Voyage By Dhow Read Online Free Page B

splash of oars and the lapping of the water against our ship. At the sonorous ‘ azaan ’ of the muezzin the nakhoda turned from the wheel and, facing east, raised a quavering voice in the call to salvation. Now the evening air came up over the bows, cleansing the ship of the staleness of sacking and dried fish and bilge. We clumsily moved the packing cases about to clear a little area of private space, and laid down our blankets. Most of the passengers who had come aboard with us lay huddled up asleep, but the Hadrami from the eastern end of the coast collected in the bows and began to sing the quavering songs of their country.
    Packages of food had been left in our luggage and we were endeavouring to find them when our neighbour on the deck, father of a family of three, uttered what sounded like a cry of alarm. They had been busy with their supper, and now the man scrambled to his feet and came over smiling and bowing. What had become of our meal? he wanted to know. It was the first of a number of such embarrassing situations. These people, we were to discover, found it difficult to eat in the presence of others who were not eating without inviting them to share their meal.
    We rummaged among our baggage, produced sandwiches, smiled and bowed and held them aloft. We had learned our first lesson, but it was a small problem that constantly recurred, and it took us a while to understand the complex routines of hospitality that governed life on board.
    We soon became friends with our neighbours on the deck, and this quickly spread to the majority of the passengers and then to members of the crew. Possibly only the Western world tends to regard questioning of strangers as impolite. On the dhow curiosity was even a demonstration of good manners. A young man in temporary possession of a few square yards on the other side of the deck leapt to his feet at my approach, and smilingly said, ‘Ask me something about myself.’ I asked him whether he was married and what he did for a living, and scribbled his replies in my notebook. At this he was clearly gratified.
    These Yemeni folk were strikingly handsome, with the refined features of a people locked away in their deserts for thousands of years. I was to notice that they seemed sometimes to respond to questions that were not asked, as if with our increasing familiarity they were mysteriously able to read my mind.
    It was the practice on dhows like ours to carry a ‘fortunate lady’. That night I was to catch my first glimpse of her. When the families were asleep the nakhoda summoned her for a tour of the deck, and as she stole past trailing an aroma of jasmine blossom. I was astonished by how much beauty the faint gleam of her torch revealed in her face.
    This young Somali girl was rarely mentioned in conversation. In Europe she would have been called a prostitute; here she was respectfully referred to as ‘ Sa Mabruka ’ (the Fortunate One). A few days later I asked through a crew member if she would permit me to photograph her, to which she agreed. She proved to be as charming and beautiful as the sailor had suggested. But as she could not appear on deck I had to take the picture in the dim light of her windowless cabin; the result was poor.
    The moon came up; the breeze died away, and we lay motionless on a sea that glistened with phosphorescence, white as a frost-flecked desert. The sail stretched above us like a dark wing, cancelling out the stars. Sometimes it gave a single flap and the mast creaked faintly. A stifling exhalation rose from the bowels of the ship and filled it to the brim, and the chanting of the Hadrami died away as if oppressed. Against the silence that followed could be heard the strong hum of mosquitoes, which the dhow harboured by the thousand. We soon found that protecting our exposed flesh from their torment meant unmaking our improvised beds and covering ourselves completely with our blankets.
    The morning brought no freshness. Aching and sticky