. "Of course, of coursel"

  Lord Moimtbatten stopped eating and looked at me: "What can I do to make you realize that I am not joking?*' He sent his adjutant to fetch a letter from the Imperial Court in Teheran. It was a long and sharp protest against the wording of the circular from the United World Colleges concerning my planned reed-ship expedition. The Iranian ambassador to Great Britain had telephoned Lord Mountbatten from London before the letter arrived, immediately the press release from the BBC had been broadcast on radio and television. I was quoted as planning to sail down the river Shatt-al-Arab into the "Arabian Gulf." How could an international college institution headed by the Admiral of the Fleet use such a fictitious geographical term? Was this the result of the growing tendency to flatter the Arabs? The true and only name for this body of water was the "Persian Gulf," and it was indeed the British Admiralty that had originally given the gulf this proper name.

  I was sorry. This was an unforeseen problem for a reed-boat voyager who had to test an ancient vessel in a modem world. I explained to Lord Mountbatten that I had indeed originally used the name the "Persian Gulf," which I had learned in school. But officials in Baghdad had corrected me and my message and made it abimdantly clear that if I wanted to sail anywhere from Iraq it had to be into the "Arabian Gulf."

  Lord Mountbatten saw my problem but objected even to the term "the Gulf," used diplomatically by many shipping people to distinguish this Old World gulf from the Gulf of Mexico. His ultimate solution was that the place should not be referred to at all. However, though I did not want to insult anybody, I could not sail down the river into nowhere, so I contacted the Norwegian Foreign Office. Their general practice, they told me, was to speak of the "Persian Gulf' when referring to a port on the Iranian side and to

  the "Arabian Gulf" when the port was on the coast of some Arab nation. However, since our experiment was to sail in open water I could not refer to ports, so I contacted a pubhc-relations oflBcer of the United Nations.

  "It is a considerable problem," he admitted. "All the nations bordering on the gulf you are saihng into are to have a meeting against pollution of that very gulf, but we cannot agree on how to refer to iti" This was a forewarning that should have told me that the twentieth century, with all its radar and hghthouses, is not the easiest one for avoiding hidden reefs.

  Our conversation turned to United World graduate students who might want to join our maritime experiment, since the institution puts a great deal of stress on marine lifesaving and on boating as a sport. I wanted a truly multinational crew on my planned voyage from Iraq. The late Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, had granted me the right to sail Ra I and Ra II under the UN flag, and his successor, Kurt Waldheim, had kindly repeated the permission for my forthcoming expedition. I had informed the United World Colleges that I wanted to give priority to any of the crew of my previous reed-boat experiments who cared to come along again, but I was prepared to draw reserves from the United World Colleges. The headmasters of the various colleges had therefore sent out a circular to former students, enclosing a copy of the press release concerning my plans that had just been circulated by the BBC consortium. The teachers would send me a list of recommendations selected from those graduate students who applied.

  I had hoped for some truly exotic candidate from the United World Colleges, and was a bit disillusioned to find two young Scandinavian candidates heading the list: a Norwegian medical student and a Danish student of mathematics. As a former sergeant in the Engineers, the Norwegian had the rare advantage of being specialized in ropework and bridge building, which was just what I needed, for the ship would be all ropes and reeds. Even the masts and the cabins would be lashed on without a nail. Moreover, a bridgelike structure of sticks and poles was immediately required as a cradle to facilitate the assembly of the reeds during the building, and permit the final launching into the river. I telephoned the young applicant in Norway, and Hans Peter Bohn, who insisted on being called HP, joined me in Rome with a rucksack and camera, and together we flew back to Baghdad.

  After seven hours by car we reached the Garden of Eden Rest House a day later than anticipated. I was to have a rendezvous with the two truck drivers from Hamburg any day now and wanted to be on the spot when all the expedition s food arrived, so as to get it quickly into the shade of the rest house before it was spoiled by the baking sun.

  At the steps of the rest house we met to my surprise a yoimg European with his face red from bhsters, carrying an armful of huge German smoked sausages, just like those I had bought in Hamburg, which he dmnped into the river Tigris. His eyes blinded by perspiration, he hardly noti
ced us as I introduced myself and asked what he was doing.

