The Sea and the Sand

by Finn Óg

  “You can call me by my name now, I think.”

  “Ok,” said Sam, relieved she appeared to be extending an olive branch.

  “Alea,” she said.

  “His name is Sam,” said Isla, earning her another look from her father.

  Sam deliberately tested Alea straight away by extending his hand. He knew that if she took it, the niqab had simply been part of the escape. No committed burka-wearing Muslim woman would touch a man.

  She waivered, looked up at him and then rolled a little to place her small fingers in his enormous paw.

  “Pleased to finally meet you,” he said, looking directly at her.

  “How do you do?” she replied slowly with a rote response, which suggested to him that English had been learned in one of Libya’s finer establishments.

  “Get Alea a life jacket,” he told Isla, who scuttled off below.

  The thaw had begun but there was clearly a lot of hard frost to chip away, and Sam knew only too well that it wouldn’t be until the ice melted and the cracks uncovered that the real damage would be revealed.

  Benghazi had been beautiful. Once. Something else to thank the Italians for, thought Habid. In scooping migrants from the sea they’d made his operation possible. They had persuaded those who could afford it that their dip in the ocean might not end with certain death. News of those rescued by the Italian navy inevitably bled through more often than news of those who had perished. When migrants drowned, most sank without trace. Occasionally bad news of biblical proportions made it onto state television but more often than not the headlines were about the pressure on Italian and Greek islands, and their governments’ attempts to deal with those who had made the crossing.

  Habid swaggered along the seafront and looked at its scars. Gaddafi had terrorised the Americans, who blew the place to bits with the help of the British. Confusingly for most Libyans, Gaddafi later set about compensating the Yanks and the Brits for his bombings, and then the US had paid reparations for theirs – fixing Benghazi before blowing it up again. It was like Mediterranean Monopoly. Madness, thought Habid, utter, incalculable, ridiculous madness. Yet the whole debacle had generated cash, and he would have some of that.

  To hide something precious in a town like Benghazi was impossible. Libya’s fortunes could turn on the head of a firing pin; no alliance was worth a wink – for the nod that followed could destroy it in an instant. His papers were so important they couldn’t be entrusted to a vault or a bank where nefarious forces could bribe and insist their way to seizure. And then there was incineration. Habid was in no doubt that further air attacks and bombings were inevitable. The only question was: which country was next in the queue to blow Benghazi to bits?

  And so he had sought a fireproof hiding place for his plunder. Inspired by the remarkable preservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Habid’s cunning mind turned to the tide as an option. The scrolls hadn’t been concealed under the sea, but Habid imagined that was simply because there hadn’t been watertight containers back then to guarantee safety. But what better way to prevent fire damage than to submerge his papers in water?

  Habid had no knowledge of the sea – he was of the sands where desert storms and tsunami-like floods could shift geography and make almost anything disappear. It was no place for a hide. Habid was a believer in history. He had made a remarkable discovery, one that would make him rich. He had taken his valuable bundle to the bay in Benghazi and asked himself what invaders don’t destroy. And it came to him: they never ruin ports, for the ports are what they use to remove the wealth from any country. They need the ports to shift the oil they guzzle from the ground. Even during the Second World War, the ports were untouched.

  With glee then, Habid rolled up his scrolls, capped the ends of a watertight tube and concealed them in the one place he was convinced they would survive. Not a dead sea, but a living one, from which he would eventually extract his fortune.

  Sam had met Dyer years later in the way that operatives do – by blanking one another. To begin with.

  The heat had been intense, the hospitality gratuitous. A consular reception for NGO staff at a colonial retreat in the Caribbean. Enormous fans were recirculating warm air as Commonwealth subjects poured wine for guests from the old country. Sam watched his wife struggle to hold her tongue as they were lavished with canapés and plonk while the local population struggled to rebuild after yet another bloody hurricane.

