NORTHWEST OF BAGHDAD

As I fly beyond the comfort of the air base, I encounter many unexpected sights.

One of the most surprising things I see when I fly over the Iraqi landscape is the amount of water in the form of rivers, lakes, and streams. Long before I came here I learned that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run through this desert, but I dismissed these historical waterways as small, possibly even dry riverbeds whose size was exaggerated through tall tales and old movies.

But here, at the end of the dry season, several rivers just as large as the one that splits Toledo in half meander through the desert. And like the Maumee River s western extremities, the shores of this river are sparsely populated, with the majority of the banks supporting just a few structures that look as if they are burned out or abandoned. From the air, these buildings appear to be fish camps, and the absurd notion of some man trying to make a living from fishing in the desert passes through my mind.

There are even fishing boats, which appear to be rough-hewn canoes with dark wooden gunwales.

These are thin, low-slung craft that the Iraqi fishermen stand in precariously as they lay out their rudimentary nets. They are boats large enough for only two people and a small amount of tackle.

I fly past one such craft at more than 150 miles an hour, and in a glance I notice that there are no outboard engines, coolers, or canopies aboard.

They do not appear to travel more than a stone s throw from shore, which means that the fish are either so abundant that one doesn t need to go very far, or that a lack of resources has tethered them to the shoreline.

The lakes and rivers here are a surprise, but my favorite water feature in Iraq is called a wadi, which apparently is Arabic for dry streambed.

A wadi is as close to a desert oasis as you will find here, a place where water hides just below the surface and feeds life from beneath. Find a wadi and you can grow a massive orchard of date palm trees or plant grass for your family s sheep, so everyone wants in on the real estate.

Date palms are the most majestic plants in the region, and though they regularly grow past 75 feet, they never seem to lose their perfectly manicured appearance.

Date palm fronds are more dense and orderly than the coconut and Arica palms we usually see, and they provide a sense of class in an otherwise

coarse biome.

In some places, the water table is so close to the surface that you can make your own water feature with the help of a front

end loader. I fly over waterholes that have been manmade, and these pools are generally square and surrounded by large berms formed from the excavated sand. Later, it is explained to me that just below the sand are a series of fl owing streams, and over time the Iraqis have dug these pools where the springs come closest to the surface. In sharp contrast to the muddy rivers and streams, the water in these pools is a shimmering emerald or sapphire blue.

Before coming here I could not imagine how people could live in a desert, but now I can see there is water here, and it is just a matter of fi nding it and

making sure it is clean.

Most of the rivers and lakes I see have the same dark brown color, and we know the water is far from fit for human consumption.

For this reason, I carry a very simple water filter shaped like a fat straw in my survival gear, another item I hope to never use.

Because of the water s dark color, it is hard for me to determine its depth, but as I fly over some lakes, they seem to have massive patches of seaweed that I am used to seeing in 4 to 8 feet of water. These patches allow the boaters to push their craft from place to place with long sticks, which strikes me as a sad semblance of Venetian life.

I know that this sort of algae is an indication that the water is polluted, which may account for the lack of fishermen and the absence of bathers.

My father told me that not long ago, Maumee Bay was so polluted that you could not see a water-ski that you were using, and the fishing fleet quickly declined in turn.

As I consider this, I recall my best memories of swimming off the Lake Erie coast one Fourth of July, diving off the hot deck of the sailboat, and hitting the cool, refreshing water. As I make a low pass over the shoreline of another Iraqi lake, I imagine people below me doing the same someday, and I have hope that this water might also be brought back to life.

First Published March 6, 2007, 5:06 p.m.