A DWELLER IN MESOPOTAMIA

Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden

by

DONALD MAXWELL

With Sketches in Colour, Monochrome, and Line

+-------------------------- + | | | _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ | | | +-------------------------- + | | | THE LAST CRUSADE | | ADVENTURES WITH A | | SKETCH BOOK | | | | WITH BIBLE AND BRUSH | | IN PALESTINE | | [_In preparation_] | | | +-------------------------- + | | | THE BODLEY HEAD | | | +-------------------------- +

[Illustration: THE GOLDEN TOWERS OF KHADAMAIN]

[Illustration]

London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street New York: John Lane Company MCMXXI William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles, England.

PREFACE

Few adventurous incidents in our lives seem romantic at the time of their happening, and few places we visit are invested with that glamour that haunt them in recollection or anticipation. I remember comparing the colour scheme of a barge in Baghdad with that of one in Rochester. It was a comparison most unfavourable to Baghdad--a thing the colour of ashes with a thing of red and green and gold. Yet now that I am back in Rochester, the romance lingers around memories of dusty mahailas. It is easy to forget discomfort and insects and feel a certain glamour coming back to things which, at the time, represented the commonplaces of life. There certainly _is_ a glamour about Mesopotamia. It is not so much the glamour of the present as of the past.

To have travelled in the land where Sennacherib held sway, to have walked upon the Sacred Way in Babylon, to have stood in the great banquet hall of Belshazzar's palace when the twilight is raising ghosts and when little imagination would be required to see the fingers of a man's hand come forth and write upon the plaster of the wall, to wander in the moonlight into narrow streets in Old Baghdad, with its recollections of the Arabian Nights: these things are to make enduring pictures in the Palace of Memory, that ideal collection where only the good ones are hung and all are on the line.

Although it was for the Imperial War Museum that I went to Mesopotamia, these notes are not about the War, but they are a series of impressions of Mesopotamia in general. The technical side of my work I have omitted, and any account of the campaign in this field I have left to other hands. The sketches here collected might be described as a bye-product of my mission in Mesopotamia; but most of them are the property of the Imperial War Museum, and it is by the courtesy of the Art Committee of that body that I have now been able to reproduce them.

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Dweller in Mesopotamia by Donald Maxwell
• 2: The oil quays 4 h
• 3: A Dweller in Mesopotamia by Donald Maxwell
• 4: Consequently they could not keep us out of Abadan
• 5: Abadan at night complete with tanks
• 6: Illustration A mysterious looking furnace tower
• 7: They are the Medes and Persians
• 8: Basra was often referred to as the Venice of the East
• 9: Basra can boast no architecture
• 10: The sudden impact of the bellam
• 11: Mahailas and Thames steamboats
• 12: It seemed as easy to get off the mudbank as to get on it
• 13: And the seller shrieked frantically that it was not
• 14: Sinbad the Sailor has given place to Sinbad the Soldier
• 15: You can go westwards from Baghdad to the Euphrates
• 16: The Marmaris had been set alight by her crew
• 17: The good little Shushan would still be at sea
• 18: Had we been ambassadors on a diplomatic visit to Hillah
• 19: Here called the Hindeyeh canal
• 20: Illustration Ancient irrigation channel near Hillah
• 21: Is generally known as the site of Babylon
• 22: The great temple of Marduk is a dusty heap of brick rubbish
• 23: Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there
• 24: But as we neared the entrance to the Khan
• 25: So we stopped and gave it a hail
• 26: I have since wondered where all these goufas were going
• 27: The thoroughfare made since the British occupation
• 28: Not only in Baghdad but in all Mesopotamia
• 29: By taking the train from Basra to Amara
• 30: Khadamain is a great place of pilgrimage
• 31: Amara must not be confused with Kut el Amara
• 32: I think a goufa was about the most satisfactory
• 33: I succeeded in getting into Baghdad
• 34: Is it true that Mesopotamia was the cradle of the human race
• 35: Xisuthros did as he had been bidden
• 36: Covering it on both sides with bitumen
• 37: Estimated by the Inspector of Irrigation in Egypt
• 38: 2 Tennyson Recollections of the Arabian Nights
• 39: Maxwell the writer and traveller