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

tacked out through crumbling surf to the reef where a bigger swell broke and reformed. It took him back to his teens, racing on the brown waters of the Vaal. A hollow wave broke just ahead of him so he gybed and ran from it, letting the white water spend itself. The wave was catching him, so he tried to harden up quickly and take it head on. The Laser didn’t come around fast enough and the wave enveloped the dinghy, knocking it over like a toy.

Splash! He went under.

Paul broke the surface to find the boat turned turtle beside him. Fortunately the wave was a rogue and he had enough time to heave on the dagger board, right the dinghy, sort out the lines and get going again before another one threatened.

Over a supper of charcoal-grilled lobster that evening, Trisha teased him about his undignified flip. She told him of a much more tragic capsize that happened recently in almost the same spot. ‘It was a dhow filled with refugees from Somalia,’ she said, the candlelight flickering in her eyes. ‘They were trying to enter the bay at night and the boat hit a reef. Twenty of them drowned and the hull washed up next to the lodge.’

Paul glanced at the calm waters of the bay, the feathery lines of surf at the headland, and tried to picture the horror of a boat grounding on the reef, the sound of wood splintering, waves broaching the vessel, the terrifying tilt of the deck, women and children spilling into the water, the cries for help.

After supper, Paul considered asking Trisha to join him on a walk to the headland, but thought better of it and turned in. His banda lay far down the beach and he followed the beam of his torch as ghost crabs in their thousands were parted like the Red Sea by his footsteps.

He climbed into bed and began reading one of the history books Pierre had lent him. In the early seventeenth century, the Portuguese captain of Fort Jesus had organised the murder of Mombasa’s sultan. The sultan’s heir, a lad of seven named Yusuf, was dispatched to Goa for a Christian education, and later sent to sea to learn the arts of war. When the authorities deemed the boy, now named Dom Jerónimo, ready to fulfil his role as vassal, they prepared him for a triumphal return to Mombasa.

The strange chameleon who stepped ashore in Mombasa wearing doublet and hose was not exactly welcomed. He was trusted by neither Portuguese nor Swahili. When he was spotted praying ‘in the Moorish manner’ beside his father’s grave, it was decided he should be arrested as a traitor and shipped back to Goa for trial. However, the young man got wind of the plot and visited the captain of Fort Jesus in his bedroom. After a heated exchange, the captain was stabbed to death. Next thing, a force of Arab soldiers and African archers rushed the gates, killing every Portuguese in their way. Fort Jesus fell in minutes, and more than 150 Christians sought refuge in the Augustinian convent. Dom Jerónimo took his old name and returned to Islam with a vengeance. Mombasa was his.

The Portuguese men were ordered to leave the convent so that they could be ‘sent to Christian countries’. No sooner had they emerged than they were massacred in the street, their limbs severed and their bodies roped together and thrown into the sea. Yusuf extended an olive branch to the women and children: those who converted to Islam could return home, those who did not would be banished to Pate. The women all chose banishment. An Augustinian friar later recounted how, as the ship pulled away, the sailors sliced the throats of ‘those innocent sheep’, tearing children from their mothers’ arms and cutting them to pieces.

Yusuf then loaded up two captured vessels and set off into the blue. With the monsoon filling the sails of his hijacked ships, the King of Mombasa set a course into the uncharted waters of his new career: piracy. For seven years he plied the Indian Ocean, wreaking havoc. The Portuguese couldn’t catch him: they’d taught him far too well. Yusuf became a legend of the coast, slipping into Swahili ports where he was feted as a hero, then disappearing over the horizon again. He was eventually killed in a battle with Arabs in the Red Sea, still defiant, still on the run.

When Paul glanced at his watch, he saw that it was past midnight. There was a big day ahead. He switched off the light and lay listening to the sea, but sleep would not come. The bed was too big for one person and the sting of longing — for Hannah, for Dalila, for Lorike — was sharp. In fact, the bed could have accommodated all three. Paul stared up at the mosquito net. He was a fish swimming into its great web, trapped in a net of regret, lost infatuation, stupid lust, impossible love. Thrashing about, suffocating.

He got up to take a leak and found a frog in the toilet. Peeing against the porcelain to spare it the indignity, Paul wondered whether he should flush or leave the creature bobbing in urine all night. A little worse for wear, the amphibian was fished out with Paul’s sandal. It flip-flopped into the night to find its mate, relate its near-death experience and then copulate furiously. Lucky bastard, thought Paul, slipping back under his net and finally to sleep.

 

CHAPTER 23

 

Paul woke to the sound of an anchor splash and peered through the mosquito net. Jamal lay fifty metres away in a bed of glittering diamonds. He walked to the lodge where he drank a quick coffee. Trisha gave him a brochure and her card. They would see each other early in the new year when he returned with the crew for the shoot. He