Marsh Arabs

The marshlands further south, where her family also travels, offer a different but related lesson.

The reed houses of the Marsh Arabs, arched and woven structures that seem to grow directly out of the landscape they inhabit, curved rather than rectilinear, organic in a way that no European architecture manual of the period would think to describe as sophisticated, and yet unmistakably, undeniably brilliant in their engineering, their responsiveness to site, their refusal of the straight line in favor of forms the wetland itself seems to suggest.

These are not lessons anyone sits Zaha down and explains to her in words.

Nobody in the family says, "This is architecture.

I know three, uh, parts of the marshes.

The biggest one is the Hawizeh Marshes, and it became a very important refuge for birds and other wild species, as well as, uh, herders and other Marsh Arabs.

The story of the marshes is intertwined with some of Iraq's darkest chapters in history.

Under Saddam, large parts of the marshes were drained in the '80s and '90s to punish and control the Marsh Arabs, coupled with brutal repression of the Marsh Arab population and Iraq's southern population in general.

After Saddam, the marshes became habitable again, and many of the Marsh Arabs returned.

But today they face an existential threat, one that's already leaving a trail of visible devastation.

It's a really major crisis for Iraq, and the material impact is massive.

And there are three parts of the marshes.

The biggest one is the Hawiza marshes, and it became a very important refuge for birds and other wild species, as well as herders and other marsh Arabs.

The story of the marshes is intertwined with some of Iraq's darkest chapters in history.

Under Saddam, large parts of the marshes were drained in the 80s and 90s to punish and control the Marsh Arabs, coupled with brutal repression of the Marsh Arab population and Iraq's southern population in general.

After Saddam, the marshes became habitable again, and many of the marsh Arabs returned.

But today, they face an existential threat, one that's already leaving a trail of visible devastation.

It's a really major crisis for Iraq, and the material impact is massive.