Chapter 6

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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