Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 277
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[Page 277]
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completely flooded, as far as one could see, in all directions: it really looked as though the whole world was flooded, as it must have looked to Noah floating aimlessly about in his ark until it grounded on the lower slopes of Mount Ararat, a few hundred miles to the North. This flooding is caused every Spring by the rapid melting of the snow on Ararat at the source of the Tigris. Due to the flatness of the Iraqui region the the velocity of the river there is not great, and the Arabs living in reed huts on the banks, get ample warning to allow them to load their family and their donkey and other domestic animals into a big circular coracle known as a "gopher". It is made of bitumen-coated, plaited, withes, and is incapable of being steered, rowed or sailed: the occupants must just drift about for a few days, or more, until the flood subsides enough to permit of their poling the "gopher" back to the river bank again, where they construct a new reed hut and are settled for another year.
In the Book of Genesis Noah's Ark is described as being built of gopha wood; also, gopher is Hebrew for a nest, and the coracle looks just like a big nest. So, all things considered, I have little doubt that Noah was the first man in these parts to build a "gopher" instead of being swept away and drowned in the annual flood.
The first day out from Basra we thrashed up the wide deep confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Shat al Arab, which is navigable by big ocean-going ships as far as the point where it divides into the two rivers; a low flat area covered with date palms and said to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. On the third day we arrived at Amara late in the afternoon and spent a pleasant evening in the British Club there. Amara and Kut al Amara were the only two permanent settlements on the river between Basra and Baghdad: the legendary tomb of Ezra the Prophet is in a small, domed, glistening white building among the palm trees on the river bank near Amara. The next afternoon we began chugging up the stream again, and except for a sports meeting ashore two days later, and a day at Kut al Amara coaling, there were no long halts until we reached our