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National Geographic : 1966 Dec
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National Geographic, December, 1966 Before the sun rose high enough to scorch the shadeless plain, we too left Ur to follow the Euphrates northwest to Haran, almost 600 miles away in the southern edge of Tur key. Genesis tells us nothing of the trip; it takes Terah and his clan from Ur to Haran in a single sentence. Still, men bound from Ur to Haran would probably follow the Euphrates. Traveling by donkey (the camel had not yet been domesticated) and driving flocks of sheep and goats, Terah and his followers could cover little more than twenty miles a day (painting, preceding pages). They would set off in spring, before the coming of the nine cloudless months that would strip every blade of grass from the land. The modern Euphrates road, rough and partially unpaved as it is, serves as the main highway through southern Iraq. More than a highway, it is an umbilical cord of communi cation from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, EKTACHROMESBY KENNETH MACLEISH(ABOVE) AND DEAN CONGER( N.G.S . where railroad, powerline, irrigation ditches, and auto tracks run side by side. The towns and villages of the region attach to this main artery like buds to a stem. The towns of Iraq reflect the past; the vil lages perpetuate it. Here in the delta, now as in antiquity, mud and date palms are the only building materials. The date groves that make Iraq the world's first-ranking date producer supply leaves for matting, frond stems for framework. Clay pits provide adobe. These materials dictate the form of a house such as Abram might have known: thick walled, almost windowless, opening into an enclosed court and roofed with mats laid over arches of frond stems. To complete the pic ture, tall water pots stand in ring frames be side each doorway, and domed ovens, fueled by brush and dried dung, smoke in the court yards. Add donkeys, dogs, frisking lambs, ca vorting children, and straight-backed women Timeless as the land, a young herder's sheep prod, with its knob of hardened pitch, resembles the mace of a Babylonian soldier. Desert dust rides the wind, clouding the air of Baghdad. Neon tubes spangle a min aret balcony, where a stork perches beside a loudspeaker; no longer does a muezzin climb the tower to sound the call to prayer. In the marketplace (left), coppersmiths raise a clatter with their mauls while ply ing a trade millenniums old. 748
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