The Tigris Expedition

by Heyerdahl, Thor

  "What has happened?** I exclaimed, horrified.

  The car rolled around three times off the road," Norman mumbled.

  "And where are the dhow sailors?"

  "In the hospital for a checkup.**

  "And Shaker?"

  "At the police station. He drove."

  "And the new car of the Soviet consul general?"

  "Wheels up, a total wreck."

  Norman had only surface wounds and there was room enough between the bandages on his face to prove that his famous appetite remained. But when the three unfortunate dhow sailors came limping in, one with an injured leg, one with an injured head, and one with an injured back, they had no appetite at all and begged me to send them back to India by the first plane. This I did, as fast as I could get Baghdad on the telephone. They flew from Iraq, with course for India, but were lost on the way and have never shown up at the agency in Bombay.

  We were in a real fix. In a few days we had to get the ship into the water; the winter was approaching and there had already been a few drops of rain, a month earher than normal. Norman was so impressed by the model-testing report from Southampton University that he insisted on a bigger sail and bigger blades on the rudder oars than what had been made for me in Hamburg. We had spare canvas for a dhow sail, but no one to make it for us, so he suggested we should forget the dhow sail and use the spare canvas to make our own sail much larger instead. "An easy job," said Norman, and fixed his eyes on our best sail and a pair of scissors.

  We had only one thick sohd sail of about seventy square yards, with rope reinforcements sewn in along the edges, together with "cringles," lateral eyes for guide ropes to be used when tacking. Our second sail was merely a larger substitute to gain more speed without fear of capsizing in the event of feeble, following wind. It was also of Egyptian cotton canvas, but much thinner, and measured some ninety-five square yards.

  We succeeded in locating a couple of old sailmakers among the boatbuilders in Huwair, and Norman split our best sail along the central seams to add the extra canvas in the middle and thus leave the fine edges with their reinforcements and cringles intact. Once the good sail was spread in separate bits aU over the dining-room floor, the sailmakers went to work for half a day and then declared themselves unable to add the new pieces to the old because they no longer had the proper tools. Too bad, I said, then you have to put the sail back as it was.

  But in spite of all their attempts, the Arab sailmakers, Norman

  and HP, who returned from Norway with sailmakers' needles and gloves, were unable to put the severed sail together again in its original shape. The rain had started, there was no time to send the pieces back to Hamburg and we had to start our voyage with nothing but a thin downwind sail. Fortunately for us, in the winter season there would be a north wind, blowing from Iraq down the gulf. We would therefore have a steady following wind all the way to the island of Bahrain. And everybody assured us that there we could find any number of sailmakers to fix oiu: sail. Even dhow sailors as pilots to take the place of the three departed Indians. How little did we suspect that none of these prophecies held true.

  A real dilemma each time we start a reed-ship experiment is to decide on the best dimensions for the wooden rudder oars. The bigger the blades the better the steering, but the greater the risk of breaking the long oar shafts in stormy seas. The report from the model test in Southampton tempted us to risk larger blades than those I had originally ordered from the carpenter in Hamburg. Norman, with my blessings, set forth to enlarge the blades of the rudder oars, and we got quite unsolicited help from a professional carpenter. But this time we worked like the inmates of a zoo. Every day hundreds of workers from the industrial areas came in busloads to gaze through the iron fence at the peculiar vessel on the riverbank: Russians, East and West Germans, Poles, Japanese, Americans and Scandinavians mostly, apart from local Arabs. A never-failing spectator was Josef CziUich, foreman carpenter of Polensky & Zollner, the West German contractors building a huge mill upstream near Amara, intended for making paper from marsh canes. Before anybody knew it, we found Czilhch busy working inside with us every Friday. With a master's hand he helped Norman to peg and glue lateral boards to the blades of the rudder oars until they were so huge that thicker shafts were needed. By fitting extra wood in a superb fashion even the shafts became colossal, though oval in cross section instead of round. The masters behind these spectacular wooden monsters vigorously defended their highly unorthodox products: that the shafts were oval did not matter so long as they were to rotate in an open fork and not in a circular hole. In any case, there was no way to slim down the shafts unless we also reduced the dimensions of the blades, and this, as Norman pointed out, would nullify the value of the Southampton model test. And Norman was right: Why the Southampton test if we ignored the results?

