Slow Boats to China

by Gavin Young

  And so I met my saviour. Even so, I still had several days to wait – Majid couldn’t work miracles – and I had Bacat 2 as a fallback.

  I sat in Chris Pooley’s office and thumbed my way through the ‘Casualties’ page of Lloyd’s List of shipping. The alarming entries made one realize how much of an illusion the bland surface of the shipping world really is:

  London. Vessel Sheng Hsing, 125 tons gross, built 1973. Last message received 1700, Sept. 29. No further information since then. Left Keelung with 11 crew. At present north-east monsoon blowing with strong winds and heavy seas in this area….

  Overdue Vessel, m.v. Myrina: US Coast Guard, New York, advised the Myrina overdue on a voyage from New York to Naples…. All ships to maintain lookout…. US Forces, Azores, briefed…. Three aircraft…. Assumption is that the Myrina had broken up and sunk….

  Port Louis, Mauritius. The sole survivor of the Induna has reached Mauritius, from where he will fly to South Africa for the inquest into the fate of the vessel….

  Supply vessel Keith Rhea sank in the Gulf of Mexico due to striking an oil rig during heavy weather.

  A fire had badly damaged the historic yacht of Kemal Ataturk. The Savarona, which was anchored off the Princess Islands near Istanbul, had been a cadet training ship since 1951.

  Lastly, as one might expect, in Beirut harbour there had been heavy sniper fire.

  *

  In the end, after over two weeks in Dubai, there was some definite news. First Jay Walton of Gray Mackenzie rang to say, ‘Terribly sorry, but the news from Bombay is that Bacat 2 can’t take you because of the rules about adequate accommodation. Indians are always quite needlessly niggly about regulations. Terribly sorry.’ It wasn’t unexpected: after all, the bureaucratic rule is that, if something is unusual, it’s impossible.

  But an hour later my luck turned.

  Two

  Dubai to Singapore

  Fourteen

  That morning in Hamriyyah Majid said, ‘A dhow, the Khalid, will sail for Karachi today at one o’clock from Sharjah. A passenger dhow. The agent is Chishty Trading; you find the office on the creek there.’

  I found the dhow, the Khalid, heavily laden with crates, a truck, two or three small cars and about thirty passengers perched on the cargo like egrets on a water buffalo’s back. She was a hefty vessel with a big, steep, square stern. ‘We sail at three thirty or four thirty,’ a moustached nakhoda (captain) said.

  In the agent’s office all was agreed. All I had to do, it seemed, was to return to Dubai to pick up my bags and my passport, a matter of an hour. But when I returned to the Sharjah wharf I found an empty space where the Khalid had been. ‘She sailed,’ some men on the dockside said.

  The exasperation of that moment comes back to me in full force even now. The Muslim Id, or holiday, was about to paralyse the region. Every office would be closed tight as an oyster for five days – longer in Dubai, where there was a local closure as well (the ruler’s uncle had died). No customs man would operate, no passports would be stamped, no dhows would sail. The Khalid was likely the last boat for a week.

  In the Chishty Trading Office, up the same narrow staircase, the fat, unsmiling agent, who passed me a card telling me his name was Siddiq, said he had no hope of any sailing before 7 or 9 November. More than a week – eleven days. It was now 27 October. All the sailors, he said, wanted to enjoy the holiday ashore, not waste it at sea.

  With its wall calendars and inevitable colour photograph of the mosque at Mecca, the small office was hot and seemed a hopeless place. The agent looked at me without apparent emotion. ‘No more passenger vessels,’ he said firmly. I was rising from my chair, prepared for the miserable drive back to Dubai when, to my surprise, he said, ‘Have some tea.’ We drank it looking at each other in silence. I should be drinking tea on the Khalid’s deck on my way to the Strait of Hormuz, I thought. I took a sip and frowned at the teasing cargo price list over the agent’s desk: ‘From Sharjah to Lahore and Karachi – Motor Car dirhams 1000; Motor Cycle dirhams 125; Fridge 60; Gas Cooker 40; Sewing Machine 20.’ Passenger?

  I took another sip, and it came to me. It might have come earlier if I hadn’t been so stunned by the heat and the Khalid fiasco. The Khalid was the last passenger boat for ten days. What about –

  ‘What about a cargo dhow?’ An outside chance, admittedly. If passenger-boat crews liked to spend their big holiday of the year ashore, so presumably would cargo-dhow crews.

