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.