In dry Iraq, an artist wants to maintain the conventional gondola

Climate alternate and contemporary technology threaten the meshhouf. In Baghdad, on the waters of the Tigris, Rachad Salim is combating to maintain those boats which have been sailing “since the time of the Sumerians”.

Sailing at the Tigris in Baghdad, younger Iraqis lead traditional boats. In drought-stricken Iraq, the show is designed by way of an artist who desires to hold those marsh gondolas, whose lifestyle dates lower back to the Sumerians. We ought to saveextinction an important aspect of our civilization, which has existed for four or 5 millennia», argues Rachad Salim, 62-12 months-antique painter and sculptor, founding father of the NGO Safina Projects.

Because the Meshhouf, this elongated gondola, constructed of timber and geared up with a tapered end, has kept the “identical form because the time of the Sumerians», a prestigious Mesopotamian empire irrigated by using the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq. From 2018, Rachad Salim went in search of the modern day Meshhouf producers. He finds them in Huweir, a locality inside the south bordering the famous Iraqi marshes.

To rescue this boat from oblivion, which had been threatened for the reason that Eighties through the proliferation of motorized boats, he placed orders for Meshhouf, joined nautical clubs or founded teams to train young people how to function it. On a spring afternoon in Baghdad, a number of them in their twenties sail on 18 boats, on the event of a river display provided throughout a cultural pageant. Equipped with a paddle, with strokes from left to right, they struggle to stay the route.

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“Communicate” with nature

Among the individuals, some have best been rowing for a month, such as Omar Youssef, 21, who practiced solo windsurfing and crusing for five years. “These disciplines rely on the wind, you have to keep the stability together with your frame“, he explains. His new sport makes him paintings “shoulders and hands“. The Meshhouf is part of “the country’s history and historical past“, he underlines.

To date, seven golf equipment had been founded, in Baghdad, inside the principal province of Babylon and in southern Iraq, with funding from the United Kingdom and the Aliph Foundation, the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage inside the in conflict. The initiative allows younger peoplecommunicate with the environment“says Rachad Salim. In an Iraq hit by climate exchange and drought, he laments the kingdom “creepyof the rivers, in terms ofwater salinity or pollution».

Nephew of the famous sculptor and painter Jawad Salim, this artist born into an Iraqi-German family is obsessed on vernacular Iraqi artwork. In 2013, aboard conventional boats, he took element in a 1,2 hundred km excursion on the Tigris, from southern Turkey to the far south of Iraq, prepared via the NGO Nature Iraq. This become no longer his first journey. In 1977, he became the youngest group member of the Tigris, a huge reed ship of Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, which traveled 6,800 kilometers at the high seas in 143 days.

From southern Iraq to the Arabian Sea, Pakistan and subsequently Djibouti, the adventure aimed to prove that the historical civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley have been in contact through the seas.

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«Renaissance»

As for the Meshhouf, Rachad Salim wants to resuscitate the Guffa, a spherical boat much like a huge wicker basket, whose length can exceed  meters in diameter. But he might additionally like to locate financially possible answers to preserve his challenge and guarantee “jobs».

Four hundred kilometers further south, the 40-yr-old Zouheir Raisan remembers how, as a baby, he helped his father and his brothers to make Meshhoufs in Huweir, the scale of which varied among 5 and eleven meters. “It’s been 30 years seeing that we stopped“, he provides. But for four years, he has resumed this craft. In the color of a conventional reed shape, the mudhif, he saws forums and enables his cousin nail them to a Meshhouf.

But he did no longer surrender his task as a truck driving force due to the fact it's miles not possible for the moment to stay from his secondary activity. “Demand is not sufficient“, laments this father of 8 children. “I couldn't meet the fees of my household. Countries come looking for this heritage, to encourage its rebirth“, he remembers. “Why don’t we carry it again ourselves?»