The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey

by Diane Stuemer

  Mohammed was certainly a good representative of the type of professional pilot we had expected to meet, based on the experiences of other yacht captains in the Suez Canal. He was friendly, eager and acquisitive, and we found his behaviour on our boat to be utterly dependable in this regard. Certainly he conducted himself in a manner befitting so many of the other Egyptians we have had the privilege of meeting during our weeks in this lovely country. We are grateful for such an appropriate send-off and look forward with trepidation to a repeat visit in future.

  And with that, we left Egypt behind and steamed out into the waiting Mediterranean Sea.

  24

  Culture Shock in Reverse

  The sea was calm as we motored on an overnight hop to Israel, 120 miles away. Because of the delicate political situation between Israel and its surrounding, mostly hostile, neighbours, we hadn’t told anybody in Egypt that we were going there; we had said instead that we were heading for Cyprus.

  Even the kids had been told not to mention anything about Israel, for fear that we might stir up bad feelings or an unpleasant confrontation with Arabs, who, clearly, blamed Israel for the recent upsurge in violence. Many times we had heard Egyptians refer to “those Israelis who are killing our children.” From the Arab point of view, there was only one way of looking at this conflict. It was an issue we wanted to stay as far away from as possible. As we were leaving Port Said and out of earshot of anybody in Egypt, however, Michael – who just couldn’t hold the secret in any longer – stood at our stern, raised his clenched fists in the air, and shouted defiantly, “We’re going to Israel!”

  About twenty-five miles away from the Israeli coast, we heard a call on the radio. It said, “Would any ship or yacht in the position 31 degrees 32 minutes north, and 34 degrees, 12 minutes east, please call Israeli Navy.” I checked our GPS and discovered they were talking about us. They had picked us up on their powerful radar and wanted to know who we were.

  About ten minutes later, I detected a white plume on the horizon. Soon the big rolling bow wave revealed itself to be a naval gunboat, heading for us at tremendous speed. The boat circled and came within twenty metres of us, its two big deck-mounted machine guns trained directly on us by soldiers in black baseball caps and flak jackets. We came under the scrutiny of large binoculars. I resisted the urge to grin and wave.

  After about five minutes, the men at the machine guns relaxed and turned their guns away. Then one of the soldiers gave us a little wave. On the radio, we heard the men on the gunboat address us for the first time.

  “Thank you very much, Northern Magic,” a voice said. “Welcome to Israel.”

  Once safely at the dock, having been escorted in for the last few miles by a police speedboat, we were boarded by a beautiful young security officer who looked all of twenty years old. She subjected us to a barrage of polite but pointed questions. Her main concern was whether we had met any local people in any of the Muslim countries we had visited, even as far back as Malaysia, and whether any of them had come on board. Of course, we had spent most of the previous eighteen months in Muslim countries. She questioned us carefully and noted the names of all the friends we had made in these places, especially those who had given us gifts. Obviously, she was screening us in case we were inadvertent carriers of a bomb. She nodded when we told her we hadn’t told anyone we were coming to Israel. “That was wise,” she said.

  After she was finished, three police officers came on board and insisted that we watch as they made a search of the boat. Everyone seemed almost apologetic that we had to be subjected to all this searching and questioning, but with shootings and bombings a daily occurrence, we weren’t upset in the least. I think Michael was probably wishing, in fact, that our interrogation by the lovely security officer had lasted even longer.

  At noon the next day, we were expecting a visitor, a friend of my father’s who had business in Israel. Dad had been pressing rather hard to see whether we would be arriving in time to meet his friend in person, and Herbert and I had wondered whether the deliverer of this package might in fact be Dad himself. But we didn’t say a thing to the kids, lest we get their hopes up for nothing.

  At ten minutes to noon on January 8, Jonathan came to me and said, “Hey, Mom, do you think the man coming to see us might really be Gramps?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so,” I said, not quite believing my own words.

  But Jon began keeping an extra good lookout on the dock, and exactly ten minutes later triumphantly shouted, “I was right! It’s Gramps!”

