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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Conquering the beast: A short story.


 

I am in prison, and I will most likely die here. I am a sailor by trade, a captain of sailors, actually.  I am now in my 58th year but long-retired through no fault of my own. I am an Egyptian and lived my life in Adabiya in Egypt, near the mouth of the Suez Canal.

I am a pilot, an expert in navigating the canal's unseen treacheries which are unknown to captains not familiar with the canal. The shipping lines hire the local pilots through the government to guide their cargo through the canal. 

I am, I admit, a complicated man, a man of few words which is off-putting to some. I have an advanced education, rare for my country, but I have also worked among the cannibals, so to speak.

Also, unlike so many of my countrymen, I professed to no religion for a large part of my life. I refused to submit to any higher power, a dangerous thing to do in my country, to be a Murtad as we call it, an apostate. But that has changed. I am now a man born again unto Allah who was there at the needed hour.

On my last mission through the canal, I was piloting a Chinese boat when the forestay, a thick iron cable that runs to the bow from the stern, snapped and whipped across the deck and decapitated two sailors, both Chinese nationals.

The fault belonged to the Chinese. The ship's rigging was old and worn but the Chinese government insisted it was Egypt’s fault and Egypt, the beast, who have long bowed to any wish of the Chinese and their money, agreed and blamed me for the tragedy.

I would no longer captain. I know no other trade but to Captain.  I found myself with no money, no way to live with dignity.  

One day, the Seafarers union contacted me and placed me in a room with a man from the government. He offered me a job. I was to guard a vessel,  a 330-foot-long MV Aman container ship. I had spent many a day as a young man aboard these types of crafts and I knew them well.  The vessel was manned by a solitary sailor, a ship's mate, a Syrian. 

I was told that the vessel, The Eliza, was owned by a mogul from Bahrain who owed the beast $2,100,500 in transport fees. When the fees were not paid, the ship was refused entry into the canal. It was not allowed to refuel. With no other option, its captain tied her to port and waited.  The mogul owned several multimillion-dollar ships so why he would abandon one over such a relatively small debt, I don’t know. No one knows.

It so happened, the union man told me, that the ship’s captain was running errands on shore, and the Syrian was working on repairs when an Egyptian court courier boarded with a letter declaring the boat would be held until its owner paid the fees.  The Syrian signed the letter designating himself as the legal guardian of the vessel.

It was the biggest mistake of his life.

The other crewmen, 25 in all, perhaps sensing the pending doom, had left the ship weeks before. When the Syrian tried to leave, a port official told him that, as the ship’s legal guardian, he was required to stay on board, and refused him entry into the country.

He survived on the food aboard ship until all that was left were a few pieces of dried bread. He radioed distress alerts but they went unanswered and then took a lifeboat to shore but the police were waiting for him and escorted him back to the ship. He pleaded with the beast to put him in jail, at least then he would have food and human contact, but the beast refused because he had done nothing wrong. He developed symptoms of scurvy and had lost three teeth. His mind raced constantly and to fall asleep, he took up to 12 painkillers a night. By then the boat was covered in insects and rodents.

A Syrian news reporter took a craft out to the boat and the Ships mate told him the story which was reported across the Arab world and embarrassed the beast. That was when I was hired as a security guard to watch over him with instructions to prevent him from leaving the boat, to feed him so he didn’t die, and to keep him out of sight and out of trouble until the situation was resolved.

I took the position. What else could I do? It was money, it was food, it was a living.

I took up residence on the boat but remained alone in my cabin, at first, which made him uneasy. I never learned his name. I knew very little of him except that he was a Syrian and like many Syrians, he made his living as a sailor aboard freighters and cargo ships. He was 29 years old, that much I learned.

He was reluctant to speak to me. He assumed, and rightfully so, that I was Keta El Amn Watani, the state secret police. Over the next week, I prepared his meals, he had no kitchen skills, and we ate together in silence. At the end of the second week, he looked up from our modest repast and asked, “How long have you been with the state security?”