  Sam had been about to go on leave when Shannon had been deployed, and he’d rerouted his flight home at his own expense to get some time with her. His plan had been to swim a bit, maybe dive a little, and then eat with his wife in the evenings. Instead she had lined him up for heavy lifting, driving water bowsers around the island, chainsawing fallen trees and a healthy dose of carpentry, which, he admitted, he thoroughly enjoyed.

  But it had begun with a thank you from the high commissioner on the island. Sam and Shannon were duly introduced to an eminent midget, and it seemed to Sam that the man was just lonely and craving company he could relate to, but Shannon didn’t care about his solitude among those he failed to find synergy with. Her role, as ever, was in disaster relief. She was disgusted at what she determined to be a decadent waste of money that ought to be decanted elsewhere. Sam found it mildly amusing, which earned him a frozen shoulder.

  He’d seen Dyer the moment he walked through the white clapperboard door. Sam hadn’t really packed the correct attire for such a gathering, and so he stood out sufficiently for Dyer to immediately take note of him too. The spook’s broad shoulders filled out a linen sports jacket – Sam’s inflated a poorly ironed shirt, taking at least some of the bad look off it. Shannon had been defiantly unperturbed by his get-up.

  “Shower of stuck-up feckers,” she’d muttered. “Do them no harm to see how workers dress when they come here to do a proper job.”

  Dyer and Sam locked eyes for the briefest of moments – neither issued a twitch. The inevitable handshake elicited no betrayal of their past acquaintance, and as the boozy night carried on they pressed flesh and talked small, evading questions as was their want.

  Much later Sam sat alone, feet up on a wicker chair amid sprinklers watering the thick grass – while the fresh homeless outside the fence craved libation. He’d investigated the work involved in diverting the supply and had resolved to set to it the following night. He knew it would please Shannon.

  “Well?” he heard from behind.

  “Mr Dyer,” Sam had replied without turning.

  “I assume you’re not here on official business, lieutenant commander?”

  “Nobody ever called me that,” he laughed, “and I’m a lieutenant commander no more,” said Sam.

  “Sounds like we have lots to discuss.”

  Dyer fell into the seat, his hulk straining the sinews of the wicker.

  “I’m here by accident really,” said Sam. “I had some leave and my wife got deployed to sort out the relief programme here. What about you?”

  “I’ve been given a tidy wee number for a year.”

  It was soothing to hear the Northern Ireland accent. It negated the need to enunciate clearly for the benefit of comprehension.

  “You must have got yourself in some more tight spots if you’re being rewarded with the Caribbean.”

  “Something like that,” Dyer replied. “If you’re retired, why do you still get leave?”

  “I didn’t say I was retired. Got busted. Bad behaviour,” said Sam.

  “Didn’t think you were the type,” said Dyer genuinely surprised.

  “Bad behaviour for good reason,” said Sam, and left it at that.

  Dyer withdrew a quarter bottle of Havana Club from one of his side pockets. And then drew another from the opposite pocket.

  “Half ‘un?”

  “Aye,” said Sam, falling into speak he hadn’t had the luxury to use in months.

  “Where’ve ye been?” asked Dyer.

  “Helmand,” muttered Sam. “I’m back to a bootleg.” />
  “Right.” Dyer breathed in, absorbing the implied news that Sam’s fall from grace had been substantial. “Still, must be plenty of young Marines glad to have someone like you leading them about the place.”

  “You know, there’s something not too bad about that side of it, but I’m getting tired. I’ve been in that kit for a long time. Most of the rest have checked out.”

  “I know well,” said Dyer.

  The pair appeared to be in similar places. Sam looked at the big Northern Irishman as they swigged from their dumpy bottles and took his turn to ask a question – he knew he’d be offered nothing otherwise.

  “You not ready to get out? You’ve done your years, have ye not?”

  “Twenty next year,” said Dyer. “I’ve a few loose ends.”

  “Out here?” said Sam, asking a question without really asking a question.

  “No, this is decompression.”