  At first I thought he was kidding. But it was true, and in a flash Jon had jumped off the boat and was running down the dock. He launched himself bodily at his grandfather, whose slim, athletic frame absorbed the shock of that joyful greeting quite well.

  Michael was hot on Jon’s tail, and he, too, leapt into the air, wrapping his long legs around my dad’s body. Michael was now a good inch taller than me, but Dad didn’t flinch.

  Christopher was next, but his soon-to-be-nine-year-old body, even flying through the air, was no problem.

  Now it was my turn. Yep, I did it too. Dad gamely withstood even this onslaught.

  Next it was … oh no … Herbert’s turn. Would he really? No … he wouldn’t, would he? But, yes, he did. You’ll just have to use your imagination to picture two hundred pounds of captain hurtling himself down the dock and jumping onto my poor father. That’s the last time he would pull a surprise visit on us. Dad did stagger a bit, but, to his credit, even this didn’t take him down. He didn’t rupture even a single internal organ.

  Soon, we were all on our way to have lunch, my dad flanked by grandsons, who skipped and jumped, jostled for position, and chattered non-stop with their beloved Gramps. This trip had really brought us so much closer to Dad, who had been an unceasing source of support.

  Dad had rented a car, and the next day, Christopher’s birthday, we drove to Jerusalem. We had a wonderful guided tour of the city and returned to the boat just in time to eat Christopher’s favourite meal and a birthday cake. Then Gramps rolled out his suitcase. Not only were there presents for Christopher, there were special things for the rest of us as well.

  On the dock that night, we hugged hard and shed tears in the darkness as we said goodbye to my father. It was an emotional farewell. We had the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to cross before we would see him again.

  As we continued our sightseeing in Israel – two more visits to Jerusalem, floating in the Dead Sea, and climbing up to the mountaintop fort of Masada – evidence of the escalating conflict between Palestinians and Israelis was all around us. Khaki-clad, rifle-toting soldiers were everywhere. Every time we entered any public place, like a shopping mall or a grocery store, we were asked to submit our bags to armed security guards for inspection. Even to approach the Western Wall, an outer wall of Temple Mount where Jews have prayed for centuries, we had to be searched and pass through a metal detector. On our earlier trip to Jerusalem, when we had driven through Arab neighbourhoods, our guide had ostentatiously placed an Arab headdress on the dashboard and Muslim prayer beads dangling from the rear-view mirror, to deter any fanatics from vandalizing our Israeli rental car, or worse.

  In the skies, the evidence of a high state of alert was even more obvious. Our marina was close to the Gaza Strip, an area controlled by Palestinians that served as the headquarters for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and many of those carrying out the intifada, the uprising against Israel. While we were there, the Israeli army had closed the Gaza Strip, penning in the Palestinians as a security measure. Israeli warplanes zoomed past every hour or so. When there were shootings or demonstrations by Palestinians, this Israeli show of force was increased, and for days many low-flying helicopters raced by on their way to fly over Yassar Arafat’s headquarters just twenty-five kilometres away. Huge missiles hung ominously from the belly of gunships that flew so low over the marina we were deafened by the noise and wondered whether they would scrape the
top of our mast.

  In the newspaper, there was a daily list of the various snipings and shootings. The list was not short. One time, a street was blockaded, and we watched as a bomb-squad robot investigated a duffle bag that had been left unattended by a bus stop. It was a small yellow robot on wheels, mounted with video cameras, controlled from a police van fifty metres away. Luckily, the duffle bag contained nothing more hazardous than a pair of old cowboy boots.

  Although signs of danger were all around us, we quickly got used to them and began automatically offering up our backpacks for inspection half a dozen times a day without needing to be asked. After a while, we hardly noticed the soldiers. Once, there was a whole busload of them, guns slung casually over their shoulders, waiting in line with us at McDonald’s.

  We found Israel congenial, but time was flying by, and so, reluctantly, on a fine clear day, we left this fascinating, troubled land behind. We were once again picked up on long-range radar by the Israeli navy, who, as we were passing Tel Aviv in darkness, suddenly seemed to notice us and required us to spend fifteen minutes on the radio explaining exactly who we were and giving our departure time from Ashkelon, right down to the minute. But this time they didn’t bother sending any gunboats to check us out.