  Mr Siddiq’s eyelids seemed too heavy to keep ajar as he murmured, ‘They cannot take a single passenger without a big payment. That payment is three thousand rupees for the Karachi Port Authority. Cargo dhows have no special licence to take passengers.’

  I brooded: 3000 rupees was about £150. A lot of money, but Karachi was a long way off.

  ‘Perhaps I can get a letter from the Pakistani consul general in Dubai to Karachi – a permit to travel on a cargo dhow.’

  The agent blinked. ‘You know the consul?’ His interest, I saw, had quickened fractionally. After a pause he said in a louder tone, ‘If you can get a letter from him, I could possibly get you on a cargo launch tomorrow or the next day.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’ He even gave a flicker of a smile.

  I wasted no time in asking where this vessel had suddenly materialized from; I was already on my feet. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Mr Siddiq said, ‘Go to the consulate at nine and I’ll join you there.’

  *

  Colonel Shufaat Hasan Khan, consul general of Pakistan in Dubai (may his shadow never grow less), sat upright in his office chair looking very military with his parade-ground alertness and black moustache, let alone the English accents of a gentleman from Sandhurst.

  I had told him my story and made my request, and we now awaited Mr Siddiq. There was no sign of him. The colonel had sent an aide to search for him in other offices in the consulate, but Mr Siddiq was elusive. I told myself bitterly that I might have expected him not to turn up, and my unease returned. The colonel, however, wasted no time. In a few minutes he had a visa stamped into my passport – although, strictly speaking, I didn’t need one – ‘For safety’s sake in Karachi,’ he said. He even dictated a telex message to the Karachi port authorities to expect a European to arrive on the launch Al Raza (I had ascertained the name from Mr Siddiq) some time within the next seven days, and asked them not to arrest me.

  ‘If there are any hitches, let me know. Call me.’ He added, I’m lunching with a very big Dubai trader, but never mind that. Call me at home if you need to.’

  ‘You’re a very kind man, Colonel.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all.’

  Then I telephoned Mr Siddiq. He seemed to have forgotten any idea of coming to the consulate, but was surprised and impressed by the colonel’s prompt assistance. ‘Be here at four thirty,’ he said. ‘Sailing at six o’clock.’

  *

  At four thirty I handed up my bags from the wharf to a dusky seaman, who lugged them to the wheelhouse high up over Al Raza’s stern. ‘Don’t sail without me,’ I said. ‘No worry,’ he called back. I saw a blue-painted bridge balustraded off from a main deck cluttered with bales, crates, refrigerators and four or five minicars.

  In his office Mr Siddiq raised gratified eyebrows over the consul’s note and visa. I handed him the money, and he grunted his thanks and gave me a receipt: ‘Received Dollars 300/– From Mr. Diavan David Young.’ ‘Food,’ he said, ‘is provided. Rice, chapatis, tea. No bedding because this cargo boat not for passengers. Crew all Baluchis.’

  In the little bazaar of Sharjah I bought a torch, a towel and some soap. I knew there’d be something to sleep on. Like their houses, Asians’ boats are always provided with spare mattresses and blankets or, if not mattresses, woven mats. I wondered if this was the moment to dig the money belt out of my metal suitcase and use it for the first time, but somehow I knew I needn’t bother. Traveller’s cheques were locked behind the combination of the metal suitcase. In the zi
p-bag, the cameras, binoculars, the bottle of Gordon’s gin and the much smaller one of angostura bitters, all that would be Wanted on Voyage, would be easily accessible. I didn’t believe Asian sailors would steal on a small boat like this.

  There was a delay and it was dark before we sailed. I heaved myself on board. Through the shadows cast by one bright mast light and the illuminations from the wheelhouse, I scrambled across bales and crates and swung myself up over the balustrade onto the bridge. The nakhoda was on the strip of deck by the wheelhouse, and warmly shook my hand: a short, fairly young man in a knee-length grey Pakistani shirt and white cotton pyjama trousers. He led me into the wheelhouse as big as a chicken coop and said, ‘You sleep’ – miming sleep, he put his palms together on his right cheek and bent his head to that side, closing his eyes – ‘here!’

