Voyage en Irak, 2007–2010
Return to the marshes
If the garden of Eden existed anywhere, it was to be found between the Tigris and the Euphrates. And it is between these rivers that the beautiful and extraordinary world of the marsh Arabs of Iraq lies.
Twenty years ago, Gavin Young was introduced to the marshes by one of the legendary travellers of the twentieth century, Wilfred Thesiger. With Thesiger he came to accept waterways instead of roads, canoes instead of cars, waving rushes instead of grass and trees, and houses built from reeds. His companions were descended from the ancient Sumerians and were surrounded not by machines but by water buffaloes, wild boar, otters, pelicans and great flocks of wildfowl.
When Gavin Young left the marshes in 1956 he was not only in love with this new world but thought that he might never see it again. However, two years ago, chance took him back there and he found, to his great joy, that he was remembered — and that the changes in the marshes, unlike those in the rest of the world, had been changes for the better.
He took with him Nik Wheeler, whose exquisite photographs have recorded every aspect of life in the marshes and have captured, in an extraordinary way, the vitality and the quality of its people and their unique heritage.
Gavin Young has woven his personal experiences and the eventful history of the marsh people, dating back to before the days of Noah's flood, into an absorbing narrative.