Book Review: The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger, 1959, 233pp

Wilfred Thesiger was an English traveller and explorer. He was born and spent the early part of his life in Ethiopia where his father was the Consul General. He would later go to Oxford and join the Explorer's Club. He served during WW2, after which he spent much of his free time in remote places in North Africa and western Asia. He seems to have craved quiet and lonely stretches, where he would integrate himself and get to know the locals. He was the quintessential traveller, and he wrote many books about these places.

His most famous book is Arabian Sands, which is quite a brilliant book about his time crossing the empty quarter of southern Arabia. The Marsh Arabs is his second most famous book, and covers his time in the marshes of Southern Iraq in the 1950's. At that time, the way of life in the region seems to have changed very little since the earliest recorded times - models and plaques have been found depicting Sumerian boats and reed houses that look very much like what Thesiger photographed, so I think we can rely on the idea that at  least some of what he reports of the culture has a long pedigree in the area. Others have pointed to the Bedouin as another possible place of cultural origin.

Ancient and Modern Marsh Houses

Thesiger spent seven or eight seasons with the Marsh Arabs, returning year after year. He loved the region and the way of life. Here's how he describes it early in the book:

"Memories of that first visit to the Marshes have never left me: firelight on a half-turned face, the crying of geese, duck flighting in to feed, a boy's voice singing somewhere in the dark, canoes moving in procession down a waterway, the setting sun seen crimson through the smoke of burning reedbeds, narrow waterways that wound still deeper into the marshes. A naked man in a canoe with a trident in his hand, reed houses built upon water, black, dripping buffaloes that looked as if they had calved from the swamp with the first dry land. Stars reflected in dark water, the croaking of frogs, canoes coming home at evening, peace and continuity, the stillness of a world that never knew an engine. Once again I experienced the longing to share this life, and to be more than a mere spectator.

This book, though short, is a loving portrait of the people and their way of life. It is well illustrated with photographs depicting people, boats, reed construction, wild pigs, and water buffaloes. Most interesting for me, as a student of ancient Iraqi history, was to see Thesiger record a way of life that has materially still the same as it was in the year 3000 BC, and likely even older than that.

More surprising was Thesiger's thoughtful observation of sexual mores and genders in this region, because in this I think there's something here for everyone to learn. The Marsh Arabs recognized transgenderism within their communities, and had no trouble acknowledging that some women were born with male bodies, and that some men were born with female bodies - and that seems to have been all there was to it.

  Silver boat from archaic Ur

Overall, as a travelogue, The Marsh Arabs is not quite as good as Arabian Sands, and it ends rather abruptly, wanting, I think, a little more reflection from Thesiger after his journeys end. But just like Arabian Sands, it's wonderfully written and evokes a place that few people knew, and will never be able to know again. Thesiger was lucky, in a sense, to travel to these places before the modern age caught up with them. Between the two Gulf Wars (1991-2003) the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were diverted from the marshes by Saddam Hussein, and the Marsh Arabs were displaced. Since 2003 this has been reversed somewhat, and the ecology of the region seems to be recovering, but it will be a long and uncertain road.

Link: National Geographic: Marsh Arab Update

Photograph by Thesiger