  Someone, I saw, had roped a tiny table and chair to the corner of the bridge overlooking the sea and the main deck foward. ‘For you,’ the nakhoda said, making energetic writing motions with his right hand. On a raised bunk running the width of the wheelhouse just behind the helmsman, blankets and a pillow in a plastic cover lay in a heap on a thin mattress. I protested to the nakhoda; obviously, he had given me his own bunk. ‘No, no, for you,’ he said with finality, and I knew that protesting was futile. You can’t argue with a Baluchi demonstrating hospitality; they are among the most stubborn peoples of the world. In my distant days as a shipping clerk in Basra, which at the north end of the Gulf seemed quite close now, Baluchis had been much prized as watchmen, as much for their stolid honesty and unshakable devotion to whoever employed them as for their physical toughness.

  *

  We sailed much later, at about ten thirty; new cargo was constantly appearing. At last the nakhoda called over the balustrade: ‘Hather?’ From the semi-darkness among the cars and bales, voices replied, ‘Hather. Ready.’ He turned to me. ‘Okay?’ ‘Yalla, meshena! Let’s go!’ I saw the crew casting off fore and aft, and the engines spluttered into life. A massive man in a turban paused to blow his nose in his fingers over the side, and then squeezed into the wheelhouse to take the helm. In the light thrown, up from the binnacle I saw a thick nose and a heavy moustache.

  Al Raza began to edge away from the quay. Soon we were in the middle of the creek, turning towards the sea, then moving smoothly down the creek, and slowly and gently rolling as we entered the relatively open waters of the Gulf. I sat at the table the nakhoda had taken the trouble to have lashed to the front corner of the bridge, and felt the excitement now; this was a small ramshackle launch and I would be closer to the sea, literally and figuratively, than on any earlier ship; even on the Pacific Basset, its heavy steel and technological equipment got in the way.

  From the bridge, I could see that Al Raza was not a thing of beauty. About sixty feet long, she was certainly not the classic dhow with high, carved medieval stern, thick slanting masts and billowing sails, running down to Zanzibar. Locally she was called a launch, pronounced larnch’; she was decidedly stubby, and her single mast was more like a twig than a tree and carried no sails. Yes, Al Raza lacked glamour. She was a working launch of 100 tons and looked it. A thin tin tube amidships was her funnel, and she had a crew of eight, including the nakhoda, all of them Baluchis except for the ‘driver’, who was Indian-born, and one elderly Iranian. Her home port was Karachi; her maximum speed was ten knots with luck, but more likely four or five.

  A light swell cradled us. A large half-moon dominated half the sky overhead, and Orion lay above us on his side, his belt perpendicular to the sea. Over the jagged mountains of Ajman and Ras al Khaymah, lightning flashes lit up a kidney-shaped cloud like a neon sign. Sharjah soon receded into a thin necklace of meaningless light.

  Most of Al Raza’s deck was in darkness. The wheelhouse was only faintly lit by the glow-worm light of the single small bulb in the binnacle. There was a strong light in the prow; another, less strong, astern of the wheelhouse roof, and a red navigation light on the corner of the wheelhouse roof over my head, matched by the starboard green on the other side. Occasional sparks flew out of the narrow funnel, arched languidly over the side and died before reaching the water.

  Soon the nakhoda went to his mattress on the other side of the bridge deck, and the crew slipped below. I lay down on the bunk behind the muscular back of the helmsman, who paid no attention to me, put my torch on the mattress beside me, took a large swig of Gordon’s, kicked off my shoes, lay back in great contentment and fell asleep instantly.

  I was woken by silence: Al Raza had stopped. Everything was dark, but the luminous hands of my watch said 4.30 a.m. I got up quickly and, peering over the balustrade of the bridge, saw at once that the whole midsection of Al Raza was enveloped in a dense white haze. Smoke? I muttered to myself, ‘God Almighty!’ Fire at sea in a wooden boat? Torch beams flickered. The nakhoda and the rest of the crew were already scurrying about the overloaded deck, opening hatches, heaving aside heavy crates. The helmsman had deserted the wheelhouse, the engine was silent and every light had gone out. We rocked quietly in darkness except for gruff Baluchi cries from the deck, under silent stars. Looking around, I saw a few remote clusters of lights on the shore and a few nearer, unmoving, and denser clusters further out at sea: oil rigs. The smaller light of a fishing boat bobbed quite close ahead. Would we soon be taken aboard her to bear gloomy witness to the hulk of Al Raza burning to charcoal off the coast of Ajman? I saw myself back in the agent’s office in Sharjah, hearing him murmuring glumly, ‘Now you’ll have to wait ten days, until after the Id’ – that is, if he himself had not already closed down and disappeared for the holiday.

