The Tigris River is called Hiddekel by Iraqi Jews, ‘sharp, swift’ — the biblical name given to this river, branching with three others from the Garden of Eden. Speaking about the Hiddekel was one of the few things that brought a smile to my grandfather’s long, serious face. I am searching for what the river once gave: mayim chayim, living water, fresh and flowing.

So much has been birthed between the Tigris and Euphrates. The Assyrians accorded them with divine forces as they emerged from the primordial waters of Apsu; they form the borders of “the land between two rivers”, Aram Naharayim, the birthplace of civilization, the birthplace of Abraham and the belief in one God.

Jewish mysticism teaches, ‘with every single drop that comes out of Eden, a spirit of wisdom goes forth with it.’

There, letters, law, sailboats, and beer making came into being — along with the wheel, mathematics, irrigation, libraries, and the world’s first epic poem. By these Babylonian waters the exiled Judeans wept for Zion, in the 6th century BCE. There, Daniel the prophet envisioned an angel who told of the end of days. Jeremiah instructed the corvée Judean slaves to “Seek the peace of the city to which I have exiled you, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its peace you shall have peace.” There, my ancestors dug new channels and irrigation routes, planted date orchards, fields of flax and barley and founded Al Yahudu Judah Town in the Southern Nippur region. The rivers sustained the Babylonian Jews where my family comes from. 

Yet ecologists warn that Iraq may lose the Tigris and Euphrates as perennial rivers within our lifetime. In the North, Turkey’s massive Southeastern Anatolia project diverts both rivers through extensive damming, choking the flow to Syria and Iraq. In the East, Iran has rerouted tributaries that once fed the Tigris, further drying the basin. Climate change only accelerates the crisis; frequent droughts, extreme heat, and shrinking rainfall have turned Iraq’s once fertile plains to dust. The river’s water levels fall every year, whilst pollution rises unchecked. Agriculture fails, families flee war, and the river, once the source of human civilization, is slowly dying, drying.  

Once, the river bore so much life; by the waterfront of chattering Basra reed warblers, my grandparents shared masgouf many times, freshly caught carp as wide as stretched out hands, grilled on apricot wood by the river. Here 1800 kilometers away from its source, the Tigris meet with its twin the Euphrates, forming the Shatt Al-Arab flowing into the Persian Gulf. 

Along the Tigris’s silty banks, the river once spread into the mythic Mesopotamian marshlands, al-Ahwar, a shimmering labyrinth of vaulted reed houses, wading water buffalo and herons lifting into the sky. Nearby is Al-Uzair, where my grandmother grew up by Ezra’s Tomb, on the western bank of the Tigris. As the Tigris reached Baghdad, it began to run thinner, faster; the city stretches along both banks, bridges linking the two sides. Before 1951 the river cafes overflowed with Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Mandaeans — all men, all Iraqi — drinking qahwa, playing backgammon, listening to Salima Pasha’s songs ripple over the radio waves.  

On the eighth day of Passover, Jewish families would walk in their festive finery to the raised river to wash their faces and bless each other: “May it be His will that you rise and be elevated like the river.” This was the living water that filled mikvaot — Jewish ritual baths in Jewish Baghdad homes. The Hebrew word, mikveh, means a gathering of water, but it also means hope.

This is the river that cuts through Mosul, the site of ancient Nineveh, where Jonah the prophet is buried. A city of many quarters, including a Jewish one where my elderly neighbor Shulamit is from; she recalls the hamam, run by a Muslim woman, once warm and friendly, who grew cold after the State of Israel was established in 1948. The warm river water cooled; Jews were no longer welcome in Iraqi society.

As the river dries my ancestors’ bones mingle at the bottom with carp, broken clay tablets, a tossed aluminum Pepsi Cola can. It carries the dead — Jews in the Farhud of 1941, Assyrian Christians at Simele in 1933, Kurds, Yazidis, Shia Muslims, Mandaeans, and others who resisted Saddam Hussein and later on, ISIS. Each time the city was ‘cleansed’, bodies were thrown in the river. 

