Eighty Days to Elsewhere

by kc dyer

  In any case, the gist of it boils down to—all decisions at this point rest with our pilot.

  Relying on the judgment of someone whose nickname is an infectious disease seems—questionable. But he is the one experienced in this region, in the end. As there is not a single other option open to me, I sit back, stare out the nearest window, and wait to see what’s going to happen next.

  * * *

  —

  Below us, the camp vanishes almost immediately, and the land, dry and desolate, stretches out as far as I can see. There isn’t a single patch of arable land within eyeshot. I do spot a handful of goats cropping at the ground—tiny little dots on a hillside—but that’s it. How can anything survive in this climate?

  After half an hour, the helicopter resumes what passes for level flight, and Anthrax flicks the red signal light above the cockpit door at us. I look over at Dominic to make sure he’s not going to dive over and re-strap me in, but his face reflects the same expression of shock that I’m feeling. We both unbuckle and stagger unsteadily toward the front.

  Anthrax glances over his shoulder as we open the door to the cockpit, and he gestures under the seat beside him. I bend low and pull out a pair of pilot earphones similar to the ones he is wearing. While steering with one hand, he flicks the other at me to indicate I should put the earphones on. There’s an umbilical that attaches the earphones to the dashboard, and suddenly Anthrax’s voice is in my ears.

  “Sorry about that,” he says quietly. “What a fuckin’ disaster.”

  “Were they warlords?” I ask. “Will they steal everything?”

  “Sit down,” he says, and I slide into the empty copilot’s seat.

  Dominic, still wearing his own ear protectors, is deaf to our conversation but nods at me encouragingly. He takes a wide-legged stance between the two seats, and I realize he’s waiting for me to hear what our pilot has to say before taking his own turn.

  Looking out the windscreen, I feel my stomach surge as the world stretches out beneath us, the jagged shoreline separating the dry tan earth from the deep blue of the ocean.

  I look away from the passage of the earth beneath us—which is making me a little sick, anyway—and turn to Anthrax.

  “We’re unarmed,” his voice says in my headset. “Nothing more than a flare gun on board.”

  I know this, since I’m one of the people who helped empty out the helicopter, after all, but I don’t say so. Instead I ask, “But—did they take it all? Everything you’ve worked for?”

  I hear him sigh through the earphones. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “But it would be so much worse if they hijacked the chopper too. It’s only on loan to us.”

  After a minute, I ask, “What’s going to happen now?”

  “I need to take this bird down to Aden,” he says. “I can let you off there. You are sure to be able to get a ship onward.”

  “Okay,” I say quietly. “Thanks.”

  “I’m so sorry, Romy. I wish this had ended differently.”

  I reach over and squeeze his hand, then stand up and hand off my earphones to Dominic. He slides into the copilot seat as I head back to strap myself into the empty hold.

  Later, as the chopper swings wide over what must be the port city of Aden, I spot a large tanker moored at the docks below. After we land and bid Anthrax a subdued goodbye, we discover the ship in question is none other than the Wahash Mahat, the very vessel that I missed boarding in Suez.

  The captain agrees to honor my ticket, and I board before he can change his mind. Dominic follows me up the gangplank, and I’m so stunned and exhausted, I don’t even think to question why.

  chapter thirty

  IMAGE: Endless Ocean

  IG: Romy_K [Gulf of Aden, April 4]

  #AnUnexpectedDevelopment #AtSeaAgain

  129

  The speed of our visit doesn’t lessen the shock of everything we saw in Eritrea, and I can’t seem to think of anything else. Climbing onto the tanker, I can’t even manage to generate a sarcastic comment for Dominic. I don’t see any evidence that he has a ticket, but somehow there’s magically a berth for him. His endless good luck is galling, but I feel too wrung out to react.

  Instead, I follow one of the deckhands to my assigned cabin. This will be my home for the journey across the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, all the way to India. The cabin is by far my nicest shipboard accommodation of the journey, fully appointed with a double bed tucked between end tables, a desk, and chair, and even an easy chair for gazing out the porthole.