  It was not smoke; after a while I realized that, if it had been, the crew in the engine hatch would have keeled over, asphyxiated. It was steam, and slowly it grew less thick. After an hour it was barely noticeable, and the nakhoda seemed satisfied, so we moved on; we had drifted with our nose toward Dubai, and now the engine weakly pulsed into life and we swung round again to head toward the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow gullet leading from the ocean into the belly of the Gulf. Al Raza remained in darkness; we had no lights at all; the helmsman steered with a torch. ‘Dynamo kharban,’ he explained from the shadows, meaning, ‘The dynamo’s kaput.’ He shrugged: never mind.

  From my bunk I saw the helmsman’s wide back, bulky in a gown with a sash around the waist. The wind had risen, and blew fresh and strong over the wooden windowsills of the wheelhouse. Once more I laid my feet on my suitcase and my head on the plastic pillow cover. I wondered sleepily what our fate would have been if the steam had indeed been smoke (the bridge boasted two rusty fire extinguishers, as effective as spitting into the flames if a fire took hold), then willed myself asleep again.

  As usual, the situation looked better when a sunny morning broke. A crewman with grey hair and a long comedian’s face brought me a plate with two fried eggs and a chapati on it, and a mug of hot milky tea.

  We were moving into the Strait of Hormuz, a mountainous profile of the land to starboard. To port, a long white tanker bulldozed its way into the Gulf, and soon I spotted the Arrisha creeping towards us near the shore, heading back from Muscat. I thought of the mock fireplace in the captain’s dayroom and tried to see Captain Maudsley through my glasses, but the little tanker with ‘GM’ on her funnel was too far away. As she faded, steam billowed up again from Al Raza’s engine-room hatches and we stopped and rolled again for fifteen minutes, while our dark-skinned driver, with a towel round his head, hammered metal and manipulated screwdrivers and spanners.

  A good breeze cooled us as Al Raza passed the two little wedge-shaped Quoin Islands, and a number of large vessels moved westwards into the shallow waters of the Gulf. Anyone who wanted to block this opening by sinking a tanker here certainly had a problem. The strait is far wider than it looks on the chart.

  To starboard the islands and coast of Oman fell sheer into deep water. The sun revealed deep fissures and caves in some; smoother ones were grey and wrinkled like the hide of an ancient e
lephant. In the lee of one such island, a small sailing dhow was anchored in the shade, as if in ambush. Our helmsman spun the wheel, we veered towards it and soon came alongside. Without delay a man and a boy in shorts hoisted up a basket of fish, long and pike-like or fat and brown; in exchange, someone from Al Raza handed down a can of what looked like engine oil. Everyone waved and grinned and we moved on down the strait. It was obviously a harmless and routine bit of barter. A glance into the ‘galley’ – a primus stove and a primitive open metal oven set on the strip of deck in the stern near where the ‘thunderbox’ hung over the side – revealed rice, strips of dried fish, eggs, a few vegetables and tea. The fish flapping on the deck looked like emergency rations.

  Just as well, for we might, I thought, be considerably longer than four days at sea. Every two or three hours steam poured up out of the engine hatch, where a 380 h.p. Japanese motor seemed to be in the throes of irreversible senility. Whenever the steam erupted, the lanky driver switched off the engine and renewed his hammering while Al Raza rocked and dipped. I opened a book.

  The nakhoda grinned at me: ‘Shweya, shweya, insh’ Allah,’ conveying, ‘It will be all right.’ As well as their native Baluchi, the crew spoke Urdu – all Pakistani citizens do – and certain phrases of Hindi, Arabic and Persian. This meant we were going to have to communicate in broken Arabic; mine was basic, and rather better than theirs, but we would manage. My memory now is that we chatted away as if we had at least two languages in common. Somehow we communicated quite adequately and became friends.

  Presently I understood that, after the dynamo, the starter motor was also kaput: perhaps you couldn’t have one without the other. A bulky Baluchi with black muttonchop whiskers and baggy trousers explained this with signs and bits of Arabic, and there was a certain embarrassed air around the wheelhouse. ‘Allah karim – Karachi!’ the helmsman proclaimed, sticking out his chest reassuringly, and I agreed, wanly hopeful that God would see us safe and sound in Karachi.