by Tania Aebi
The wind howled like a hurricane through the rigging; waves crashed over the deck, sloshed down through the Dorade vent and splashed onto my bed. Going out to check on Alexio’s whereabouts and survey the surroundings guaranteed me a cold bath, a reminder that we were no longer in tropical latitudes. The chilly north wind and cooler water temperatures had me digging through the piles of summer clothes in search of something warm to wear. Varuna plodded onward, burying her nose in every other wave.
Finally, on the night of April 5, we were just off the reefs leading into Port Sudan. We could make it in on one tack, but because it was nighttime, we doused the sails instead, drifting in the light of Sanganeb Reef lighthouse as its welcome beacon swept the water.
In the morning, the wind died down and we sailed carefully toward the harbor, past the spot where Henry’s Debonaire had sunk. Keeping a very close watch for anything unexpected, we arrived without consequence several hours later and I anchored next to Alexio, behind Christina and an abandoned freighter named Captain Handy.
The quarantine launch arrived, and after the formalities, I sat down, relieved, and struck up a casual conversation across the water with the people on another sailboat whom I recognized from Djibouti. We shared the usual happy Hellos and How was your trips? and Awfuls.
“Hey, did you hear about Len?” they asked.
“No, what?”
“He’s dead,” they said.
“What?”
“Just as he was leaving the harbor of Djibouti, the boom jibed, hit him in the head. He was killed instantly.”
My knees went weak and I sank onto the seat of the cockpit. When Olivier and I had seen Len lagging behind and thought he was changing a sail, it must have been after the accident when his crew member had been turning around to head back to port. I couldn’t believe it. I pictured Len, full of plans and ideas and wondered what his last thoughts might have been. One minute you’re happy and full of life, and the next . . .
All afternoon and into the evening, I tried to let the news sink in and stop worrying about Olivier. I had assumed that he and Len were together and now my imagination was going off on a series of tangents. What if he couldn’t receive the shortwave time-tick station that constantly emits the universal time (reception in the Red Sea was very bad) and he didn’t have the correct time for navigation and had foundered on a reef? I worried that he had wandered too close to shore and, without boat papers and passport, had been picked up by the Ethiopian gunboats and now was in some dingy jail. As darkness poured in, I sat numb in the cockpit, thinking about Len and Olivier, and searched the night sky for falling stars.
10
Misery loves company, and no matter how hopeless things seemed, it was funny how nothing helped to alleviate anxieties more than to read about or listen to the woes of others. Oftentimes at sea, whenever the weather had gotten out of hand, I had grabbed a book and tried to gain some consolation from the accounts of other people’s hellish difficulties.
On that storm-plagued maiden voyage to Bermuda, it had been Dr. David Lewis’s northern transatlantic crossing in a folkboat just as small as Varuna that had cheered me up. He had encountered a parade of terrifying gales while keeping a fearful watch for icebergs; and the immensity of the minor depressions that had engulfed Varuna dwindled in the face of a trip that had been even worse. In turn, Dr. Lewis had sought consolation by reading the accounts of Hanns Lindemann, another doctor who crossed the Atlantic in a fold-up canoe—both braver, more adventuresome people than I.
Here in Port Sudan, I pulled myself together and moped over to Christine’s cockpit to be with Henry, Lauder, Christine and little Sebastian, keeping an ever-anxious eye on the harbor entrance for the familiar black hull. As I listened to the tale of the fall of Debonaire, Henry’s story helped to take my mind off of Len and Olivier, as his gourd of rum helped him cheerfully keep his mind off his problems. Together, we all commiserated and remembered stories about Len. We shook our heads and, in need of a meal, went to dinner.
Passing camels and donkeys at hitching posts, we made our way up 150 feet of dusty road alongside the harbor. At an open-air restaurant with sizzling grills, tables were crowded with desert men in flowing white robes and turbans, who stopped talking and stared as we entered. Christine and I were the only females, and I looked down self-consciously to see if my clothing was modest enough for the piercing dark eyes.
