MESOPOTAMIAN ARABS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 108, 31 January 1921, Page 6

MESOPOTAMIAN ARABS

SOME REMINISCENCES

AN INTERESTING PEOPLE

•<' For moat of us the Arab is a rather incomprehensible, inscrutable person, belonging, as it were, to another sphere of humanity, and as our ideas of him are thus based on-that ignorance which is the root of all failure, anything which may help us to form, truer ideas of his character and nature must be of value (writes A. S. Elwell-Sutton in the “'Spectator")- There are now no doubt a good many people who have been there," but my experience is that these •are just as likely to be wrongly prejudiced as the etay-at-home Who has to get hie opinions from others. Not many of those “out there” came into any real personal contact with the Arabs, and in any case the majority were ill-equip-ped for an understanding of them, .in 1 :? probably never got beyond the inevitable batch of stories with which one was met on one's arrival in the countryhorrible stories for the most part of treachery and cruelty and oppression, a regular "Newgate Calendar”: but the philosophical mind, remembering unfortunate prejudice against the natives" into which the average Britisher too often allows himself to be led, wondered whether the narration did more justice to them than the aforesaid document would do to the British people, if it were related, say, to some Arab notable visiting this country. My first personal contact with the native was when I met Sheikh, Habib of Behemet (near Abadan, the site of the works of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company). This sheikh is a vassal of the Sheikh of Muhommerah. whose territory, nominally under the sway of Persia, is well ruled and prosperous, thanks largely to the ability of the Prime Minister, the Hadji Rees. Sheikh Habib .might be considered as a type of the -prosperous, civilised Arab; he |s a finelooking, black-bearded man, who knows how to receive visitors with dignity and hospitality. His son is—or was—very proBritish, and can speak a little English. He, the son, invited me to a meal in his own quarters, eating with me, and subsequently returning the compliment. These quarters of his were plain, but quite clean and comfortable, and, best of all, cool, with their thick mud walls and narrow windows. In this country you don’t want windows—yon must keep the outside air, and the light and heat and glare which pertains to it, outside. When it begins to get dark, then vou go and sit outside yourself, and enjoy the evening air, and the scent of the roses, and the music of the nightingale, under a verandah roofed with dry date-palm branches, and pillared with dead trunks of the trees planted at regular intervals in the ground. I pamook of my meal seated on a, high bench on which you are really supposed to cross your legs. As I wasn’t prepared to do this they dangled, recalling that period of one's youth when one got down from table instead of up. Spoons, forks, and knives were provided by this up-to-date. host, and the food, chiefly chicken rice aud mutton, with various condiments and the peculiar flaps of Arab bread a kind 'of tough pancake made of oatmeal—was carried in on an enormous brass tray, borne over the heads of two negro retainers. The.cookery was excellent, the rice, steeped in butter made from buffalo milk and done up in little rqjls ot mulberry leaves, being.particularly good; and after the first mouthfuls, the young sheikh, in accordance with the Arab custom towards a guest with whom one has , eaten, informs me that he is my friend and devoted servant for life. The garden was really delightful. It covered many acres, traversed chessboard fashion by the irrigation trenches, ■which -are bridged by roughly cut datepalm trunks. The growing date palms supply the shade, and beneath, around, and in the clearings bordered by them ore ranged along little paths the pomegranates, peaches, apricots, almonds, nectarines, white mulberries—all a blaze of -white andl pink and red flower, as I saw • them then, in the rich promise of an ■ abundant harvest. Vegetables of all. kinds there were—except potatoes, which won’t grow in Mesopotamia—and the corn is sown in little patches; you can’t have fields, for the patches must be small to secure the benefit of the datepalm shade. Very pleasant and restful is that shade, and there is a cool freshness rising from the stagnant water of the irrigation trenches, gay with watercrowfoot on the surface, and little blue flowers along the banks; and then there were the roses —real Persian ones! The old sheikh politely gave me some “for 1 the Memsahib,” and the sweet scent was strong in the leaves still when they got home. It may bo observed that it would have been highly improper for me to' have made any mention whatever of the sheikh’s “Memsahib” or rather “Memsahibs,” but the “civilised” Arab teems quite to appreciate the difference lietween his own and our estimation of the other sex. Let it not be supposed that all this wealth and luxuriance comes of itself. Our garden was an oasis, an earthly paradise, created by man’s labour, and apt to fall to ruin again when man should leave it. Where the irrigation canals stop, there the bare • brown desert begins, at once. The sheikh exercises over his numerous retainers and labourers an autocratic but not unkindly authority; it is despotism tempered by patriarchy. Everybody seemed to agree that the Hadji Rees, the “Primo Minister" of the Sheikh of Muhaminerah, was a "Sahib.” Certainly there was nothing of the traditional Arab aloofness about him. He burst suddenly into the club at Muhanimerah the evening I was there —he was apparently a frequent visitor—broke up our bridge party, and insisted on playing what he called “billiards.” This consisted of placing a cue across the cushions, with all the coloured pool balls in front of it. You then bet on your colour, and, taking turns, you thrust the cue forward • so as to drive the balls up and down, and the colour that stopped nearest the top cushion won. The . game soon became sufficiently uproarious, the Hadji taking his full share of the cue, in the handling of which he seemed to think there was scope for the legitimate exercise of "skill.” Later on, very much later on, I’m afraid, leaning over the balcony for a lest look at the moonlight blowing amidst the date palm groves, before turning in, one felt that one had learnt that the Arab could be just as good a fellow and just as human as any of US,

