The two young men are paddling a quffa, the traditional circular boat in use on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia. Their long striped wrap-over robes, and headdresses with heavy rope-like bands holding the head-cloth in place, were worn at the turn of the century in southern Arabia, but are now obsolete. Haddon painted portraits and scenes of everyday life; he also illustrated books. He is known to have visited Spain and Italy in the 1880s and 1890s, and to have travelled in North and South America in the 1920s, but no trip to Mesopotamia is recorded. It is possible that this scene was based on a photograph.