The Sudan is a country under the strict regime of Islam, where a woman’s place is in the house—barefoot and pregnant. When women did leave their homes, we later noticed, every part of the body except a slit for the eyes was wrapped up and veiled over. Hoping that my jeans and sweat jacket were suitable enough, we, too, stole furtive glances. The cheekbones were accentuated in the handsome ebony faces of these men, and we saw that their average height was that of a good-sized basketball player back home.
When it came time to order our dinner, I asked for what I had craved most while at sea—a green salad. When it arrived, I saw that, yes, it was green, but not of the leafy variety. Rather, it was a mushy eggplant concoction that I recognized from meals at Middle-Eastern restaurants on MacDougal Street in New York. Next to a slice of pizza, falafels, shish kebab, hummus, baba ghanooj and tahina had always been the cheapest foods in my days of street wandering. I remembered downing the ethnic food without ever taking a moment to think that three years later would find me in the countries of their origin.
Surprisingly, here in the Sudan, it all tasted very much the same, but with one additional ingredient: sand. We devoured a meal of green mush, tomato salad and hunks of succulent mutton cooked atop an outdoor coal fire, trying to keep our eyes off the piles of bloody sheep heads that had been thrown over the small stone embankment near our table.
It was all we could do during dinner to avoid the use of our left hands. Every time one of us slipped up, every eye in the place fixed on us and registered looks of disgust. The Sudanese were far more sensitive about this custom than the Sri Lankans, who were more accustomed to Western visitors in their midst. Blushing, we even tried sitting on our left hands, but before long they always seemed to find their way back into use.
On the way back down to the dinghy dock, we passed a herd of dromedary camels that were parked under trees for the night, the long necks of some craning to munch away on the leaves of overhanging branches, the rest lying down in sleep with their legs curled up beneath them. I had read that camels are ornery, and that when one is irritated by its owner or takes an instant dislike to a person, it exhibits its feelings by rudely spitting or taking nips at him. The only way to make amends once you have fallen out of favor is to surrender your clothes or belongings. Only after the camel has emptied its bladder on top of the pile can bygones be bygones. Dissuaded by their loose lips curling back from some well-formed, square teeth, we resisted the urge to reach up and pet them, and found our way back to the boats.
At midnight, I was back in Varuna’s cockpit alone. The worry was back and sleep elusive. I prayed for Olivier, and my thoughts drifted to Len, a kind man we might not have known well, but whose dreams for life had mirrored our own and had been cut short before our eyes.
The next morning, Alexio and I were preparing our papers for the long ritual of properly checking in with customs and immigration when the black hull ghosted in past the harbor wall. My whoop of joy startled those on Christine and all the neighbors smiled my way. Too many disturbing things had been happening, and finally here was at least one reason to rejoice. Alexio shooed me into his dinghy and I rowed madly across the water toward Akka.
“Where were you?” Olivier called as we drew closer. “I waited for three days in the Hannish Islands.”
“The wind was really strong and I was too scared to head in between the rocks without an engine. Did you get any of those horrible north winds a few days later?”
“No, it was beautiful and southerly the whole way, till yesterday.” All in all, considering all the sad news, this was a reunion of relief, and
together with Alexio, we went to check in.
The next day, Alexio returned from wandering about town with news that at 3:00 P.M. the President of the Sudan would be arriving at the local airport. “We must go,” he insisted. “The President is said to be a direct descendent of Mohammed. There will be a crowd of thousands.” So, we set out on foot to see the grand manifestation of the desert. Along the road were dozens of nomadic tents surrounded by children, women, goats and camels as, in the distance, men in white raced their graceful Arabian horses across the yellow sand flats toward the horizon. Everything seemed to float in an oily mirage created by the heat reflecting off surfaces.
Around the small white airport thronged dark-skinned Sudanese, magnificent light-skinned Bedouins and Arabs. Veiled women bedecked in flowing fabrics of reds, oranges and greens brightened the picture wherever they sat, clustered in isolated groups. As we walked into the midst of a scene from a century past, I stared openly at the people, who showed absolutely no inhibitions about doing just the same.