  For the time being we had much more pressing problems to worry about. Norman took to bed with a temperature of over 40° C. (104° F.), and so did our second navigator Detlef, and HP, and all the other men one by one, except Carlo and myself, and Yuri, who suffered from pains but ran from bed to bed with his special medical kit designed for Russian astronauts. Even the camera teams tumbled into bed, and for a while the outlook was very serious. A cholera epidemic had struck the surrounding Arab world and was reportedly raging in villages downriver, but no cases were reported from the Quma region.

  While nearly all the men were in bed the rain came. The real rain. It poured down as described in the story of Noah. The Marsh Arabs kept to their reed houses and waited for their islands to lift and float. The sandy clay in the Garden of Eden turned to sticky mud. With a couple of men I tried to cover our vessel with reeds to shed the worst of the water, for we could see that the bundles were gathering weight. I was terrified when I saw some of the vertical poles of our perfect jig begin to lean outward. Tons of water must have been added to the weight of the vessel and the jig was ready to coUapse. We hurried to hammer slanting props into the ground to support the endangered structure, and Mohammed ran to Quma and came back with green plastic sheeting to cover the entire ship. Ugly though this material was, it looked now like a Noah's ark with its gabled roof streaming with rain, while pools of water grew in size and number on the ground. It was exciting to see if the woodwork of the launching jig would resist the pressure. It did. And as the clouds drifted away and the sun shone as before on the Garden of Eden, the mud dried up, the ugly plastic was removed and Noah's ark lay as dry as if it had landed on Mount Ararat.

  It was time to decide whether to cover our golden ship with black asphalt. We puUed the two test bundles up from the bottom of the river. To our horror they both lay much deeper in the water and were obviously waterlogged. We dragged them ashore and with a saw cut them off at midlength. They were soaked right through, both of them. The asphalt had cracked and done nothing but add extra weight to the bundle.

  I looked at Gatae and his marshmen, who stood speechless around the waterlogged pieces. They were as bewildered as I was disappointed. Gatae had no explanation except that we had forced the bundles down to the bottom instead of letting them float on the

  surface. But, as I explained, our ship too would be submerged, partly by tons of cargo and partly by towering waves. Gatae had no comment to make and went stooping away with his silent men. I remained alone with the dissected test bundles. The pieces of berdi in the glasses of drinking water in my room did not behave like this, especially the samples standing in salt water. Could it be that the polluted water of the river Tigris had caused the reeds to rot? That, I recalled, was precisely what happened when the Papyrus Institute in Cairo had left their test reeds to putrefy in the stagnant water of a bathtub.

  We got rid of the waterlogged bundles that left a gloomy impression on all of us, and had to concentrate on getting our ship launched before the next rain, which would be more than a passing shower. After I had first chosen the building site the water in the river had gone far down. The Tigris runs like a drainage ditch througho
ut the length of Iraq, receiving the downpour only in Turkey, and it therefore shrinks through the summer and autumn when there is no more snow to melt in the mountains around Ararat. But this was a minor problem. We could always tilt the reed ship down to the water. The real obstacle was a high and solid concrete wall which the river authorities had built from the rest-house terrace to well beyond Adam's tree in the short time I was away in Europe to organize the expedition. The mayor told me it was no problem, the wall could be broken through wherever we needed a gap for our launching.

  The estimated weight of our tight-packed bundle ship was about thirty-three tons, and the rail system I had devised for the launching had to be extended to pass the new wall and reach the river. The vessel was built inside a wooden jig that would remain ashore when the reed ship itself was launched; but it rested upon an iron sledge that would puU the vessel into the river and then sink free when the vessel began to float. The runners of the sledge consisted of steel beams with I-shaped cross sections set on edge into rails of the same kind of beams but laid on their sides to provide channels. They had to be extended another two ships' lengths to reach the water's edge.

