What Happened to the Garden of Eden?

What was once the Garden of Eden is now Iraq’s Aquatic Desert.

Our narrow red canoe slips across the surface of the turbid water within a forest of spindly reeds. Longtime marsh resident Abou Haidar expertly navigates us past swimming buffalo, little more than their frothing noses visible above the surface, through the maze of channels. It’s difficult to place this land as a biblical paradise, but once it was. Fed by the mighty Euphrates and Tigris rivers, this was the Mesopotamian “Garden of Eden.” We swim, search for dwindling wildlife, and delve into the complicated and tumultuous history of Iraq’s marshes and the Arabs who live here.

The vast Iraqi Marshland is nestled into the Southeastern corner of the country, fed by rivers and bleeding into the Persian Gulf. Used by semi-nomadic peoples for millennia, and depending on your system of beliefs, the first place human life touched earthly soil.

This swampy, wet landscape is no longer a promised land or idyllic other-worldly haven but a unique phenomenon called an aquatic desert, and it’s well worth a visit.

A Waterlogged Marsh Atop an Iraqi Desert

Battered by a never-ending drought, the Mesopotamian Shrub Desert of Southern Iraq is not the romantic varietal of rolling sand dunes and windswept landscapes. It’s sunbaked to a crisp, cracked surface. Flat, desolate, painted in shades of pale yellow. A desert is any arid swath of land receiving less than 25 centimeters of precipitation yearly. The region surrounding the marshes, namely the towns of Chibayish and Nasiriyah, receives nearly none. But what exactly makes it aquatic? An “aquatic desert” drops a water feature directly atop this barren wasteland.

While they exist in various places worldwide, namely where the Atacama meets the Pacific Ocean and the Namib meets the Atlantic, this one feels different.

The faintly blue waters, cooked by the unyielding sun, give way to parched land around its edges—an unlikely desert lake of sorts. Much like the traditional deserts, wildlife is sparse, with scarcely more than a few birds sailing past us in the sky.

Sitting in the floodplains of two major rivers, this desert marshland was the lifeblood for the humans and wildlife that called this region home, in addition to being one of the most beautiful and verdant wetlands on the planet. While it’s a far cry from Eden today, it’s still a vitally important ecosystem hanging in a delicate balance.

Deeper Desertification

Littered with humanity’s most ancient, unearthed structures like the Ziggurat of Ur, this land is one of the country’s most biologically and historically important. Yet, year by year, the Garden of Eden shrinks into itself. The unstoppable desertification of the marshes is driven by climate change, a heating planet, and politics. In the ’90s, Saddam Hussein chose to drain and intentionally pollute the water in hopes of forcing residents, whom he viewed as threats to his regime, to flee their reed homes. More than 200 species of migratory birds, wild boar, fish, and an endemic smooth-coated otter have either gone extinct or been pushed to the brink of existence.

Today, the water is heavily polluted, thick with sludge, and has a mildly sulfurous odor. Yet, residents stay. For many, this land of intricate canals is the only home they have ever known.

And it’s at risk of a slow death by evaporation. More of the flat, cracked earth is revealed each year as the water dries in the unrelenting sunshine. While still two meters deep in many areas, the marshes are much shallower than you would expect while gazing into their depths. The good news is that the tide of public opinion is beginning to turn. Previously, a rare few cared about the marshes and their plight.

Freshly designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2016, the Marsh Arabs of Iraq are gaining new life via an unlikely source: tourism.

An Overnight Stay In the Garden of Eden

Iraq might not be at the very top of your travel list. But it should be. Alongside incredible historical destinations like Babylon, Hatra, and Samarra, there are dazzling Shia shrines in Karbala and Najaf, the foodie-favorite capital city of Baghdad, and varied landscapes worth road-tripping in the Iraqi-Kurdistan region. The most sought-after attraction, however, is an overnight stay in the Mesopotamian Marshes.

How often do you get to visit an aquatic desert, after all?

The Iraqi-owned and operated tour company, Bilweekend, connects travelers with longtime marsh residents and arranges an overnight visit to their reed homes. The man of the marshes himself, Abou Haidar, is always dressed to the nines in a stark white thawb with a blue checkered keffiyeh atop his head. He’s usually telling stories about his time drafted into the Iran/Iraq war and singing traditional Iraqi folk songs in Arabic. 

You’ll zoom through the narrow waterways on outboard-motor rigged canoes by day, exploring the nooks and crannies of this landscape with visions of Adam and Eve in mind. After a pink sunset, you’ll retire to his home, a nail-free structure called a mudhif. Reeds harvested at about 10 meters tall are bent to form a dome, as they have been for more than 5,000 years. Here, you’ll eat a home-cooked meal, sit around a fire fed by buffalo dung, and pepper one another with questions about your respective lives.

This is not a luxury stay by any means; it’s best for intrepid travelers bent on true cultural immersion. That’s not to say you won’t savor every second of this experience. Despite the pollution, we swam in the swamp and had a day filled with firsts, the way travel should be.

The Ma’dan, or Marsh Arabs, are a marginalized community in the modern era, as are most groups who maintain a more traditional way of life. The tourism boom puts them and the aquatic desert they rely on in the limelight, forcing the government and groups like UNESCO to take a stand and protect the land.

Without tourism encouraging the world to care about the marshes, they will likely disappear within the next generation, dried up in history.

Historical, Biological, Biblical, Cultural

Iraq’s aquatic desert checks all the boxes.

While I may not be religiously inclined (I prefer devoted skeptic) or a knowledgeable history buff, the unique culture of the region and a smidge of “last chance” or “doomsday tourism” played a part in my decision to visit.

Because without intervention, this unique geologic feature and essential wetland habitat could be gone.

Specifically devastating for the Basra reed warbler, Iraq babbler, African Darter, and Goliath Heron for all my twitchers out there. It’s not just birds and swampy water. It’s an immersive travel experience that helps you better understand a subculture of modern Iraq and impress all your friends with a one-of-a-kind adventure.

A wet desert is about as oxymoronic as it gets, yet its existence is as old as humanity itself. Thanks to local organizations like Bilweekend, which easily arrange private visits and overnight stays, you can visit Iraq’s aquatic desert and show the world the merits of cultural and environmental preservation.