Up the Euphrates one meets him in amore primitive state. At Medina, some 30 miles above Qurnah, even the sheikh’s dwelling’s are no more than reed huts, and when wo partook of their hospitality it was at a table laid out in the open, under the faathery date palms. Here there were no knives and forks; you used your right hand to discuss the Various dainties; rice, hard-boiled eggs and baby chickens. It is not very pleasant eating rice, especially rather greasy rice, with no other weapon tlFnn the right hand, but it wna cooked to perfection, and the taste was delicious. Our hosts did not eat with us. They apparently could not go as far as that. Ihe war was net over; the Turks might come back; there had been grim examples oi what they could do to "traitors” when they came down after Townshend’s repulse at Ctesipbon. Some way elf, in an irregular group on -the ground, eat the inferior retainers. After we had finally finished with the variole . dishes limy were passed on to theAc gentry, and when they had finished they disappeared, to the women’s quarters, as we were given to understand. Such is the rule, and there is not too milch of the food loft by the time it reaches this third stag®. Meanwhile the "first-served” could eat as much as they wanted, but from lack of practice nt eating in the primitive fashion describ-

"Sh This sheikh "•| 1 s ie t l u Xi';s of his little S r X%ere administered by fine-looking, heavily bn , Wack bea ed Arab, who .has a r l"®^ 1 „ iost o/these 0 Arob siieikhs for matter of that, though it is perhaps not alnaj tribes become wilder and moie pn d. e lll K «» liny »»• ".'“i’T,,,;,,,,,.! provocation. One riP ILiu tribea o{ - “ d .s f X 'This wac quite enough. Village No 2 lay low, but in the small hours of the next morning they sent a flai v ing payty across the lake artificial bund thrown up by the d r«’» er afforded standing ground and shelter, and at the pre-arranged moment delri cred also a frontal attack on village No. 1 which got decidedly the worst ot it. By the time we got up—we steamed nearly all night through the reedy channels, feeling our way by the help of the searchlight—the fight Yas over for the time, the casualties having been about 80, but there was much weeping and wailing and letting off of guns—the sendoff for the dead; Ultimately both tribes agreed to pay a fine and keep the peace for six months. The sheiks of these tribes had by no means the appearance of savages. They were fine, dignifiedlooking men, and chiefly indignant, so it seemed to me. at being interfered with. I could not. help feeling sorry for the sheik of No. 1 village, who had lost his son, anfl seemed quite heart-broken in consequence, and who could hardly have been said to he the on this occasion.

On the whole, how could we do better than ‘leave them nlone? That the Arab can become civilised and can develop his country the Sheik of Ifuhanimerah nnd his vassal Sheik Habib have shown. As for the wilder tribes, it is not to be expected that they can bo tamed bv bureaucratic methods in. a few years. It will take time, hut that even nmongst these there are the seeds of n higher development the writer is convinced.