  First the wall had to go, and this required permission from the river authorities. I could visualize papers circulating up and down the river until the rainy season started, so we took a shortcut by directly approaching the two bulky building contractors who had

  put up the wall in such a hurry, oflFering them a reasonable payment to knock it down and build it up again.

  They accepted and guaranteed with a double handshake to have the waU down by noon the day before the launching. They even gladly agreed to half-pay if the wall was not down on time. They came as promised, and asked to borrow our picks, but an hour later I saw their broad backs as they calmly walked away. Shaker came running and said they refused to do the job because the wall was too hard. I hurried to catch up with them and told them that since they had made the wall they should be able to knock it down. But they explained that though they could build, they lacked the tools to destroy. Goodbye.

  I tried the Arab wall with a pickax and it only threw up sparks. I blessed the Danish cement factory downstream that had made it possible for these men to mix a concrete harder than mountain rock. Norman jumped out of bed, his eyes still red with fever. He was a commander in the U. S. Navy Reserve all right, but in his daily hfe he was a New York building contractor. With Shaker he drove to the village smith and had iron wedges and a huge sledgehammer made, and in no time fever-bitten men tumbled out of the rest house and took turns with the heavy sledgehammer; even the British and Arab cameramen joined in Operation Jericho. And the wall crumbled to provide a gap as wide as we needed.

  The road was open into the river. The river ran into the long gulf that opened into the Indian Ocean, an ocean I had never been at grips with. A gateway to unknown adventures stood agape in the Garden of Eden, and Noah's ark lay ready to float as new rain clouds gathered on the horizon.

  DOWN THE SUMERIAN WATERWAYS

  z,

  ERO hour. All flags up.

  "Are we ready?"

  "Ready!"

  "OKI Let go!"

  We had invited no one, but the Garden of Eden was packed with spectators who seemed as curious as we were to see the reed ship enter the river. The atmosphere was that of a big theater with the rumbling of countless voices that came to a sudden silence as we set to work with two small hand jerks we had borrowed to pull the heavy vessel into the river Tigris.

  The silence was broken by the roar of thousands of jubilant voices as the lofty reed colossus began to move and then to shde along the metal rails. Slower than a turtle, she moved in jerks toward the gap in the broken wall, with the flowing river below.

  There would not have been room for an apple to fall to the ground in Adam's peaceful garden, the way the spectators now pressed forward for a better look, and the Iraqi pohce who had come along to protect the high oflBcials from Baghdad were in difficulties to save the dignitaries, expedition members and work-

  men from being pushed beneath the advancing Sumerian curiosity. Even the river was full of Arabs and foreigners in mashhufs, balams, pohce boats and motor launches.

  It was a great rehef to see the monster moving out of our own homemade wooden jig and onto the improvised steel beams which an engineer from the upstream paper mill had kindly welded together as rails to the water's edge. The corn-colored vessel still carried blood marks on the bow that rose proudly like a swan's neck, but covered by red human handprints after the recent naming ceremony.

  There had been some discussion about this ceremony. The Marsh Arabs had come to the launching site with six beautiful sheep. They wanted them sacrificed and I was supposed to handprint their blood on the bow of the new vessel. This I refused to do. KoTirTiki had been baptized in South American coconut milk, Ra I and II in milk from Berber goats. I could not even propose the use of buflFalo milk, which would seem an insult to the Marsh Arabs. They insisted on the local custom of animal sacrifice as adhered to since the days of Abraham. They always hand-printed blood on any new building, whether house or boat. The marshmen blankly refused to let the ship enter the river unless the proper sacrifices had been performed, and Gatae insisted they would do it themselves if I would not. They were so dead set on this rite that even our educated Baghdad friend Rashad refused to come along on the voyage unless the customary ceremony was performed.