  "Disasterl" he said. "All the food is spoiled. The truck has returned to Hamburg without me and I am alone to dimip it all into the riverl"

  In one jump HP was over the terrace rail and came out of the water with a giant sausage in his arms hke a baby. The last one. All the others were gone with the current and there was none left in the storage room, where the young perspiring German was already back to dig out a smoked ham and a carton of cans of Norwegian mackerel to throw in after the German salami.

  I reahzed we had come at the eleventh hour. Like a robot, the stranger went on with his dumping until we made him sit down with us on some of his unladen rope coils to explain the great idea of bringing food from Hamburg to throw into the river Tigris.

  "The customs," he said. "The customs."

  AH, the friendly boy of the rest house, had to run for a cool can of beer before we could get any sense out of his wild story. He was a special envoy of the excellent Montan Transport in Hamburg, sent along with the two truck drivers to see that they had no customs problems and to ensure a speedy unloading directly into our shaded storeroom in the rest house. It was hot even in Europe, and the truck had no cooler, so he made the drivers race to cut down on the two weeks' estimated driving time. In this he had had more success than expected. In southern Turkey, Kurds had ambushed them and started to shoot. They had accelerated. There were buUet holes in the trailer when they caught up with a whole convoy of transport trucks driving desperately to reach Iraq. In the confusion they had not got clearance from the Iraqi border customs, who were awaiting them with special orders from Baghdad to break the seals. Instead,

  they had rushed on southward into ever hotter conditions down the whole river country, past Baghdad, past the Garden of Eden, ending up beside the ships in the overcrowded port of Basra, where nobody had orders to help them. A poHceman showed them the road until they suddenly found themselves locked up in the big customs yard of the harbor. There was no place to park in the shade. It was 45° C. (113° F.) outside the trailer and 70° C. inside, according to the shattered envoy. The three of them were almost dead by the third day in the customs yard; even the big bamboo they brought for me had started to burst from the heat and it was Hke sitting on a cargo of firecrackers. Then a friendly soul who spoke EngHsh had helped them telephone to the Ministry in Baghdad, and this had ended the confusion and cleared them and their cargo from their prison.

  As he spoke we were startled several times by violent explosions around us: the thick bamboo was still drying up and cracking with the sound of gunshots.

  No wonder the two truck drivers had hurried home and left the special envoy to clear the rest of the mess, which he did by dmnp-ing all our comestibles into the great river. The cheese had gone first: 90 pounds of select Norwegian Cheddar, 50 pounds of Edam and a variety of other types estimated to resist modest heat. Leaking cans of hquid soap and melted butter followed, and assorted smoked meats. He had barely had time to liquidate 45 pounds of especially prepared polony salami when we arrived.

  HP sat with a knife shaving the fresh beard of mold off the polony he had saved, and savored a piece with dehght. In one leap he was back into the river. Nothing more to be found. We were never to taste another one like it. But with the one he saved, throughout the building period, we and aU our guests at the rest house had the best sandwiches of the sort any of us had ever tasted.

  The cans, however, scared even us. They were no longer cylindrical, but round like cannonballs, normally a sure sign of poisonous contents. I filled a sack with one can of each kind and sent them with the envoy by air from Baghdad to Hambin-g for a laboratory test before we would consent to discard all this costly expedition food. A few days later our entire collection of cannonballs had resumed the shape of normal cans; they had merely swollen in the immense heat. Those poor chaps from Hamburg had been sitting on top of them while they expanded 1

  We had to replace all the lost supplies, and shortage of time now forced me to order shipment by air. The shippers promised this time to send it to the airport in Baghdad, and inform the ministry of the waybill number and hour of arrival, for the ministry had oflFered to forward it direct to the Garden of Eden by road. The day of arrival came, the heat was still with us and the shipment disappeared. Hamburg confirmed that the food had been sent, Baghdad airport reported that it had never arrived. After a week of worries I got the crazy idea of sending a messenger to the same magic customs people in the harbor city of Basra. Three days later the indefatigable emissary came back in triumph; he had indeed located the lost replacements down there with the harbor customs.

