architecture
BY SUZI STEFFEN
PHOTO COURTESY OF HASSAN JANALI, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
Marsh Arabs pilot a mashoof
In Paradise,
Dreams Are Free
B u t r e c o n s t r u c t i n g w e t l a n d s i n I ra q
isn’t so easy
D
espite an icy snowfall, about 90
people braved the weather Tuesday,
Jan. 29, to hear a civil engineer
describe his dream of a new Eden.
Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi who worked in
southern California for decades before the
fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, called
himself “a tree-hugger” who believes he
and other Iraqi returnees have to “jumpstart
the country.” His was the fourth lecture in
the UO Department of Architecture’s
Savage lecture series, “Cities in War,
Struggle and Peace” — and he was the
most animated of the lecturers, eliciting
gasps and winning laughs from the audi-
ence in Lawrence Hall.
Alwash grew up in Nasiriyah, near the
Mesopotamian marshes and the ancient city
of Ur — the famed Fertile Crescent where
organized agriculture first took root. He left
Iraq in 1978. After earning a Ph.D. from the
University of Southern California, he worked
as a soils and environmental consultant until
the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled Hussein.
Long before he returned, he and his
wife began a project called Eden Again to
restore the marshes. Alwash lit up as he
discussed the wetlands of his childhood,
saying, “I hope to make you fall in love
with this place.”
The marshes originally covered an area
about 8,000 sq. miles in the spring when
snowmelt pulsed down from the headwa-
ters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Reeds
grow thickly and tall in water up to 6 ft.
deep. “It’s not a desert but a waterworld in
southern Iraq,” he said. “When you are a
small boy in a boat in these marshes, the
reeds extend to the sky.”
The people living in the marshes are
often called Marsh Arabs, and those reeds
are vital to their way of life, Alwash said.
Though they have cultivated wheat, barley
and other crops in the rich land of the
floods, they have relied for other purposes
upon the reeds. The Marsh Arabs create
islands, build houses and make fuel from
the reeds, not to mention fishing among
the reeds and feeding the plants to their
water buffalo, which each give about four
gallons of milk per day. And the marshes
acted as a huge biofilter on the water’s
way to the Persian Gulf. “In the U.S., reeds
are treated as weeds,” he said, “but in the
marshes, they are the skeleton of life.”
But for two reasons — the Iran-Iraq War
of the ’80s and Saddam Hussein’s desire to
punish rebels who fled to the marshes fol-
lowing a failed uprising after the first Gulf
War — this ecosystem was destroyed.
Hussein’s plan, to build six massive canals
that would cut off water from the marshes
and end the annual flooding, worked. The
350,000 people living in the marshes were
forcibly dispersed, Alwash explained, with
almost a third becoming refugees in Jordan
and in the U.S.
When Alwash showed photos of the cen-
tral marshes before the canals and then after
the project, gasps arose from the audience:
What had been a lush wetlands like Fern
Ridge Reservoir looked suddenly like the
South Dakota Badlands. By 2000, a U.N.
document said, 90 percent of the marshlands
had disappeared, and by the U.S.-led inva-
sion in 2003, even less remained.
Some former marsh inhabitants, joined
by administrators from Nasiriyah, breached
dams in early April, 2003, to reflood part of
the marshes. Alwash spoke joyfully about
the continuing breaches of embankments
and dams. “People are restoring the area
because they can make a daily living with
fishing. They can earn $3-$5 a day,” he
said. “That’s nothing to you,” he added,
“but it can feed a family of 10.”
Now almost 60 percent of the marshes
have been reflooded, and Alwash, working
with Canadian, Italian and U.S. backing, is
making plans for new villages. The new
houses, though respecting traditional
designs that go back 5,500 years, would
solve some of the sewage problems present
arts
‘It’s not a desert
but a waterworld
in southern Iraq.
When you are a
small boy, the
reeds extend to
the sky.’
– A Z Z A M A LWA S H
with a higher concentration of people, he
said. There would also be opportunities for
agriculture and commerce. But with Turkey
damming the upper Tigris and Euphrates for
irrigation purposes and with a literacy rate
of only 10 percent among the people of the
marshes, there are a multitude of problems
to overcome. That includes high toxicity
rates in the water. “Kidney stones are a dime
a dozen in the marshes; gastrointestinal dis-
eases are common,” he said.
But, as he repeated, he’s a dreamer.
Besides rebuilding the marsh villages, he
said, “I want to give you the passion to visit
this place — hopefully when things will
settle down, not too far from now.”
ew
“History and the Future of Community in Post-Earthquake
Bhuj, India” is next up at 7:30 pm on Tuesday, Feb. 5, in
177 Lawrence. Go to architecture.uoregon.edu or call 346-
3656 for more information.
shorts
BY SUZI STEFFEN
Affordable Pretties
“Buy art,” my artist friends tell me. Good idea, but I have a student loan larger than my
salary, and the paintings I like require $20,000 to buy and a large modern house to show
them to best effect.
Then again, there’s the “ Illustrated Word: An Exhibit of Letterpress Broadsides”” show
at Maude Kerns Art Center. This one, juried by poet Kim Stafford, rare books librarian John
Carmin and local letterpress publisher Sandy Tilcock, features letterpress prints made by
artists from across the country. Prints will always be more affordable than huge oil paintings
thanks to labor and materials, but they can still be lovely or compelling.
Balancing art, text, ink color and paper color makes for a multitude of choices for the printers,
and the best prints work in an intricate equilibrium on stark backgrounds. Broadsides give Portland’s
Clare Carpenter a chance to create sly postmodern Pop Art prints like Johnny Drove or Bulldog
Betty ($50 unframed, $95 framed). In the skillful Dada prints by Brooklyn’s Kingsley Parker ($250
unframed, $280 framed), complicated letter-art-color interplay lends weight to subject matter.
Tilcock’s own prints often stand out thanks to her stunning color sense, focus on environ-
mental writing and preference for artists like Susan Lowdermilk. But the rest of the exhibit,
including the smart, moving Shift by Chicago’s Shawn Sheehy ($100 unframed; $300 framed),
has a lot to say — and show — as well. It’s gorgeous, and it’s affordable; some of this art can
definitely come home with me. “Illustrated Word” stays up through Friday, Feb. 8.
Memory House Extended By One Show
The Lord Leebrick’s Memory House (reviewed in the 1/17 EW, available online) will have
one extra performance, a matinee, at 2 pm on Sunday, Feb. 3. “Matinees have been selling out
quickly,” says Leebrick Artistic Director Craig Willis. The play, which revolves around a mother
and the daughter she adopted from Russia, also features a blueberry pie baked during the
course of the show. Get tix at www.lordleebrick.com or 465-1506.
CORRECTION: In last week’s review of the Very Little Theatre’s Awake and Sing!, we wrote
that tix are available on the website. They are available at 344-7751. Also, the two talkback
sessions occur on Thursday, Jan. 31, and Sunday, Feb. 3.
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JANUARY 31, 2008 25