Different tribes were distinguished by their hairstyles and the shades of earth-colored woolen vests that covered their long white caftans. Some had bushy afros; others had short-cropped hair; still others had beads interwoven with hair strands, or matted dreadlocks hanging down from just above the back of their necks. Blue, green and brown eyes stared our way, and little boys crowded around as if we were the Pied Pipers of Hamlin. I felt a tingling up and down my spine to be in such a different, beautiful world.
Everything about the moment was charmed until Alexio pulled out his newfangled camera. It became immediately clear that these people have a strong aversion to having their pictures taken; they deeply resent the invasion of their privacy, and this fact is common knowledge to most incoming visitors.
“Don’t worry,” Alexio said, shrugging off our concerns. “I was smart enough to get a permit at the office for tourism. See?” The smiles turned into hostile glares, and some shouts were directed our way as Alexio continued to snap pictures and wave his permit around at the angry men surrounding us. The Arabic language has a harsh sound to a Western ear unaccustomed to its guttural rhythms, and when ripe with emotion, it is positively intimidating.
“Here, Tania. Let me take a picture of you with these people in the background,” he said, unfazed.
“Absolutely not,” Olivier said, putting his arm around me protectively, and we started to walk away. Alexio followed along, snapping the shutter and waving his permit, with more boys behind him, who came to press against me, while the older men caught up. A little hand pinched me.
“Please stop, Alexio,” I pleaded. “Do you really think they care two cents about a piece of paper? If you make them any angrier, they’ll chew up that piece of paper, spit it out and you’ll be next. Look, all these guys have huge swords.”
Heavily engraved metal hilts popped out of three-foot-long leather sheaths strapped down on the backs of the majority of the men. These people weren’t complacent townies accustomed to the ways of Westerners. They were nomads who have roamed the Sahara for centuries and were now flocking in caravans to see the descendent of the beloved prophet who had founded their Islamic religion. I admired their air of regal pride and it distressed me to be part of a group who was making them angry. Alexio finally stopped when I found my handbag sliced on the bottom, while the smiling child who did it waited for my belongings to drop out.
“Tania, let’s get out of here,” Olivier said, and we pushed our way through the mob, with Alexio following close behind in sullen silence. A white Peugeot pulled up as we plodded back toward town, and a dark face peered out of the window at us.
“Hello there. Hop in and I’ll give you a ride,” said the stranger in perfect English. And so we met Ibrahim, a food distributor for a famine relief agency. In the car, we answered questions, telling him where we came from and what we were doing in the Sudan. It took a while to convince him that we were all sailing singlehanded.
“Yes, we are really alone, each of us,” Olivier explained from beside me in the back seat. “Sometimes we meet up with each other. But, essentially, we are always alone, each one to a boat.”
Ibrahim took his eyes away from the road, turned his head and stared at me, clearly bewildered; there aren’t many Sudanese women who are even allowed to leave their houses alone. Thirsty for more information, he took us to the Red Sea Club, a colonial establishment that still adhered to the old regulations and people could only enter if brought by a member. He bought us Coca-Colas and we told him everything he wanted to know. He was particularly interested in me, and as the afternoon wore on, we learned why. Ibrahim had a wife and several mistresses. It was perfectly normal, he said. If he didn’t love his wife so much, he could have wed three more to add to the collection. “The mistresses are to spare her the agony of extra wives,” he explained matter-of-factly.
Since Djibouti, I had been having a hard time trying to imagine what living in this kind of society would be like. Depending on who my parents were, I could have been circumcised as a child, and by now my father could have married me off to a man who planned on having backup wives. I had even seen a newspaper from Saudi Arabia that had blackened out the pictures of Western women from the neck down. Ibrahim’s notion was that all Western women were promiscuous, that orgies were a way of life for us, and he was incredulous that I could be loyal to only one man. During that afternoon, after I cleared some things up for him, Ibrahim became a good friend, eager to show us the beauty of the only culture he knew.
