'First Impressions of the Madan'
"The Zair fetched the tea things and sat beside the fire, washing the glasses, saucers and spoons in an enamelled bowl. The tea was in a screw of paper and the sugar in a small tin. While the Zair and Sadam discussed the levy of reeds which Falih had demanded for his father's new mudhif [guest house], the Zair's son arrived back. He unloaded the hashish [animal fodder], feeding some of it to the buffaloes and then piling the rest just inside the house. He looked about twenty, was bare-headed, his short hair cut in a pudding-bowl style, and was naked except for a cloak wrapped around his waist. Leaning his fishing spear in a corner, he put on a shirt before joining us.
"I will go to Bu Mughaifat and see Sahain tomorrow," Sadam said. "He must produce two more boatloads of reeds from his village."
"Yes, by God, Sadam, so far we have produced it all," the Zair exclaimed.
"Sahain's people always get out of everything," his son added. "It is the same with the Feraigat. All they can do is to make trouble."
That evening, back at Sadam's mudhif, I stood watching the sun go down behind reedbeds that stretched to the world's end. High overhead, banks of cirrus cloud, blown to tattered streams, ranged from ebony to flaming gold and the colour of old ivory, against a background of vermilion and orange, violet, mauve, and palest green. From all around, as if the Marshes breathed, came the massed voices of frogs, an all-pervading pulse of sound, so sustained that the mind ceased to take note of it. More than any other, even the crying of geese in winter, this was the sound of the Marshes. A dog barked; a buffalo grunted with a noise surprisingly like a camel's; a man called out a long, and to me, unintelligible message; a pause, and someone answered. More buffaloes swam across the open water towards the village, only their heads showing and each leaving a wake. Among the houses columns of dense smoke spread upwards from small fires, lit to keep the mosquitoes away from the herds. A boy, late back from the reedbeds, paddled down a waterway, a path of shining gold leading from the setting sun. He sang softly as he came towards me, the notes lingering in the air.
Sadam called and I went inside."
From The Marsh Arabs. A Zair is a man who has made the pilgrimage to the tomb of the eighth Imam at Meshed in Iran in Shi'a Islam.