  I spend the entire first day of the journey in my room, mostly sleeping or staring blindly out the porthole at the distant brown line formed where the deserts of Yemen and Oman meet the impossible blue of the gulf. My period’s arrived, leaving me crampy and sapped of energy. I’m behind in my reports to ExLibris, having submitted nothing since the one I sent off before I got sick at Madame Nephthys’s place. But the sight of the desperate people in the camps, of the hard-faced men on the jeeps with the guns—has somehow drained my interest in writing anything at all.

  Sometime, long after darkness has fallen, I lift the lid of my laptop.

  ExLibris Destination Report, submitted by Ramona Keene

  CITY/REGIONAL SUMMARY: Port Said, Suez Canal, Egypt

  TOP PICKS TO SEE AND DO: This city is a tiny oasis in a sea of sandy sadness. The canal itself is a model of modern engineering, built mostly by colonialist overlords using slave labor . . .

  As I type, something splashes the back of my left hand, and I realize I’m crying. What is the use of anything—anything at all—when there is such terrible hate in the world?

  At the sound of a quiet tap on the door, I jerk my head up and hurriedly wipe away my tears.

  I open the door to find Dominic standing there. The warm air from the deck swirls his hair around, and he is backlit by a clear, starlit sky the likes of which I haven’t seen since I was in the Alps.

  Which was less than a week ago.

  “Holy shit,” I blurt at the thought.

  “And a kind good evening to you too,” says Dominic, rolling into my room without an invitation. “I haven’t seen you since we boarded, so I thought I’d better check that all is well.”

  He places a small, tinfoil packet on the desktop and glances at the screen of my computer.

  “Not exactly a rave beginning,” he says.

  I leap across from the door and slam the lid of the computer closed, which unfortunately leaves us both standing in utter darkness.

  “That’s private,” I snap at him, desperately feeling around the wall beside me for a light switch. “How is it they let you stay on board, anyway, when you hadn’t even booked a ticket?”

  There’s a click, and the lights go up. Dominic has flicked the switch by the door. His smart-ass grin has been replaced by a more guarded look.

  “Well, I don’t have a nice room like this, I can assure you. I’ve got a bunk with the crew, and I’ve spent the day down in the galley, baking bread.” He gestures at the small packet he’s dropped on the table. “I brought you some, since I’m pretty sure you haven’t had anything to eat since we boarded.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I reply coldly, even though—now that he’s mentioned it—I’m feeling so hollow, it’s making me a little wobbly.

  Of course, my stomach chooses that moment to growl, and Dominic raises an eyebrow at me skeptically. “Okay, whatever you say. I’m only checking you’re all right.”

  Flopping back down into the desk chair, I can’t suppress a sigh. “I’m not all right,” I say bitterly. “I feel wrecked after the last few days. All those suffering people—and the only ones who do have money spend it on guns to rob the others of what little they have. There’s nothing good to say about any of it. It feels hopeless.”

  Dominic is silent for a moment. Beneath us, the hum
of the ship’s engine chugs on. The smell of salt water and engine oil drifts in through my open window.

  “Look,” he says at last. “I’ve never seen anything like that either. I had no idea things were so bad, but maybe that’s part of the problem. I know we can’t fix any of this, but . . .”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, cutting him off. “That kind of attitude is nothing but apathy. Those warlords have taken all our supplies—the supplies Anthrax and his team paid for—away from the people who desperately need them.”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Dominic says. “The fact is, you wouldn’t have seen any of it if I hadn’t essentially stolen your credit card to buy us a seat, and to cover the cost of those supplies. I had to make that decision without you, and when I told you about it, you were really upset with me.”

  I swallow hard. “That’s not fair. That was before I saw what it was like. How bad things are.”