  We found a compromise. The marshmen should be allowed to carry out their own rite beforehand, but the naming ceremony should be the way I wanted it.

  November ii was the day that had been set for the launching. In the late morning I found Gatae by the ship in his spotless white caftan with a bloodstained right palm. He was still stamping red hand marks on the golden bow from the last sheep sacrificed, while his men sat happily squatting on the ground devouring roast lamb with no eflFort to conceal that this was to them the most important part of the ceremony.

  By midday the dignitaries had arrived from Baghdad, bringing a white silk ribbon and scissors to be used by the director-general of the ministry in a proper bridge-opening ceremony in front of the bow. Then it was our turn; Gatae's beautiful Uttle granddaughter was to name the vessel. Gatae stepped up from the river's edge

  leading this tiny black-haired lady in colorful costume by the hand. Little Sekneh struggled to carry a traditional Marsh Arab bottle-goinrd dripping full of water from the river that was to lend the ship its own name. With sparkling eyes she splashed it successfully on the reed bow, forgot all her lessons, and only those who stood close could hear her mumble "Didgle" the local name for Tigris. Her grandfather never let go her hand as he took over and declared with loud voice in Arab:

  "This ship is to enter the water with the permission of God and the blessing of the Prophet, and will be called Didgle: Tigris."

  No sooner had these words been proclaimed than a low rumble of thunder was heard in the south. All heads were turned as if in surprise or awe; it had sounded as if approbation had come from the mightiest of all Mesopotamian gods, the sun god who struck thunder and hghtning with his hand mace. Black clouds were approaching from the horizon. Even those of us who were not superstitious almost felt a shiver down the spine at this timely comment from the weather god.

  A screw on the borrowed "come-along" system broke and had to be replaced by a piece of nail, so it took an hour to pull the newly named Tigris through the broken wall to the critical hump where the slope began to run steeply down to the river. We had tried to ease this rather sharp incline by filling in more soil, but the current immediately carried the lower part away. As the Tigris reached the hump we all held otu* breath. Would the sixty-foot reed bundles and the thin steel sledge they rested on stand the strain when half the ship balanced unsupported on the hump?

  To our rehef the giant tilted over like one massive block and began to shde downhill by its own weight. The bow hit the water at the foot of the steep slope with a splash. Thousands of jubilant voic
es rose to a crescendo of triumph as the broad bow was lifted up by the water and began to float in the river, high as a rubber duck, while most of the ship was still up on dry land.

  What uplift, what buoyancy! I ran close behind to ensure that all ropes were held tight to prevent the unrigged body from disappearing down the river. Then the stern suddenly stopped just at the moment when the bow rose on the water. I heard a terrible crash of breaking timber and saw the steel beams twist like spaghetti under the broad body of the ship. The jubilant sound of applause sank to a deep murmur of lament, mingled with screams of despair as the

  broad vessel slowly settled on the solid ground like a rebellious hippopotamus refusing to enter water.

  There it sat. Firmly aground. Bow launched and afloat in the river and stem sohdly planted up among the crowds in the Garden of Eden.

  An army of volunteers ran to try to help push the vessel down into the river. In vain. Only a few could get their shoulders to the high stem that curved steeply into the air, and those who tried to push along the sides sank into loose earth and river mud.

  We began to dig beneath the vessel to inspect the damage and try to let the water in under the stem. Our idea was close to that of the wise Prophet and the mountain: if our ship did not want to come to the river, then the river had to come to our ship.'

  The dignitaries saluted pohtely and left with the police. One by one the crowd also melted away as evening approached and drizzle began to fall. Worst of all, the Aymara Indians had left for South America the previous day, because their excursion-rate return tickets to Bolivia would otherwise expire. Without them it would be a major problem to repair the ship if ropes and bundles had been damaged. But until we had access to the broad twin bottom we could have no idea of the extent of the damage caused by broken ends of timber and steel. As night came on an incredibly chill wind began to sweep the landscape. We had to run into the rest house for more clothing. The black night sky was split by spectacular streaks of lightning.