From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

As a compliment to our hosts we did not even express a wish to explore the city, which we had come so far to see, until we had visited their schools and those conducted by their heroic coworkers, the Sisters of the Visitation of Tours. After having spent several most delightful hours with teachers and pupils we sent for a trio of those white donkeys for which Bagdad is so celebrated. Gentle as they are strong and hardy, they willingly keep up an easy, ambling gait for hours at a time without exhibiting the slightest evidence of fatigue. I learned to value them a third of a century ago when traveling in Egypt and I was glad to have an opportunity of again availing myself of their service in the old capital on the Tigris. Here they take the place of cabs which would not be at all available in the majority of the very narrow streets of the city.

As the Carmelite monastery is in the heart of the city, we soon found ourselves in the midst of a colorful scene that could not be surpassed by anything similar either in Damascus or Stamboul. Such a seething cauldron of races, such an utter confusion of tongues, such a motley carnival of costumes from plain white and black to the gay fabrics of Madras and the tawdry prints of Manchester! Here we meet men of countless types and creeds and nationalities—Turks, Afghans, Persians, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans; Jews, Hindus, Christians, Parsees, Shiites, Sunnites, and Mohammedans of all the seventy-three sects into which the Prophet of Mecca predicted Islam would eventually be divided. The languages and dialects number more than a score, for which reason the traveler in Bagdad would imagine that he hears fully as many different tongues as were spoken by the builders of the Tower of Babel. Indeed, not the least of the many difficulties which the British forces encountered in their recent operations against the Turkish army was, we are told, “the same which confronted the contractors for the old tower so many thousands of years ago.”

The appearance of Bagdad, as we wandered through the maze of narrow, filthy, noisome streets, was quite different from what it seemed when we first saw it from our lazily moving kelek on the palm-fringed Tigris, or when we gazed upon it enveloped in the delicate mist of early morning. Then little was visible except domes and minarets covered with bright-colored tiles and scintillating mosaics which appeared to float in the opalescent atmosphere.

As in the case of all other eastern cities, Bagdad is more enchanting at a distance than when viewed from her somber unsanitary and intricate thoroughfares. And as we threaded our way through these dingy streets and byways, flanked on either side by low, dun-colored, windowless mud houses, we found it difficult to see in them, even in fancy, the sumptuous homes that adorned the city in the time of Caliphs and more difficult still to repeople them with the glamouring figures of Thousand and One Nights.

But when one passes from these narrow and gloomy streets, that will scarcely admit a camel, into the spacious courtyards with which even the most unpretentious dwellings are provided, one is often surprised at the magic transformation of the scene. Here one finds a profusion of beautiful trees and shrubs and plants loaded with flowers of every size and hue. Among the most conspicuous are the palm, the orange, and the pomegranate whose bright green foliage is in striking contrast with the flaming blooms of the hibiscus in which the Bagdadi takes as much pleasure as do her dusky Hawaiian sisters in far-off Honolulu, with whom these brilliant flowers are universal favorites.

A peculiarity of the habitations of the well-to-do of Bagdad is the serdab, an underground chamber which is usually eight or nine feet in height. It is here that the family lives during the terrifically hot weather that prevails during summer and a part of the spring and autumn. But, although the temperature is here ten degrees lower than in the upper part of the house, the intense heat of mid-summer, which often reaches 120° Fahrenheit in the shade, is almost unbearable. As so great a part of the people spend much of their time in the serdab, the city seems to be almost lifeless during a greater part of the day. Towards sunset, however, it begins to revive. The women then repair to the terraces of their dwellings where they pass the night in talking, smoking, drinking sherbets, and trying, when the mosquitoes permit, to get a little sleep. As to the men, especially the Moslem portion of the population, they endeavor to find some surcease of misery in the Lethean fumes of their chibouks and hubble-bubbles. Most of them congregate in the countless coffeehouses which, during the everlasting dog days of Bagdad, are thronged day and night with all sorts and conditions of sweltering and par-baked humanity.

Passing so much time in a state of semi-torpor, it is not surprising that even the strongest constitutions soon succumb to the enervating climate. Because of the intolerable heat, Europeans endeavor every few years to find relief in a change of climate. But when this is not possible, the majority of the foreign sufferers are short-lived. Thus I was informed that the average life of the Carmelite missionaries in southern Mesopotamia is only about nine years. But their premature deaths do not deter them from continuing the work of charity to which they are so devoted. As soon as one drops out of the ranks his place is immediately taken by a zealous confrère who is only too willing to serve in the cause of the Master where the trials are most severe and where the dangers are greatest and most imminent.

What with the grilling climate, defective drainage, ignorance and neglect of the first principles of hygiene, one is not surprised to learn that the population of Bagdad is periodically decimated by the plague. Cholera is frequent. It was this dread visitant that carried off General Maude, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces during the recent campaign in Mesopotamia against the Turks.

We visited all the places of interest in the city but those in which we found most local color were the bazaars. As we neared the principal one of them we found the street crowded with Kurdish hamals bearing incredible burdens, and quick-stepping white donkeys disputing the way with awkwardly racking camels which snappishly sputtered or proudly held aloft their supercilious noses while disdainfully sniffing the air above the heads of shouting drivers. And round about us was a vociferating throng that were roughly jostling one another in their mad rush to force themselves into the alluring bazaars, which were already filled with all kinds of curious idlers or prospective purchasers.

Although the bazaars of Bagdad are much smaller than those of Damascus and Constantinople they are more interesting. This is not because of the attractive wares, but rather on account of the strange and motley crowd. And what a variety of garbs and what a medley of colors! There are every type and shade of oriental face; every style of headdress; every variety of costume one can conceive. Fezes, tarbooshes, keffiehs, turbans, the brimless hat of the Baktiari, the long felt hats of the Lurs and the Kurds; the black astrakan caps of the Russians and the Persians. As to costumes, there is everything imaginable from the primitive dhotee of the Hindu to the graceful full-flowing aba of the Arabian mollah and the elaborately embroidered apparel of an Indian rajah or the closely fitting frock coat of some prodigal nabob from Europe in quest of strange curios or rare old rugs and tapestries from Khorassan and Candahar.