Taking Mesopotamia E-Book

Jenny Lewis

• Herausgeber: Oxford Poets
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Taking Mesopotamia was originally inspired by Jenny Lewis's search for her lost father - the young South Wales Borderer who fought in the ill-fated Mesopotamian campaign of World War I. Through reconstructed diary extracts, witness statements, formal poems and free verse, the book extends into a wider exploration of the recent Iraq wars. It also includes translations of a number of the poems into Arabic, and photographs taken by Lewis's father on campaign in 1916. Woven throughout the book is a strand inspired by The Epic of Gilgamesh, whose themes of hubris, abuse of power and fear of death show us how little the world has changed in four thousand years.

Leseprobe

Jenny Lewis

Taking Mesopotamia

For Gillian, Tom and Ed, with love

Contents

Title PageDedicationPrefaceAcknowledgementsEpigraphSwimmerMineBlaenclydachMarch 1916March 2003Hints for the new recruit 1Hints for the new recruit 2How Enlil, god of air, sent the Flood to get rid of humansHospital barge on the TigrisApril 1916April 2010BaptismHow the one wise man, Uta-napishtim, survived the FloodAnti-tank weaponsThe call-upMay 1916May 2010LunetteThe fall of Kut 1916June 1916June 2010Witness statement 1Gilgamesh dreams of Enkidu in the wildernessJuly 1916July 2009Non-military statementsGilgamesh and Enkidu seek fame by killing the giant HumbabaAugust 1916August 2006FatherSong for Inanna/IshtarSeptember 1916September 2010Witness statement 2Notes from exilei. Cucumbersii. Umm-Ulrabiainiii. OccupationOctober 1916October 2009MotherThe gods punish Gilgamesh with Enkidu’s deathThe Regimental Collect of the Royal Regiment of WalesGilgamesh seeks the wise man Uta-napishtimNovember 1916November 2009YSiduri the tavern keeper advises GilgameshDecember 1916December 2006The Welsh HorseHints for the new recruit 3Hints for the new recruit 4January 1917January 2009Wound shockThe wise man Uta-napishtim advises GilgameshLearning to love my high heel legNo other heaven pleased meNow as thenEpiloguePlatesAbout the AuthorAlso by Jenny Lewis from Carcanet/OxfordPoetsCopyright

Arabic translations

Swimmer

translated by Gassan Namiq and Dr Salah Niazi

Mine

translated by Gassan Namiq and Adnan al-Sayegh

August 1916

translated by Dr Bahaa Megid and Adnan al-Sayegh

August 2006

translated by Dr Bahaa Megid and Adnan al-Sayegh

Father

translated by Ahmed al-Hamdi and Adnan al-Sayegh

Song for Inanna/Ishtar

translated by Taj Kandoura and Adnan al-Sayegh

Notes from exile

translated by Gassan Namiq and Adnan al-Sayegh

Mother

translated by Marga Burgui-Artajo and Adnan al-Sayegh

The gods punish Gilgamesh with Enkidu’s death

translated by Gassan Namiq and Adnan al-Sayegh

No other heaven pleased me

translated by Gassan Namiq and Adnan al-Sayegh

Now as then

translated by Taj Kandoura and Adnan al-Sayegh

Second Lieutenant T.C. Lewis

Preface

I

This book started with research into my father’s part in the Mesopotamian campaign of World War I as a Second Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion, the South Wales Borderers (SWB), now the Royal Regiment of Wales. He was born in Blaenclydach and qualified as an analytical chemist aged 16, having served a year’s apprenticeship with the Trehafod Colliery Laboratory. After his SWB commission (recommended by the Military Education Committee of the University College of South Wales) he was sent with his regiment to Mesopotamia (Iraq) in May 1916. While there he took over sixty photographs with a Box Brownie camera, some of which are published for the first time in this book. He was wounded at Kut-al-Amara on 11 January 1917 in bright moonlight, while on a covering party, and was invalided to Deolali, India. He remained in India for eighteen months, part of the time recuperating in the palace of the Maharajah of Jaipur. He later trained as a doctor (the first person in his family to go to university). Much later in his life he met my mother and they had two children, my sister Gillian and myself. He died of a coronary thrombosis when I was a few months old and I have been searching for him ever since.

The parallels I have been able to draw with recent wars in Iraq through monitoring news coverage and interviewing British, American and Iraqi soldiers, poets and commentators have provided me with valuable insights. Throughout the process I have been mindful of the fact that, in another era, the young men killed and wounded could have included my own two sons, Tom and Edward. I have tried to give the diary poems a loose narrative structure not always consonant with actual dates and times, although most of the content is based on fact.

II

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was set up in 1909 after oil fields had been discovered in Iraq, then known as Mesopotamia, meaning the land ‘between two rivers’ – the Tigris and Euphrates. Two years later, Winston Churchill, then First Sea Lord, bought a controlling stake in the company for Britain for £2.2 million.

The day after war was declared in 1914 a force of British and Indian troops landed in Southern Iraq to protect the pipeline that ran from Shushtar (Iran) to the refinery at Abadan on the Shatt-al-Arab river. The Indian Expeditionary Force D was the largest Indian Army force to serve abroad in World War I.

So began one of the most ill-fated, under-funded campaigns in British military history, and another chapter in the story of the great civilisations of the Ancient Near East, which were the first to divide the hour into 60 minutes and the circle into 360 degrees, the first to develop agriculture and the first to develop writing (originally pictograms, then cuneiform).