Whoever Fears the Sea, Justin Fox [i love reading .TXT] 📗

Just as he was about to doze off, a squall passed over the dhow. Although he lay beneath a tarpaulin, raindrops drilled the deck around him and rivulets seeped under his mattress. He got up and pulled his bedding nearer the mast and further under the awning. A while later he was woken by the lid of a pot tapping to the rock of the boat and he got up to silence it. Husni was snoring at the stern. A gust of wind shifted Jamal closer to the shore and she kissed the sand briefly, then drifted free. Somehow, he found sleep again.

Paul woke to the sound of Husni loudly blowing a conch. The crew emerged from the tree line and waded out to the dhow. It was a grey, windless day. Jamal motor-sailed up the western flank of Kiwayu, gliding through a viscous sea and sending an arrow wake into the web of mangrove roots on either side the channel. A bigger awning was strung across the deck to protect them from regular showers.

Mid-morning, the doc dished up a breakfast of toast and bananas, fried on a jiko charcoal cooker, washed down with mugs of strong Kenyan coffee. All was soporifically peaceful on board.

‘Fire one!’ came a bellowed command from the Kiwayu shore.

‘Merciful Allah, we’re under attack!’ shouted Husni. ‘Hard a port, full throttle!’

Nuru swung the tiller over and the dhow slewed round. A black projectile hurtled through the air towards Jamal. The dhow responded sluggishly. It was too late. The ball struck the sail and exploded. Water rained down on them.

Paul stared at the crest of the dune in disbelief. A grey-haired man dressed in a white admiral’s uniform stood with a sword raised above his head. Beside him was an enormous catapult. Three men were pulling on a long, thick elastic. A fourth was loading another plastic water bomb into a pouch. ‘Look lively,’ cried the admiral, ‘they’re getting away!’

‘Ready, Sah!’ called the loader.

‘Fire two!’ His sword came down with a flash of silver and the projectile arced skyward.

‘Hard a starboard!’ yelled Husni. Nuru responded instantly, allowing the sail to flog as the dhow jagged through ninety degrees.

The bomb hit the water a few metres behind them with a splash. Jamal’s crew let out a cheer.

‘Load, load, load, you lily-livered landlubbers! Where the hell did you learn artillery? The scum are getting away!’

By now, they were out of range and the third projectile landed in their wake. Everyone on board was laughing. Taki pulled off his red kikoi and waved it at the enemy, chanting something derisive.

‘Old Jim,’ said Husni. ‘At least he only got one on target. He’s an eccentric English lord, or something like a lord. He’s got a lodge up there on the dune and shoots at all the dhows using the channel. Everyone gets into the spirit.’

Later that morning, Jamal anchored off Mkokoni, a mainland village opposite the northern end of Kiwayu. The clouds remained low and gentle rain continued to fall. A few dhows were fishing in the channel, but nobody was venturing into open sea due to the lack of wind and a big swell. There was little to do but laze about the boat. Paul wrote in his notebook, scripting a Pate scene for the movie. A rotund and ever-smiling Taki listened to tinny Arab music on a windup radio, the doc fried white snapper for lunch and Rafiki grated more coconuts.

When the weather cleared in the late afternoon, Paul and Husni went ashore to have a look around Mkokoni. They landed in the middle of a game of beach soccer: Manchester United versus Arsenal. Most Kenyan boys supported an English football club and took premiership games seriously, explained Husni. There was a communal television set, run off solar panels, that screened important games in a village clearing. ‘In this country, soccer is politics,’ said Husni. ‘You never see any of our coastal players in the national side. It boils down to tribal prejudice and corruption. The Swahili don’t count in modern Kenya.’

Mkokoni was a typical rural settlement of coral-rag and makuti-roofed buildings set back from the beach among cultivated shambas and coconut-palm groves. The villagers were welcoming, calling out ‘Karibu’ as the two men strolled by. Passing the school, Paul noticed there were far more boys than girls. Husni said this was because, from a young age, girls had to start tilling the fields and tending to the house.

‘Some of my family live here,’ said Husni. ‘You’ll find that most island people have relatives spread throughout the archipelago. Come and meet my granny.’

They ducked through an open doorway into a dark interior partitioned by walls of cloth. Husni was warmly greeted by family members within, a young relative jumping up to give him a hug. He introduced Paul to his blind grandmother and a handful of female cousins in long kangas. One of them was weaving a grass mat, the other crafted jewellery from discarded slip-slops made in China. Paul was offered a bowl of bhajees the girls had just cooked. They tasted like smoky doughnuts.

The two men continued their stroll through Mkokoni. ‘Seeing as you’re so interested in dhows, do you want to meet a mtepe fundi?’ asked Husni.

‘Gosh, is there still one alive? I’d love to meet him.’

They walked to the far end of town and knocked on the door of a stone building. The housekeeper opened and a short conversation in Swahili ensued. They were ushered into an anteroom and the woman motioned Paul to sit in a straight-backed wooden chair. There was a rug with a geometric design on the floor, a chest in the corner, a second high-backed chair and not much else by way of furnishings. Husni excused himself and the woman reappeared with a tray of tea, which she placed on a low stool beside Paul without saying