  We were on our way to Cyprus, a country we knew practically nothing about. I had some distant memories of a Canadian United Nations peacekeeping force being stationed there, but until we arrived, we had no idea that this was still very much a divided country, with Greek Cypriots controlling the south of the island, and Turkish Cypriots the north. In between, there was a UN-patrolled buffer zone keeping the two sides apart.

  We anchored at Larnaca, in southern Cyprus, the part controlled by Greeks. It was a beautiful little town, very European and full of chic boutiques. More importantly, it had a real supermarket! I have to confess, I made a fool of myself there, raving over products we hadn’t seen for a very long time. In particular, I got all worked up over pork, having been hoarding our last precious scraps of Kenya bacon through a long succession of Muslim countries and then through Israel.

  “Oh, look! Ham!” I said, triumphantly, hoisting up a great pink haunch like Wayne Gretzky holding the Stanley Cup. “I can’t believe it! And look – pork chops! And nacho chips! Ooh, Shreddies! And Gummi Bears! Fresh milk! And … and … and …!” Eventually, to save himself further embarrassment, Herbert left my side to prowl the aisles on his own.

  We took a trip to Nicosia, and explored both sides of that strange city, the last divided capital in the world. We also had a chance to catch our breath and recover from a year of travel in difficult places. Ever since leaving Kenya, we had been travelling hard, often accompanied by a sense of danger. We were beginning to recognize how much all this, especially our six frustrating weeks fighting for our package in Egypt, had affected us. We realized we had stopped laughing as much as we used to, that we were not as friendly to strangers. We had a new, hard edge. Now we consciously began trying to shed those defences.

  In most of the countries we had visited over the previous three years, we had looked and felt sophisticated compared to the local people, many of whom regarded us with a certain awe. But in Cyprus we were no longer extraordinary. Herbert, wearing the battered old Greek captain’s hat he had worn everywhere around the world, looked so much like a local that people often tried to strike up conversations with him in Greek. The same didn’t happen to me. With my lack of make-up and coiffure, my unfashionable shoes and pants, I looked nothing like the elegant painted Greek women around me. I had no body-conscious clothing, no henna highlights in my hair, no high-heeled shoes, no lipstick carefully outlined with just the right shade of lip liner. People addressed me in English.

  I stood, gazing in amazement at dainty crocodile-skin handbags, as foreign to me as if they were artifacts from another planet. I had only my well-worn backpack, slung over my shoulders as always, stitched and re-stitched half a dozen times by shoemakers in dusty African towns. How many hundreds of kilos of potatoes had it carried? But in Indonesia, in Thailand, in Kenya, in the Sudan, we had been rich. The fact that in Europe we were no longer important and prosperous, but instead anonymous and slightly shabby, hit us surprisingly hard. Now, suddenly, we felt like poor cousins. Those fancy handbags and silk suits had no more place in our lives than they did for a Bedouin camel driver. They were vaguely troubling, these status symbols of modern life. They reminded us of who we used to be. They looked enticing, but like the song of the Sirens that tempted Odysseus in this very sea, they were more than simply beguiling. Their faint but persistent call was a warning about what was waiting for us ahead, the financial and material pressures we would soon be facing once again. We couldn’t help but wonder how we would re-adapt to a life in which we would be thinking of taxes and business suits and meetings rather than whether we’d be able to find fresh pineapples for our breakfast or whether the clouds looked good for an early-morning departure. Or whether that one particular twinkling light amidst a myriad of others in the brilliantly spangled night sky was a planet, a star, or the ka of a long dead Pharaoh.

  Now that we were back in the Western world after being away so long, we couldn’t ignore the fact that our trip would soon come to an end, that more big changes would soon be facing us. We began to get the feeling that maybe we were no longer the same people who had set out on this adventure almost four years before. Would we do better, we wondered, once back at home, at keeping a balance in our lives, at being generous, at remembering the things we had learned, at living our lives with passion?