As in every country under Islamic rule, the vice of alcohol was strictly forbidden, and whenever we went ashore a guard at the harbor gate checked our bags to see if we were sneaking in any contraband. In the Sudan, Ibrahim had confided conspiratorially, there were illegal moonshine stills where they brewed their own firewater from dates, a wicked potion called aragi. The day after we met him, he made an appearance at the anchorage.
“Come along now,” he said. “I have some surprises for you.” We were game, jumped in his Peugeot and drove out into the middle of a desert wasteland, stopping at a slumlike area in front of a shack. Ibrahim got out of the car and made a purchase and we drove to a seawall to talk. To be polite, I took a sip of the pure alcohol, felt a channel burn down my throat and my stomach shrivel up. That was my last sip. Alexio, too, was a nondrinker and even Olivier couldn’t handle stuff that hard. Ibrahim, drinking alone, stood like an African prince, gesticulating with his arms as his flowing white robe billowed behind him in the wind.
Arriving at another shack later on, we found what appeared to be a low-end brothel with erotic posters on the wall. Together with a few robed men, we sat in front of a 1950s pickup truck with a television on the hood that was broadcasting Popeye in Arabic. Next, Ibrahim, fortified with the spirits, pronounced that he was taking us to the wedding of a friend, and so began an evening of magic and splendor that could have come straight from the pages of the Arabian Nights.
The women and children in the wedding garden must have cornered the world market on lace and organdy; yards and yards of it adorned socks, waistbands and hemlines along with acres of satin, sequins and glitter. The children looked like the old-fashioned porcelain dolls that I had always craved as a child, while ravishing, mysterious maidens flitted in and out around the tables. Not only was the apparel exotic, but for once the women were unveiled. Most looked like Hollywood princesses with regal bearing, high cheekbones, sloe eyes and jet-black hair.
As the bride and groom walked into the garden, they were hailed by a bevy of women, who belied their elegance by whooping in high-pitched voices, making a staccato sound with their hands against their mouths like children imitating Indians. The bride was robed in miles of white lace, and even the groom had on makeup—powder and eyeliner. I worried that someone would tell me to put my eyes back into my head, it was all so marvelous.
When the bride and groom sat down, well-wishers flocked around with advice and congratulations, and eventually, a band began to pla
y. Before we slipped out, I went up to the beautiful bride and wished her a good life. No more than eighteen and overwhelmed by all that was going on, she looked at me with glazed eyes and said thank you.
The splendor of the ceremony contrasted all too dramatically with Port Sudan itself as we drove back through the streets toward the dock. More an expanse of hovels than a city, Port Sudan was baked and blanched by the relentless North African fireball and completely out of touch with modern Western standards. The monetary system was riddled with corruption, and the black-market exchange rate on the street for the Sudanese pound and the U.S. dollar, which everybody wanted, was double that in the banks. International telephone lines were nonexistent, so calling home was impossible. Also, while checking in at the port offices, we saw that even shipping was chaotic. Carriers delivering grain were sometimes laid up in the harbor for months while dockers emptied the holds by the basketful for twenty cents a day. There was a modern vacuum on one of the quays, but it was broken and nobody knew how to fix it.
In town, rickety old cars, buses, Bedouins on camels and carts pulled by braying donkeys kicked up clouds of dust on the dry streets, with groups of men smoking molasses-dipped tobacco in their hookahs on every corner. Astride donkeys and camels, men from different caravan tribes loped into town to provision, just as we were doing, before heading back into the desert.
Blocks and blocks were lined with old men in front of foot-pump sewing machines who created caftans and vests, with scraps of material blowing in the wind. The scent of henna, which is used to dye the hair and skin, overpowered everything, even the market overflowing with spices, oranges, grapefruits, nuts and vegetables. Without enough money to buy the universal Tang, Olivier and I bought two pounds of the cheaper fragrant rose tea.