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Arab belumchis, Jews, Persians, Armenians, Sikhs, Gurkhas, Pathans, and Ghats crowded the bank, voluble and picturesque. Dhobies thrashed clothes at the river edge. Bhisties drew water in kerosene tins. Convalescent Tommies in blue dungaree, fished stolidly wishing they were bound for India. The roofs of the square white buildings were filled with nurses taking tea.
It was, at times, necessary to use violence to belumchis, who insolently demanded absurd charges, and a certain padre gained respect by administering a severe thrashing to one of these rascals. When the Russians came down, one of them was obstructed for a moment by an Arab on the river bank. The Russian officer a big fellow picked him up and threw him into the river. The chickens were poor.
It was Sunday and at that time it was still the custom of the inhabitants of Basra to collect on the banks of the creek and hold a kind of social parade from which the suggestion of a slave market was not entirely absent. There was a continual procession of boats and painted belums, the native gondola, long and narrow, with curved ends, and either rowed or poled by two belumchis.
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