14 - 20 February 2002
Issue No.573
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 February 2002 Issue No.573 |
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Stories from the Iraqi marshes
Zakirat Al-Ahwar wa Qisas Ukhra (Memories of the Marshes and Other Stories) Cairo: Ishtar Publishing, 2002. pp150
"As I came out into the dawn," wrote the British traveller Wilfred Thesiger in his book The Arab Marshes, "I saw far away across a great sheet of water the silhouette of a distant land, black against the sunrise. For a moment I had a vision of Hufaidh, the legendary island which no man may look on and keep his senses, then I realized that I was looking at great reedbeds. A slim, black, high-prowed craft lay beached at my feet -- the Sheikh's war canoe, waiting to take me into the Marshes. Before the first palaces were built at Ur, men had stepped out into the dawn from such a house, launched a canoe like this, and gone hunting here. Woolly [a British archaeologist] had unearthed their dwellings and models of their boats buried deep under the relics of Sumeria, deeper even than evidence of the Flood. Five thousand years of history were here and the pattern was still unchanged."
Images of the bygone marshes and their people
Thesiger, one of the few Westerners to visit the marshlands of southern Iraq, instantly fell in love with the region, its people and its pattern of life, writing books that have provided first-hand knowledge of them. Yet, in reading these books today we can only understand the area in the terms they provide, which rarely go beneath the surface. While Thesiger's books describe the lives of the people living in the marshlands in detail, they cannot explain their essence, which is why the publication of Zakirat Al-Ahwar, (Memories of the Marshes), is such an event.
A collection of 11 short stories by Iraqi writers native to the marshes and coming from different generations, these lively and fascinating stories give accounts of the lives, attitudes and traditions of a people whose values and perceptions are very different from ours. Through them, we gain significant glimpses of these marshlands, which go back five thousand years. To my knowledge, this is the first time that such a comprehensive collection of stories on this subject has been published, and we are all in the debt of the Ishtar Publishing House for making it available.
Zakirat Al-Ahwar, the collection's title story by Mohamed S Al-Sebahi, deals with the struggle between the marshlands' inhabitants and their main source of livelihood, fish. Fish and man kill each other, he says. Similarly, the tribesmen in a story by Fahd Al-Asadi trick another competitor in the marsh environment -- the wild boar that are destroying their crops -- luring the animals to their deaths. Women in the stories are identified with fish and are described in terms of their elusiveness, mystery and strength. But like the fish that supply these men with food, women are sometimes hunted down in scenes of shocking brutality: three female characters in these stories are raped among the waterways that make up the marshes.
Myths and fantasy are also a part of this marsh world. In "The Story of Absence," for example, by Warid Badr Al-Salem, the mysterious disappearance of Ali, one of the village boys, is depicted, as is his miraculous reappearance as a huge falcon swooping over the village. Memories of the Marshes, in fact, introduces a living world full of every kind of bird and beast, including geese, ducks, falcons, swans, bees, buffalo, boars, frogs, snakes and fish. The stories take the reader down waterways that wind ever deeper into these marvelous marshlands, revealing reed houses built on water, reedbeds stretching out to the horizon on all sides, and the many canoes of the marshes' human population. This is a place inhabited by tall, strong-faced men and by women who are as tall as palm trees, their beautiful bodies signaling fiery, unspeakable desires.
In May 2001 a British journalist visited southern Iraq, paying a visit to the marshes. "I gape incredulously at what are supposed to be marshes," he wrote afterwards. "Miles after miles of flat, barren, hostile nothingness. A few nice reed houses (mudhifs) are still standing, but many villages have been abandoned, and only the large ones are still inhabited".
Parts of the marshlands adjacent to Iran were drained, it is true, to deprive rebels who had taken refuge there of cover; but the rest of the marshes are still flourishing, as has been shown by recent Iraqi maps.
Whatever the truth about the real marshes may be, this collection of stories will keep them alive in the minds of all interested readers. The book includes a valuable Preface by Warid Badr Al-Salem, summoning up his own marsh village as a kind of lost paradise, recounting his attempts to find descriptions of it in old books and manuscripts and looking through the accounts of foreigners, such as Thesiger, who might have visited it. It also includes a glossary, just as valuable, of the dialect words used by the marsh people, as well as a selection of evocative photographs.
Reviewed byButhaina Al-Nasiri
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