“I am not with the state security”

“You carry yourself with assurance. You are more than just a ships guard”

I told him about my mistreatment at the hands of the beast and when I finished he looked me in the eyes and said “So it, the beast, your government, is a mask for some great force of evil? A figure of nature that hides, perhaps, the face of Allah? Or is it just a clever machine?

He smiled, slightly, as he spoke. But the smile mocked me, gently. I had wanted him to make my quenchless feud his own. We could bind our vengeance against the beast as one. But he was far from that. For him, I was a crazy old man. His only dream was to return home, perhaps to a wife and children. I had no such dream. I am alone in this world, and I was home, and I was at war with my home.

Realizing he had wounded me,  he reached across the table, grabbed my arm and said, “You have a grand quest then.”

The next morning I prepared his breakfast, and we took our coffee, and I smoked my cigarettes, a Fatwa for him, at the bow just as the sun rose. He left me to say his Fajr, the sunrise prayer.

“Join me, my brother,” he said before leaving.

I waved him off “My coffee will become cold” and stayed at the bow to drink more coffee and smoke more cigarettes.  

When his prayer was complete, and the morning sun showed itself brilliantly on the horizon. The air smelled clean. It would rain today, the sunset proved it, as any captain of sailors knows.  

“I believe we will have a heavenly intervention,” I said watching the horizon.

“Did Allah take mercy on you?” he asked half-jokingly.

I pointed to the approaching storm and said “If there was an Allah, he could send down a storm from the heavens that would cause the ship to run aground”

It took him a moment to comprehend what I meant and when he understood he stared up at the brooding skies and whispered “Praised be to Allah”  

“Go below,” I told him “start the engines. Then cast us off”  

I waited on the bow for the storm to arrive. It would come gently at first and soon afterward develop into a cyclone of dust and then a heavy, non-stop rain pushed by the winds.

The storm came in the way I said it would. The battering we were taking by the heavy winds pushed the 20,000 metal containers filled with machinery parts below deck to and fore.  When the full storm hit us with full force, the containers pushed themselves to our bow creating a sail of sorts.

I turned and faced the Syrian, smiled broadly, and said “Abandon ship, my friend. I wish you a long and peaceful life”

“Come with me,” he said.

I clasped his hand in mine and pointed for the shore. “Go now before its too late”

The high tide late that evening and the rising waters and a mighty turn at the helm by me helped to lift the boat and turn her sideways. The ship hit both edges of the canal when it turned,  and since the base of the canal is soft sand, the ship wedged herself there.

It would take dredgers eight weeks to remove tons of sand and silt from around the ship’s hull. It would take four more weeks for the tugboats and dredgers to dislodge her and four more weeks for the military and its special helicopters to remove the tens of thousands of containers on board to help lighten the load. But they removed the ship's load to quickly, which only served to unbalance the boat and further wedging her back into the sand. Meanwhile, a backlog of ships waited for the canal to reopen.  Oil prices around the world went up dramatically. Some ships gave up the wait and took a longer route to Europe, sailing around the entire African continent which, I am told by my captors, has led to reconsideration of the canal route by shipping companies.

In the excitement and confusion and anger over the ship blocking the canal for miles and miles, no one noticed the Syrian had disappeared. He had slowly climbed down a ladder, quietly slipped into the water, and swam ashore. Before he disappeared into the darkness, he stood on a sandbank and waved goodbye to me. And then he was gone.

The beast lost billions of dollars in trade, and someone had to be blamed. That’s always the way it is. Everywhere.  The beast launched a press conference that it would be investigating the incident. I was identified as the captain of the ship. I was blamed, tried, and jailed. I am not a young man, and I may be here for the rest of my life or perhaps until this embarrassment against the beast is forgotten. I don’t care. I’ve won. I have defeated the beast. Vengeance is mine.