  “Must’ve be working, judging by that tan.” Sam smiled.

  “It’s not a tough station.”

  “You sail?”

  “Nah,” said Dyer. “Like boats though.”

  “My wife, Shannon, she seems to have a fair bit lined up for me, but I’ve a plan that might earn me a pass for a day and maybe we’ll get on the water.”

  “Dead on,” said Dyer, a phrase Sam hadn’t heard for a long time.

  “I need a hand to do something that might land you in bother with that wee ambassador, but.”

  “He’s only a commissioner, and he’s a gobshite.”

  “Right, well. See if you can find us a set of spanners or shifters and we might get to go sailing tomorrow.”

  By night he heard Alea scream, which was an achievement given the noise and banging of the boat as she sailed, and the distance between the cockpit and the forecabin. He assumed she was yelling in her sleep. It disturbed him because he imagined the children could hear her too, but they didn’t mention it.

  She and Sam had adopted a not-uncomfortable peace. Most of the time he just dozed as she sat in the cockpit and read voraciously through his stockpile of paperbacks. There was no deliberation, she simply peeled the next one off the shelf in the order they were stacked. He wondered how much she was able to understand and noted her incredible appetite for knowledge. Perhaps there was no better way to learn English – to prepare for life in the west, to be able to hold conversation, to better understand what was going on.

  Occasionally she took a break and skipped up onto the deck, gripped the stays and gazed into the warm breeze, her hair blowing out behind her. Barefoot and lithe, Sam banished the flutter of a thought as he watched her, guilt edging it away. She only did it when he was asleep, and she always adopted the same pose. Sam often caught her as he stumbled out of a dream.

  “You turn your face to the sun a lot,” he said, not really intending to verbalise his thought.

  “Mmm.”

  He couldn’t work out whether she was annoyed at having been caught. “It’s like you miss the sun on your face,” he tried, happy not to have been ignored.

  She turned her head to her shoulder, her back to him, in deliberation.

  “It has been long time,” she said.

  “Why? The one thing Libya has, besides oil, is sun.”

  “Not all places,” she said, her tone hardening.

  Sam had a choice: pursue the dialogue or let it drift. He’d never learned to take the easy option.

  “Why, where have you been hanging out?”

  She turned, and the stare came back. Alea fixed him for a moment, then rotated again to the falling sun.

  “Hiding from tribesmen.”

  “What tribesmen?”

  “Any of them. All of them.”

  “Why?”

  “We do what you do. Protect ow-er child. Keeping her from fighting.”

  “The Spring?”

  She stiffened again. “There is no Spring before your planes arrive-ed. Is small revolt. Benghazi only. Then you take-ed chance to remove-ed Gaddafi.”

  “Will you quit with this you and your country carry on. I told you before – I am from Ireland. I am not American.”

  “You speak both sides of mouth,” she stated, not inviting comment or rebuttal. “You fight for Great Britain.”

  “I fight for no one. Not any more.”

  “So is true. You have been army.”

  “Not really army.”

  “Then what?”

  “I was in the navy.”

  Then she said something curious. “Why not have tattoo?”

  “Tattoo?”

  “You not have,” she said, and Sam remembered she had seen him pretty much naked, which meant she had seen the scars – which perhaps explained her conviction that he had been in the military. “I believe men in navy have tattoo.”

  “Just like all Arabs are filthy?” Sam retorted.

  She snapped him a stare until she realised he was being ironic.

  “Anchor,” she said absently.

  “Excuse me?”

  “In movies. British navy men have anchor tattoo on arm and hand. Like Popeye.”

  Sam laughed and she almost smiled.

  “You think I should look like Popeye?”

  “No, I thinking you do look like Popeye.” She tried to suppress a curl at the edge of her lips and looked away.

  “It was a while ago,” he said, “that I was in the navy.”

  “Did you come to my country,” she rounded, the smile replaced by seriousness, “when you were in navy?”

