Young Iraqis rock the boat

The millenia old culture of sailing has been revived, thanks to the efforts of a few enterprising individuals

Baghdad: With the orange sunset saturating the sky, a cluster of mostly teenage sailors, windsurfers and jet-skiers were making waves along the river Tigris. “It’s a difficult sport that requires a lot of effort, and plenty of patience and perseverance,” said 16-year-old Mariam Khaled, a former junior swimming champion.

“But I want to show everyone that we, Iraqi women, can succeed,” she added, after pulling her dinghy up the muddy bank.The water sports are also revolutionising how Iraqis interact with the historic Tigris and Euphrates, which gave the country its byname of the “land between the two rivers” millennia ago.

---

Along the waterfront, restaurants and small funfairs are teeming with families who gaze out at the young athletes.”It’s now a place of leisure and relaxation, It’s a joy to see Baghdadis gathering here nearly every day to watch the swimmers or the boats go by,” said Ghazi al-Shayaa, a sports journalist.

Ahmad Mazlum came up with a crazy idea: setting up Iraq’s first water sports federation.
Its riverside headquarters in Adhamiya is identifiable by the rows of white dinghies and bright windsurfing sails.

Half of the 10 dinghies are Iraqi-made, at around $600 each. “An (imported) sailboat can cost $10,000. So we had to build our own in a workshop we set up with the club members,” said Mazlum, the federation’s deputy head.

Around 100 mostly teenage members — eight of them girls — wear matching fluorescent athletics clothes, as bathing suits would likely contravene Iraq’s widely conservative norms.
Boys and girls train together under Anmar Salman, a regional rowing champion who recruited from fellow rowers and Iraqi swimmers to launch the sailing club.

The federation is proud to nurture a culture of sailing in Iraq, where navigating the Tigris and Euphrates has been done for several millennia — but usually on circular “quffa” rowboats.