  Eventually our weather window appeared, the fluffy white cumulus clouds beckoned us to leave, and we were ready to sail onwards. We had to hurry in order to reach a safe harbour in mainland Turkey before the next winter depression swooped down. And so, on a fine sunny day, we left our explorations, our musings, and the baubles and finery of those lovely, troubling shops behind, we closed our ears to the call of the Sirens, and once again turned our bow west.

  Dawn found us sailing past the western tip of Cyprus. Clearly visible behind the last of Cyprus’s low green hills, the tall mountains of Turkey were already looming up over the horizon, only about eighty miles away. As we motored through the day, Cyprus disappeared from view and the mountains grew taller and more breathtaking with each passing hour. When Herbert woke me up for my early-morning watch after our second night at sea, he whispered, “Take a look outside. You can see snow!”

  I could scarcely believe my ears. Snow? But off our port bow, there it was, a solid cap of snow on the highest mountain peaks. Half an hour later, when Jonathan woke up, he poked his head out of the cockpit and yelled, “Snow ho!” It had been nearly four years.

  We arrived at a town named Kaş, an astonishingly beautiful place, with picturesque multi-storey houses cascading down the steep sides of a green valley. With the shining white buildings, the gleaming wooden fishing boats, the lone, pencil-shaped minaret, and the deep green forest, we had found ourselves a perfect little paradise. But we had no more than two days to explore lovely Kaş and its well-preserved ancient Greek amphitheatre. We had to move on, or be stuck there in bad weather.

  We left in late morning, sailing behind the shelter of the Greek island of Nisos Kastellorizon, which was just three miles offshore from mainland Turkey. The island protected us beautifully from the waves of the open sea, allowing us to scoot along in perfectly flat seas at almost seven knots.

  “When people think about cruising in the Mediterranean,” I commented as we sailed exhilaratingly quickly, with Kastellorizon just fifty metres away on one side and the mountains of Turkey towering on the other, “this is what they’re imagining.”

  “That’s right,” said Herbert, “and if sailing around the world were always like this, everybody would be doing it!”

  We approached the island of Rhodes after nightfall. It felt as if we were back in the Singapore Strait or the Gulf of Suez, for we began encountering an immense amount of shipping traffic, all of it appa
rently heading directly for us. The small cargo ships were all coming through the bottleneck around the northern tip of Rhodes, and so we found ourselves on a collision course with an oncoming ship at least half a dozen times during the night. All this dodging and weaving made for very wakeful night watches, with no urge to doze off whatsoever.

  We motor-sailed around Rhodes in darkness, never seeing more of this fabled Greek island than its myriad lights. There was still no sign of the approaching storm, but ominous gale warnings were beginning to be broadcast every few hours on VHF radio. By morning, we had passed Rhodes and turned north into a labyrinth of bays of ever-diminishing size, at the end of which was our destination, near the tiny village of Orhaniye. Around us, closing in more and more closely as we glided through calm, protected waters, were tall hills lightly covered with pine forest. I half expected to see the Mongol hordes, with bushy eyebrows and curved scimitars, rushing down the slopes at any minute.

  That night, our halyards began slapping, our rigging howled out a mournful song, and our masts shivered as they were lashed by cold wind and rain. But we didn’t care. We were all tucked into our beds, snuggling under warm blankets and feeling very pleased to be tied up, safe and secure.

  Within two days of arriving at our new home base in Turkey, Northern Magic was lifted out of the water and set ashore near the walls of an intriguing ancient ruin located right within the marina. Day after day, our captain sanded off layers of old paint and applied layers of new. To get onto the boat we had to clamber up a tall metal scaffold.

  With ready access to land, the kids took to playing soccer inside the walls of the old ruin during their breaks from schoolwork. The boys were outside on one of these breaks, while I was helping Herbert do something or other in the engine room, when there was a clatter just outside the boat, followed by a scream. It was such an intense, unbroken shriek that I couldn’t immediately recognize which of the boys was producing it. Whatever had caused that wail must have been something bad.