I'm going to be able to be

And one story that always kind of captures my imagination.

The street's lost culture.

And you're listening to Kearning Cultures.

I'm Dana Balutz and this is Karnan Cultures.

Today is a slightly different episode.

It's a shorter one and it's about one man's love for a really special place in the world,

a place that was once known as the cradle of civilization.

The word Iraq means to me the marshes.

It's impossible to describe the marshes and words. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

So I'll try to paint a picture for you.

Imagine you're in a hot desert and all of a sudden you see in the horizon this green, wall of green,

that if you kind of step up, you can see the green extending all the way to the end of the horizon.

Azam al-Wash grew up in Iraq in the 1960s. His dad was an irrigation engineer, and it was kind of an

ordinary job, except for the fact that he worked in a pretty extraordinary place.

Imagine yourself than riding a boat.

Surrounded by reach that extend into the sky, water underneath you, so clear that you can see the fish.

And every now and then, the boat goes out into a wide lake, and your movement disturbs birds, and the birds in the thousands or tens of thousands will fly into the sky making the sky black from their density.

The air comes into your face drying it and cooling you.

And you will reach the center of the of the marshes the

Baghdadiye lake and there I could leave you for four hours just enjoying the the sound of the

wind going through the reeds the noise of the wings of the ducks as they go up in the air,

...