  HP and I occupied two of the three nice big bedrooms in the rest house, and the many friendly servants were all at our disposal. AH and Mohammed were excellent, and even knew some Enghsh. Good Arabian meals were served us alone in an empty restaurant hall, so large that we planned to build the reed bundles indoors if the heat continued into the next month. We were up the moment the red desert sun rose across the Tigris, and the morning air and first shower in the bathroom were refreshingly cool. On the first morning I lay down in my tub and let it overflow with the coldest water I could get; until two long brown antennae began to waver out of the overflow, and two expressionless eyes peeped at me. A huge cockroach dived out of the hole into my bathwater, followed by another, and another, and another: they were twenty-two in all. With this swimming armada I was out of the water in a second and tried to flush them aU down the drain, but they were too big and I had to scoop them with a glass into the toilet. I woke HP and suggested he should take a cool bath. I waited awhile and then heard a yell through the wall. "You know what happened to me?" he asked as we sat down to a grand egg-and-cheese breakfast on the lawn. "Yes," I replied. "How many?"

  There was plenty of work ahead to prepare the building site for the arrival of all the groups of helpers: Marsh Arabs, South American Indians, dhow sailors from Bombay and expedition members from all continents. The three bedrooms would not sufiBce, but two rooms could be made serviceable upstairs under the roof, and mattresses and camp beds could be put up everywhere.

  With HP I began to prepare the ground for the combined jig

  and building scaflFold. I had the idea of digging two deep and broad trenches side by side in the garden, so that the boatbuilders could walk underneath the double body of the vessel when the thick spiral rope was to be wound around the two final bundles. Half a dozen Arab workmen from Qmna came with picks and shovels and they soon began uncovering big, square, yellow Sumerian bricks which they unperturbedly carried away in baskets on their heads to dump. My archaeological conscience made me stop the work in the Garden of Eden immediately, until HP stooped down and picked up a tiny living tortoise among the debris. Then I too noted something: between the truly ancient bricks lay the neck shard of a beer bottle, showing that others had plowed up the whole area before and filled in irregularities to level the ground for the building of the rest house.

  The digging was resumed, but on the third day, just as we began to see a satisfactory result, a committee of solemn gentlemen in European dress came and to my surprise began to measure our trench. Soon afterward one of the workmen spoke in Arabic to Kais, my young interpreter, who sat with me in the pleasant shade of a date palm, wondering what was going on.

  **They say we should dig six feet closer to the road," said Kais, translating the message.

  "No," I protested. "We should keep as close as we can to the river."

  The workman left and the digging was resumed, but soon he was with us again. "They say oui marks are not in hne with the rest house!"

  "Nonsense," I explained. "They don't have to be. You are digging just right."

  The workman left again, but as I saw gesticulations aroimd the trench I went over to calm everybody down and clear up the obvious misunderstanding. A little friendly man with a prominent nose, who knew English well, introduced himself and his companions and with both hands he showed me in a
very friendly way where he wanted the trench to go.

  "It makes httle difference," I admitted, "but the closer to the banks the easier will be the launching."

  "Launching?" he said, and he looked at me as if I had escaped from an asylum.

  "Of course," I laughed. "You don't expect me to leave the ship ashore?"

  "Ship?" Now he really showed big eyes and an open mouth. "This isn't going to be a ship I"

  It was my turn to suspect that the little man in front of me had crawled through the fence of some institution. "Call it a haystack if you wish, but to me it will be a ship," I said.

  The little man stepped back and looked at me with profound suspicion: "You make fun of me. Sorry, sir, but I have my orders from the Ministry of Information!"

  "That is the ministry that granted me the right to build here," I answered, and began to suspect some real confusion. The little man now looked really unhappy: "Sir, please, I have the masons and the carpenters all ready to start tomorrow, we shall add twenty-five bedrooms to the rest house just here."

  Obviously we had dealt with two different oflBces in the same ministry. We had to disentangle this problem,

  "If you build your house now," I replied, "I cannot build my ship here afterward. But if I build my ship now we will sail away and you can begin building your rooms two months from now."

  For a moment the little engineer looked at me in despair, then he pointed to the top of the palm tree above our heads: "Do you see that date palm? You will find me hanging with a rope around my neck just up there if I go back before I have done my job!"

  We all began to laugh as he capitulated, and as Mr. Ramsey had come with all his luggage I agreed that he could stay in the rest house, where the easygoing manager gave him a spare bed in his room. Thus, in a sense, an engineer I had not asked for had half joined the expedition as a local consultant whom we should discover we really needed.