  “My very point,” says Dominic, swinging open the door. “Those people have been hungry a long time,” he says, “but maybe seeing that changes us. Maybe we need to learn more about the place before we impose our ideas of what will work on them.”

  He walks out and the heavy door swings closed behind him with a slam. I stare at the back of the door, feeling totally speechless at his callousness. How can seeing people go hungry make a difference?

  I jump to my feet, determined to follow him and straighten him out, when I realize, suddenly, there’s exactly zero I can do at the moment. I decide the best course of action is to accomplish what I set out to do. Which includes not spending another minute with Dominic. Instead, I’m going to put all my energy into beating him to the prize. I’ll find a way to get some kind of support to those people in need.

  Then we’ll see who can make a difference or not.

  * * *

  —

  The Wahash Mahat is classed as an LR2, or large-range tanker. It’s considered a Suezmax, which means it’s the biggest ship that can traverse the Suez Canal fully laden. Apparently there are much larger vessels than the Wahash, but I’ve never seen one. It’s carrying a load of crude oil from Egypt to Mumbai, and is a fast and powerful ship. I spend the next full day rewriting my report, taking ibuprofen, and reading Wiki articles about East Africa.

  That evening, since I’m feeling better—physically, at least—I head up to the galley and sit at a table with the first mate, a sailor called Ganesh. He’s wearing a crisp, jewel-green short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck. When I ask if he’s from Africa, he sets me straight right away.

  “Born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu,” he says, his accent carrying a distinct Indian lilt. “But I have family in Mumbai and London and many other places. Most of us are on the sea, somewhere around the world.”

  Ganesh is regrettably enthusiastic about Dominic’s contribution to the menu. “Your friend—he’s quite the pastry chef, eh? Did you try the sponge? I haven’t tasted cake that fluffy since my mother’s.”

  I roll my eyes and try to change the subject, but Ganesh will not be silenced. It turns out the crew are all massive fans of The Great British Bake Off, and Ganesh pulls out his phone to show me his favorite cakes, as featured on Instagram. Unfortunately, after this, he clicks through to Dominic’s page. My heart sinking, I see his follower count has soared since I first found his account. He’s posted a ton of pictures, dish after dish highlighting all the different foods he’s come across in his travels, with a focus mostly on baked goods.

  I use my own phone to show Ganesh my Instagram page, which he dutifully follows immediately. But while my following has definitely grown since I left home, I still don’t have numbers anywhere near what Dominic is pulling.

  “Woo-hoo,” crows Ganesh, and waves across to Dominic, who has come out of the galley to deliver baskets of warm beignets to each table. “Look at the followers you have, bro!”

  Dom drops a basket on the center of our table and shrugs. “I share the pictures, but I don’t care about the numbers. I just like talking to people about food.”

  As he moves away, Ganesh sinks his teeth into a beignet, his eyes closing in pleasure. I pocket my phone, and bring the conversation around to what I saw in Eritrea. “I’d love to hear what you think about aid for the people stricken with famine and disease, Ganesh. Do you support donations of supplies, or is straight money the better way to go?”

  Ganesh’s face, which had been open and laughing while we went through the Instagram posts, suddenly shuts down. “So many people want to impose their own ideas to rescue Africans,” he says with a sigh. “This? Is not what’s needed.”

  He excuses himself and departs through the galley door. Inside, I get a glimpse of Dominic, wrapped in a giant apron and with flour dusted across his netted hair. As the galley door swings closed again, I can’t help thinking that his growing connection with the crew—including Ganesh—isn’t helping my cause at all.

  If he’s reaching them through their stomachs, then I’ll go in through their hearts, I vow silently. Grabbing the last beignet from the basket, I take my phone outside. My head is full of possible new hashtags aimed at finding new followers. But the followers I find?