I think of this as I ask my friend in Baghdad, “How does the river look today?” He messages me a photo. It is brown, he tells me. “Like tea,” I try to comfort myself. But I know the truth. My grandfather’s cherished river is polluted with waste, dammed by  Turkey, its water level falling more and more each year. 84–90% of Iraq’s marshlands have been lost since the 1970s; Basra is in a state of public health emergency, poisoned with salt and sewage. The Basra reed warbler’s chatter is silenced, classified as Endangered. Leon McCarron laments in his book, Wounded Tigris, that the river may not reach the sea by 2040. McCarron asks, “What would it mean for humanity to lose one of the great rivers of civilization?”

In the 80’s one summer, I visited my grandparents in Kiryat Ono. Once a ma’abara refugee tent camp a few decades earlier, it was now built up, “developed”, and it was oven hot. We made popsicles from mitz petel cordial to stay cool. As an Australian child, I didn’t understand why we could not flush toilet paper, or fill the bath. Then, no water came from the tap; trucks arrived and my aunt handed me a pot. Water trucks filled the pots and jugs of clustering women and children. I filled mine too, careful not to spill a single drop. I wonder if my grandfather ever thought back to his ever flowing Tigris River, where the saqaa - water carrier - filled goatskins and  lugged them on a long-suffering donkey through Baghdad’s narrow alleyways of his childhood.

This was during the time of the Iran-Iraq war, before the Gulf War in 1991, when Saddam launched Scud missiles at Israel. My grandfather suffered a heart attack. He died a few years later, never truly recovering emotionally from his earlier expulsion. Truthfully even if he returned, could his heart have held the fact that the Tigris had changed color by then.

Today, I look outside my Jerusalem window to my garden, where I have planted a myrtle tree, a life-cycle symbol of blessing and renewal for Iraqi Jews. It is watered with drip irrigation. Thanks to desalination, water-sharing agreements with Jordan, and innovations such as drip irrigation, Israel has become a leader in water technology. I am not surprised to learn that Iraqi Jews like Sami Michael— famed author and trained hydrologist— have dedicated their lives to bringing water to life.

My friend in Baghdad tells me the Tigris River is very sad. He is also very sad; his wife just miscarried her pregnancy because of the lack of prenatal care in Iraq. “We don’t have a good health care system,” he writes. Another Iraqi friend tells me, “No one dares complain about the lack of fresh water in Basra. Activists are jailed.” 

How do you rehabilitate the Tigris River? How do you bring blessing back?

There is an Arabic saying: el-māy yerja‘ lil-sāqiya — the water flows back to its channel. People, too, always return to their origins; my grandfather spoke of the Tigris all his life. Now I dream of returning the river, to visit the Tigris and return the people of Iraq back to themselves. The origin story of the people of Iraq is one of diversity and shared humanity. McCarron writes that even in scarcity, Iraqis still opened their homes to him, shared what little they had. This reminds me of my grandparents’ home. It gives me hope.

What if peoples and nations gathered again around the Tigris? To return the river is to imagine new leadership, a new vision for Iraq: to restore the marshes, clean its waters of sewage, and share fairly what flows across borders. To return the people is to protect minorities, rebuild shrines and schools, and restore the memories of my grandfather— of Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, Yazidis, Kurds and Muslims living side by side under palms and Babylonian willows by clear, blessed water once more.

Mayim Chayim — living waters. Let us live together. We all come from the same source. •

Sarah is an Australian born, Iraqi Jewish writer, poet, and educator. She is the author of the award winning picture book, Shoham’s Bangle and This is Not a Cholent, as well as the award winning online poetry micro-chapbook, This is Why We Don’t Look Back (Harbor Review). She also co-authored The In-Between, a literary dialogue about identity and belonging (Verlagshaus Berlin). Currently Sarah is an Elson Israel Fellow at the Jewish Federation of Tulsa. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband and four boys.