Another curiosity of the Upper Tigris is the raft of light wood and air-inflated skins which comes down from the north to Samara and Baghdad. On this section of the river there are many shallows, sometimes caused by traces of old rubble weirs. Consequently any kind of craft which drew more than a few inches would be always in trouble. These rafts, made of light saplings lashed together, are rendered buoyant by being packed underneath with goat-skins inflated with air. Thus they require only a very slight depth of water to float them, and they are sufficiently tough to stand bumping and scraping over shoals and shallows.
The men who manœuvre these strange craft have some sort of tent or shelter to protect them from the sun, and they row with huge paddles. This rowing is sufficient to keep some sort of steering way on the raft, enough to enable it to get from one bank of the river to the other as it floats down.
Wood is scarce in the Baghdad region, and the material of these rafts is sold together with the cargo on its arrival at its destination. The crew proceed back by road to Diarbekr or some up-river town to bring down another raft.
The glamour of the East is felt mostly in the West. In an atmosphere of fog and wet streets, sun-baked plains with endless caravans and belts of date-palms by Tigris' shore seem the most delightful of prospects. Memory and imagination, those two artists of never-failing skill, leave out of the picture all dust and squalor—and insects! Yet to those who are sojourning by the Waters of Babylon or resting in sight of the golden towers of Khadamain romance and mystery would seem to dwell in a glimpse of Waterloo Bridge, with ghostly barges gliding silently by a thousand lamps, or in the grey cliffs of houses that make looming vistas down a London street.
"High, eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold;"—Paradise Lost, IV.
Of all places in the world, Baghdad, the city of Haroun-al-Raschid, is the one around which cling the romantic ideas of the enchanted East. For this reason "Chu Chin Chow" will probably be still running in ten years' time. It is a play which has become almost a symbol of Eastern romance. In Mesopotamia I observed that it was a standard of comparison. "Like 'Chu Chin Chow'" or "quite the Oscar Asche touch" were expressions frequently heard among our men who were describing something picturesque they had seen.
Now I may as well confess before I go any further, that I have not seen "Chu Chin Chow." I have never been able to get in. During the war, leave in London was an opportunist affair, with no notice in advance to allow for advance booking, and so I never succeeded in my quest of the glamour of the East—on the stage. But war, which brought with it so many disadvantages brought also many opportunities. Although I was unable to get into His Majesty's Theatre, I succeeded in getting into Baghdad.
I found streets through which beggars and British officers, camels and Ford cars jostled each other, often in vain attempts to get on. You can imagine the state of things on a busy morning. By day there is so much more rubbish and dirt to take the romance away from the picturesque, but at night, especially by moonlight, the quaint streets of old Baghdad do give an element of mystery and adventure that the Arabian Nights and the stage lead us to expect.