Leon McCarron travels the length of the Tigris and highlights the threats facing this great river and the ‘birthplace of civilisation’
Review by by Jules Stewart
The River Tigris has formed the lifeblood of ancient Mesopotamia and modern Iraq, but geopolitics and climate change have left the birthplace of civilisation at risk of becoming uninhabitable. The river is of greater volume than the Euphrates, to which it is connected by ancient canals, and it furnishes much of the water used for irrigation in the land between the two rivers.
Three millennia ago, the Syrians decided that the source of the Tigris was deep in the great peaks and lakes beneath a mountain range called Korha. This area, now popularly known as the Cradle of Civilisation, is where Leon McCarron and his companions began their remarkable journey of more than 1,600 kilometres through the Turkish mountains, across northeast Syria and into the heart of Iraq.
McCarron reveals what humanity stands to lose with the threatened death of a great river and what can be done to try to save it. His journey along the Tigris was the first attempt at a full descent since Ottoman times. Occasionally harassed by militias, often helped by soldiers, the author rode his luck in areas still infested by ISIS and relied on the generosity of a network of strangers on his remarkable adventure, which eventually took him to the Persian Gulf.
Basra was the end of the line and a sobering sight for the team. As the author explains, everything that finds its way into the Tigris upstream – the industrial, agricultural, human and animal waste – eventually ends up in Basra. This is where he witnessed the true impact of the environmental damage inflicted on a human settlement in desperate need of salvation from what is, in no uncertain terms, poisoned water.
