Parts of the drought-affected Hawizeh Marshes in south-eastern Iraq have come back to life after winter rain replenished water levels.
A downpour in March, followed by several spells in April, brought 70mm of rain, flooding parts of the marshes known for their wildlife and water buffalo population, and sometimes linked to the biblical Garden of Eden.
Wooden boats can now glide across the pristine waters, reviving the hope that animal life could return, at least temporarily. From the air, the landscape looks like a sheet of hammered silver, broken only by islands of reeds and the thin, dark lines of mashoof boats.
The main water source for the marshes is rain and inflows from the Euphrates and Tigris. But dams built in Turkey and Syria block the influx from both rivers to southern Iraq. Climate change has also reduced rainfall, with annual droughts in parts of Iraq.
In Iran, dams on the Karkheh River have also reduced a key supply feeding the Hawizeh Marshes, part of which lie in Iranian territory.
For Hashim Mahdi Lazim, 36, the return of the water means a home reclaimed.
Over the past years, when the marshes around his home in the Abu Khasaf area dried to dust, Mr Lazim was forced to move his nine-member family to the small town of Kahlaa in Maysan province.
“They were tough and cruel years,” he told The National. “All the families suffered. We lost our life, which is based on water.”
Now, the family is back – buying buffalo, fishing and rebuilding. “All the people are happy here. The buffalo, the fish, the reeds and the birds are back, as are the tourists,” he said.
Nothing is guaranteed. The marshes have been declared dead before, only to revive when winter rains and water releases from dams upstream coincide. Extreme summer temperatures, often exceeding 50°C, accelerate evaporation and cause the wetlands to dry out entirely.
The Iraqi government has described the latest floods as a “relative revival” for the land, with enough water to keep the marshes wet until after the summer season.
Around “85 per cent of the Hawizeh wetlands are now submerged after recent rains, although water levels remain shallow”, environmental activist Ahmed Saleh Neema told AFP.
More rain is needed to maintain continuous inundation of the marshes, where visitors and residents travel by wooden boats and observe a way of life dating back more than 5,000 years.
Although authorities have assured residents that sufficient water will continue to flow and that measures will be taken to keep the marshes inundated for as long as possible, Mr Lazim's family has not given up their home in town. They fear the area could dry up again in a few weeks, as has happened every year.
But for now, the horizons for its inhabitants are wide and blue once again. "We know it can go,” Mr Lazim said. “But today, we live. Today the marsh remembers us, and we remember how to live in it."