  Are not exactly the ones I expect.

  chapter thirty-one

  IMAGE: Ship’s Tender

  IG: Romy_K [Wahash Mahat, Arabian Sea, April 7]

  #OceanRescue #Refugee

  129

  I spend the next couple of days mostly in my cabin, which has the dual advantage of helping me avoid both the intense African heat and any contact with Dominic. On April 7th, the Wahash Mahat officially exits the Gulf of Aden and enters the balmy but more turbulent waters of the Arabian Sea. Since the heat of the day is mercifully cut by the gusty wind, I head up to the deck of the ship to try for a last photo of Africa. I’ve just pointed my viewfinder at the coast, when I hear a thin voice cry out. Way up at the prow of the ship, I see Ganesh wave frantically out to sea, and then, as he turns to look up at the bridge, I hear him cry out again. Other crew voices join his, and by the time I race closer, I hear the ship’s engines change note.

  We’ve come upon a small fishing boat, built of grey wood and riding incredibly low in the water. It’s filled, stem to stern, with people. They are packed in so tightly, their knees are interlocking, with no room to move, let alone lie down. Waves slap across the gunnels of the boat, and most of the people on board are waving frantically up at us. The Wahash Mahat now has her engines in reverse, but it’s no joke to slow down a ship of this size, and momentum carries us past the small craft. As it bobs in the waves below us, I can see the wood on the stern of the boat, where presumably there should be some means of propulsion, is cracked and broken. There’s no sign of an engine, or even an outboard motor, but I can see the word “Njeri” hand-painted on the stern. The tiny vessel is completely dwarfed against the side of the tanker, and as I look down, it feels like a miracle that we didn’t plow right over them.

  Several crew members of the Wahash Mahat toss down ropes, and the Njeri is drawn alongside. The ship’s captain, whom I’ve not caught even a glimpse of since the first day, comes marching out on deck, and engages in a loud discussion with two of his senior crew. Meanwhile, one of the Wahash’s tenders comes roaring around from the far side to moor itself beside the small boat. Again, there’s more discussion among the crew on the tender, and what looks like two men, yelling from the back of the Njeri. Each time a wave slaps across the bow, my stomach clenches. We are close enough now that I can see the expressions of terror on the faces of the people. More than a handful of them are children.

  In the end, the captain of the Wahash Mahat begrudgingly accepts the people on board, conditional to the ship dropping them all upon arrival in Mumbai. I watch from above as the group of refugees is settled onto a section of deck to the rear of the tanker, where the crew are rigging up a huge tarp. There’s no other space to house this
number of people, which to my rough count looks to be close to fifty, including the children. The group is strangely silent as they clamber on board, faces exhausted and drawn, clothing soaked and salt-stained from their journey.

  That night, I corner Ganesh to try to get a bit more information. He tells me there’s enough food on board to feed everyone, though he’s not sure it’s halal.

  “He’s not happy, I’ll tell you that,” Ganesh whispers. We’re leaning against the outside wall on the starboard side, to get a break from the unceasing wind. It’s not so hot now, late at night, and it’s definitely easier to hear him on this side of the ship.

  “The captain?”

  He gives a quick nod. “From what I can tell, they come from a camp in Yemen, but most are Somali, displaced by the war,” he says. “The captain has a policy not to pick up refugees—there are so many these days, and so many countries refusing them. But this ship was sinking, so . . .”

  “So, he couldn’t watch them all drown,” I whisper, barely able to get the words out.

  Ganesh shrugs. “They are lucky,” he says. “I think the smugglers were taking them to Pakistan, but they lost their engine. We do not stop until Mumbai, so what happens to them there is anyone’s guess.”

  He folds his arms, looking serious. “From my experience, there are usually one or two of the human smugglers on board. You need to stay away from these people, right? They are bad men.”

  “Okay, but one or two out of nearly fifty? Can’t I try talking to any of the actual refugees—at least get a few pictures and make a connection?”

  Ganesh blows air out his nose like a bulldog. “Listen, I know you mean well. But most of these people have no English, and they are all traumatized. Also, they have not been exposed to the same germs and things you have—you could be a danger to them, you see?”

  “Got it,” I say.