  Her question was suddenly laden with suspicion. Sam was reminded there was deep damage and he would need to tread softly.

  “Once,” he said.

  “What to do?”

  “It was to do with my country. With Ireland, with Northern Ireland. There was a man – an informer, who had information, and I was sent to get him. I was never involved in any airstrikes, and I was never on a carrier where an airstrike was launched. I was gone before all that happened.”

  “It happen many times,” she said. “It happen when I was same age as Sadiqah. They come in night-time. They kill my mother.”

  “They bombed your house?”

  “They bomb neighbourhood. Many house. Many dead.”

  “The Americans?”

  “You all the same – Americans, British, French. Same thing. Someone pull trigger, thousands are dead. You have fight with one man – Gaddafi. You kill everyone except Gaddafi.”

  Sam thought about that for a moment but had no way to counter her assessment.

  “You grew up without a mother,” he muttered eventually – not as a question but as a kind of explanation. He thought of Isla, then of Sadiqah and understood the risk Alea had taken to make the migrant journey.

  “Ronald Reagan kill her.”

  “I was a child then too.”

  “You not child when Britain bomb Libya.”

  “So I am to blame for you going into hiding?”

  “Your country is blame.”

  “I am Irish.”

  “Does Ireland have special soldier? I have read your books. Ireland is neutral country.”

  The books. The reading. The children. Sam reflected on how much was going on aboard this small boat under his nose without him noticing. Alea had obviously been vetting him, silently, working out who she was at sea with. He imagined she had probably been priming Sadiqah to extract answers from Isla.

  “We’re back to me being an SAS trooper, are we?”

  “You are not simple Irish sailor,” she stated, “and you are more than navy man,” she said snorting. “Informer. Navy does not send simple navy man to Libya to get man out of country.”

  Sam knew he couldn’t fool this woman. She was arguing and beating him and she wasn’t even speaking her first language. “Well, do you want to have this out?”

  “Have this out?”

  “Cards on the table. You tell me who you are, I tell you who I am. All that stuff.”

  She gripped the vertical wires th
at held up the mast, elbows bent and pushed against them like a bow. She arched her back and allowed the sun to pour down her neck as if she were showering in the glow for the first time. Then she stood at ease, turned and walked slowly towards the cockpit.

  “Very well,” she said. “We put card on tables.”

  Shannon would have gone ballistic if she’d seen Sam swimming with the sharks. He’d been ‘released’ for the day, like a good boy who’d done something nice, to mess around with his new friend. Sam didn’t tell his wife he and Dyer had known one another in a way that welds men to secrecy. As far as Shannon was concerned they’d bumped into one another at the party, got a bit pissed and re-rigged the consulate’s irrigation system. The pipes were now pouring drinkable water through a hose they’d diverted outside the fence of the protected property. Nice work, she’d said. You can go and play today.

  Not with sharks though. Not that it was any more dangerous than his day job, but extra risks were frowned upon regardless. He and Shannon were trying to start a family and she had no desire to be a single parent.

  Dyer was as chilled as the beer in the boat above them. Sam hadn’t managed to acquire a sailing yacht or even any diving apparatus. The two men were flicking around in flippers and snorkels in a place they’d been told to avoid. The sharks there were a variety that could easily eat both men as if sucking steak through a straw. The key was in the calm: if the sharks felt as though the men were supposed to be there and sensed no fear from their presence, then they stood a good chance of leaving the sea with their limbs.

  Later they sat on deck with the buzz of having done something edgy and the tingle brought about by heart-pounding exercise. They chugged a few beers and nibbled the fat. Unexpectedly, it was Dyer who raised it first.

  “D’ye ever wonder what that was all about?”

  “What?” said Sam, knowing full well.

  “Libya.”

  “There were loads of Libyas,” said Sam.

  Dyer looked put out, as if what had happened was of no consequence to his … friend? Person he liked, certainly, respected – for sure.