The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [33]
This was a totally aquatic society. 'The ground looked solid but felt very soggy. Actually it consisted of a layer of roots and decomposed vegetation floating on the surface.' Some of the islands were only a few square yards, others an acre, some tethered, some floating about.51 The houses were built on these reed platforms floating on the water, and all transport was in boats, usually very small. As Thor Heyerdahl noted, 'A Marsh Arab can rarely walk more than a couple of steps before he has to enter his canoe.'52 When it floods they just add a few more layers of reeds on the floors of their houses so they can keep dry. Once Thesiger was treating patients, and there were so many of them that 'the weight of my patients submerged the floor. I finished treating them ankle-deep in water. My host assured me that it did not matter, but nevertheless he seemed relieved when I moved on.'53
This way of life goes back perhaps 5,000 years. Yet even when Thesiger was there in the 1950s the oil boom in Iraq had begun, and many Madan, as the Marsh Arabs call themselves, had moved off to Basra and Baghdad in search of fortune. As he noted: 'Soon the marshes will probably be drained; when this happens, a way of life that has lasted for thousands of years will disappear.'54 Gavin Young was a bit of a protégé of Thesiger, and first visited the marshes with him. He spent a considerable time there in the early 1970s, but by then things had already changed dramatically. There was a tourist invasion, with guests living in floating house boats or government guest houses or tourist bungalows, and people got about in motor launches rather than canoes.55 Much marsh land was being reclaimed for rice cultivation, and there were even then schemes to control the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates and so reduce further the size of the marshes, or even drain them completely. Since Young's time this process has continued; Saddam Hussein may have the political aim of ending the marsh sanctuary of his Shia political opponents, but in any case the marshes would be doomed regardless of who ruled in Baghdad.
Tourists have invaded other aquatic areas also, such as the backwaters of Kerala in southwest India. These lie behind a coastal sand spit, and again their inhabitants can be seen as moving beyond amphibious to aquatic. The area consists of narrow strips of land, with flooded rice paddies all around. The men fish: indeed when Frater was travelling along them in 1987 he was surprised to see heads sticking up out of the water. These were the bottom walkers, who trawl by hand, walking along the bottom of the shallow waters.56 The women work in the neighbouring paddy fields, and indeed many of the paddy fields are reclaimed to make islands. Some islands are substantial with stone levees or dykes, locally called bands. Others are less substantial, having only earthen bands which can collapse, especially during the monsoon. Transport and commerce, and getting to school, is by water, mostly in tiny dugouts.
A Dutchman in 1689 left us an enchanting picture of this society:
So pleasing that it is really worth seeing how nicely the embankment on all sides has been divided into small and some large village-plots by trees and houses, and how everywhere around these villages there are beautiful large and small islands, planted with grain, as far as the eye can gaze. Everything looks so pretty and green that every view pleases the heart and every time, through the beautiful tincture and perspective, the sight is equally enjoyable. And not least pleasing are the many small dikes, galley and other creeks, the cattle grazing here and there, fences of long reed around the houses and mats very finely braided. Many different kind of crafts from one