Overnight at the Rasheed Hotel, Baghdad, 15 November 1999

The Tigris, from the time I arrived in the early morning of the first day, I never let go of my heart. I've been here for so many days, and it's time to pay a serious visit.

Night had fallen, there were not many lights on both banks, and the river was calm in the dark. There are no turbulence, no ripples, only gently flickering waves. The clutter of shore grass guards it, making it possible to ignore history and the hustle and bustle around it.

Ships were also not seen. The only thing people can claim from the river tonight is the fish. We walked into a fish restaurant with almost no decorations, but it was actually a shack on the river beach, so simple that it was not aged.

The fish is freshly caught, large, similar to the Chinese carp, which the locals say, called Tigris fish. There is a sink where two workers are skillfully dissecting. They didn't tie a sheet, and from time to time they wiped their watery hands on their clothes, rubbed them, and dried them again.

In the middle of the hut was a huge stone fire pit, circular, two feet above the ground. On the edge of half of the fire pond, there are black wooden sticks as thick as fingers, supporting many fish cut in half in a semicircle, the skin of which is facing outwards and horizontally, and from a distance it seems that they are still swimming in one direction. In the middle of the stone fire pond are a few thick apricot trees, which have been ignited, and the fire is very large, and I feel that my hands and faces are hot when I get a little closer. The apricot trees have no smoke, only the heat swaying. The fish that were stuck across the water were shrouded in heat and looked more like they were dancing in the waves.

After roasting for a while, the fish's front side turned from white to yellow, and from yellow to brown, so the workers took them down and put the side that had not been on fire flat in the embers of the fire pit. After a while, smoke came out and a fire was burning in the corners of the fish, and the worker quickly reached in with an iron fork, took the fish out, rested it on a square plate, and immediately walked to the customer's table. The corners of a few fish were still burning, so the workers used their black hands to extinguish the fires, or pluck off the burning corners, and after two or three movements, they walked to the table.

At the table sat all of Hessesen's bearded men, and a few wore white turbans or checkered turbans pressed by black rings, like Arafat. They stretched out their thick fingers and tore the hot fish directly and sent it to their mouths. The worker brought a plate of cut lemon and a plate of raw onions, and the diner squeezed a piece of lemon with his right hand to drip juice on the fish, and with his left hand scooped up a few slices of onion and chewed it in his mouth. Then, several hands reached out to the grilled fish at the same time, and soon the browned outer layer was eliminated, leaving only the middle layer of white flowery flesh. This discouraged the diners, so they took a short break, and there was a hookah rack at the table, burning pungent cigarette blocks, and the bearded men took a few puffs of their long pipes and fluttered on the ground.

The browned parts on both sides of the grilled fish are fragrant and crispy, and many diners save up a lot of time to eat a meal for this bite. Therefore, eating grilled fish is always climaxed in the front, and the rest of the thing is to eat with the fish, the rhythm of action begins to become slow, and the fish in the middle is good or bad, mainly depending on the fat content, the fat is high, it appears smooth, the fat is less, and it is easy to be dull, similar to the "firewood" that Beijingers say. However, the meat of the "chai" fish is easy to form lumps, and it is difficult to pick up the smooth and tender ones with their fingers, not to mention the thick fingers of the bearded people. This needs to be wrapped in dough, Iraq's dough is good, but in this kind of fish shed will not be spread out of the dough, the workers took out a large stack of thin dough from a broken plastic bag as big as a duffel bag, and spilled it all on the greasy mud floor, no one cared, picked it up one by one, and sent it directly to the table. The diner smiled, holding the pancake in his left hand, and scooping the fish with his right hand, he couldn't afford to catch the mush, frowned and fished slowly, fished a bag, sandwiched a few slices of onions, wrapped it, and entered his mouth. In today's Iraq, it's a top-notch meal.

I came out of my mind for a while in front of the stone fire pond, and then sat down at the table and ate a little. An old man next to me saw that I had eaten too little, thinking that I was afraid of being hot and couldn't do it, so he enthusiastically came over and fished out a ball of fish meat with his fingers and sent it to my plate. Outside the shed is the Tigris River, and I think everything tonight won't change much for thousands of years, right?

The Tigris River has flowed silently for thousands of years, and the most fundamental part of human ecology has not changed much. Diderot said that modern delicacy is not poetic, and the real poetry is in the unchanging primitive ecology, like the grilled fish on the river beach. I think of a book I used to read in a book, as if it were a book written by an Arab historian, as early as the sixth century A.D., Chinese merchant ships entered the two rivers from the Persian Gulf and anchored near the city of Babylon. Well, the Chinese merchants should have also eaten grilled fish in front of the stone fire pond on the river beach. After eating a few bites, I raised my head and meditated, leisurely comparing the cutting kung fu of the Jiangnan crab fat shrimp jumping season in my hometown.