Living in Romantic Baghdad: An American Memoir of Teaching and Travel in Iraq, 1924-1947

9. Baghdad from the Tigris

96 9 Baghdad from the Tigris It is the Tigris that draws you in Baghdad; at least, it did draw me. The river is so accessible, so near to every part of the city, flowing almost through the middle of it, that one would suppose much use would be made of it for recreation and enjoyment. But we did not find this to be so, though when we first came motor launches ran back and forth between the city and the suburbs. Later when boulevards, smoothly asphalted, were constructed and automobiles and busses appeared, they superseded the launches. Like the guffas, the launches disappeared, leaving only the balams (boats) to take people across the river who preferred to be rowed rather than walk or drive over the bridges. Yet, when the caliphs ruled in Baghdad, the river was alive with crafts. It was said that in the days of Amin, the son of Harun al-Rashid, thousands of gondolas were on the river, and that the people so enjoyed crossing in balams that the number of these boats was ,. This caliph also arranged gorgeous fetes, with five royal gondolas in the center, constructed in the shape of a horse, an elephant, an eagle, a serpent, and a lion. The river today is much the same as it was then and has the same possibilities. To row down the river through Baghdad today is to row through history . Therefore, in order to understand, appreciate, and evaluate Iraq’s glorious past and her present achievements, I deliberately rowed one evening from one end of the city to the other. The history of Baghdad from the time it was founded until the present day moved before me like a moving picture. Along the shores of both sides of the river were the “leftovers” of a bygone age and the achievements of today. Baghdad’s checkered life for me became real. Baghdad from the Tigris • 97 Rowing down the river through the whole length of the city is the best, and possibly the only, way to relive that “pulsating life that built here a great city, and from it ruled such an enlightened empire that it gave the lamp of learning to Europe; and so stimulated and fertilized the minds of our ancestors that it led directly to the dawn of the modern world.” Besides, it is a good way of bringing one face to face with the Baghdad of today, as it is striving and struggling to regain its former greatness. I had a somewhat similar experience years before when I strolled along the Seine in Paris. Paris was founded only a few centuries before Baghdad; and every boy and girl in Iraq who has gone to school knows that Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid had exchanged gifts.I took a delight in walking along the historic Seine and observing what both shores had to reveal. I had then walked through history, just as now I was rowing through it. It was on a summer day when I rowed through the whole length of the city. It was an unforgettable evening, when the sky was glorifying the earth, and a silver-grey mystic light flooded the city. The rays of the setting sun were reflected from glazed domes and minarets; and as twilight deepened , the stars began to peep out one by one, and later burned brilliantly in the heavens. As I now launched out upon my river trip, and passed lovely gardens at the edge of the city, these words of Tennyson flashed upon my mind: By Tigris’ shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens, green and old. On both sides were green gardens, and some of them indeed were old. The sunken Persian garden of the minister of Education, in which we occasionally spent a delightful evening, was just a little further up the stream; and beyond that was a shrine of fretted gold, the golden domes and minarets of Kadhimain. Had Tennyson been fortunate enough to visit this spot, he might have said, “Not only have I written what is beautiful, but also what is really true.” It seemed most gratifying that shore and river should have conspired to bring me first to the royal palace. Here the new Iraq began, while across the river is the supposed site of the first beginnings of Baghdad. 98 • Living in Romantic Baghdad In a well-kept garden that...