Towards the end of October the weather became cooler, and in November the nights were chilly. Sickness diminished rapidly. At this season there is a kind of charm about Mesopotamia. Clouds begin to inhabit the skies and the colour effects, especially those of dawn and sunset, are lovely. It is a time intermediate between the season of heat and the season of floods—a brief time, but one in which the country is at its best. Mosquitoes and sand-flies vanish. A lovely bird, a deep blue and russet, sings in the groves. The blue jay screams and darts through the palm trees. It is possible to understand how in the Eastern poets the beauty of women is constantly compared with the moon. It is the only thing to compare it to. In a country like Mesopotamia, with its entire lack of scenery, the moon in all her phases is by far the most beautiful thing that one sees. After the heat of the day, when the sun has seemed a destroyer rather than a fructifier, the slender crescent rising over the plain is like a girl dressed in silver. This poverty in nature must perplex the Mesopotamian artist. The only objects that the native jewellers etch into their silver work are Ezra's tomb, the native boat, the jackal, the palm tree and the camel. And that is about all the material the country yields. It is this simplicity that leaves only two courses open to the inhabitants. They must either fall back upon their senses and become sensualists or seek a higher path and become mystics.
There is little love lost between the Indians and the Arabs. The Arabs in Mesopotamia have long feared the incursion of India into their country, for they knew that the Indian farmer under the British engineers would make Mesopotamia blossom like a rose. The swiftness with which seeds grow when properly watered is uncanny. We had a garden attached to the mess and watered by a variety of people. The first attempt was a failure owing to the absent-mindedness of the waterers, each of whom, during an exceedingly hot spell, tacitly assumed that the other man would do his duty. The second attempt was successful. Peas straight out of packets and scattered in a long furrow rose from the earth with a kind of ferocity, as if they hated the soil in which they found themselves. There was one disadvantage in the produce of this garden—its flavour was rather weak.
Coming down the river at the end of the year the railway was a great new feature of the country. Small tank engines were crawling over the plain and all along the banks were piles of sleepers and gangs of Arabs. We reached the entrance of the Narrows at dusk and anchored for the night. It was a night that differed entirely from those we endured when going up. There was a concert party on board, and a cavalry major who possessed some tomato soup. That night the sky was superb with stars. Taurus rose, with Aldebaran as red as fire; then Castor and Pollux calm in their symmetry, with the Pleiades above like a shattered diamond. Then glittering Orion slowly swung above the horizon. In the middle of the night there was a crash of musketry, and a sudden uproar. The major appeared, speaking Hindustani very rapidly, his eyes closed. It appeared that some Arabs had crept on to the barge next the shore and tried to loot some mail bags. Quiet was soon restored. At dawn a crescent moon, upholding Venus at her fairest, hung in the east, throwing a soft white flame over the dark water.
That night we reached Kurna and tied up alongside the Garden of Eden. It was pitch black. A string of little Arab boys suddenly emerged from a brightly illuminated door each with a sack and slipped on board. This was the mail for Basra, from the dwellers in Eden. About nine a dim, white-robed procession passed down the river-side with a lamp, a torch and a beating drum and vanished into a building. A wedding was being celebrated in the Garden of Eden. Next morning that bride of yesterday might have cast her white veil over the scene. Through the clinging mist the life of the little hamlet gradually became visible. A café revealed itself, a collection of wooden settles in a small square, and beyond a big dark doorway. A fat Arab in yellow appeared and gazed at us. Then an old wizened fellow, a haji from his green turban showing he had seen Mecca, came up and they conversed. Green Turban was plainly lamenting. He pointed to our ship, to the telegraph-office, to a squad of Gurkhas marching past wearing their ration baskets as hats, and threw up his hands. The fat café proprietor shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the bazaar. His argument was plain. Business was good and he was content with the changes. Green Turban drew his robes closer round him, shook his head and went off, a sad, gaunt figure on whose face was stamped that expression which is common all the world over when new wine and old bottles make contact. As he passed up the bank a barge load of howitzers, their yellow muzzles gazing skywards, churned its way up stream.
The railway from Kurna to Amara was nearing completion towards the end of November. It is possible for vessels of considerable size to traverse the whole length of the Shatt-el-Arab up to its point of commencement at Kurna. The railway, so long in coming, will make a great difference to the troops in the country during the next hot season. For, with proper lines of communication and with properly equipped buildings for the sick and wounded, a great deal of the sufferings that were endured in the early stages of the campaign will be entirely done away with.
The major, a dreamy soul, while brooding over the golden brown plain on our way down river, now and then sought to fathom the mystery of the country's future. As we left Kurna and entered the fair, broad-bosomed Shatt-el-Arab he suddenly swept his arm round the horizon. "All this show of ours out here is nothing in itself," he said. "It's a beginning of something that will materialise a hundred or two hundred or a thousand years hence. We are the great irrigating nation and that's why we're here now. We'll fix this land up and get it going and then far ahead all the agricultural produce which we made possible will move the wheels of a new humanity. Pray God, yes—a new humanity! One that doesn't stuff itself silly with whisky and beef and beer and die of apoplexy and high explosives."
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