Whoever Fears the Sea Justin Fox (books for 8th graders .txt) 📖

for themselves on to paper plates, the crew polished off the rest, eating straight from the pot with their right hands.

Jamal cruised up the western flank of Pate, the largest island in the archipelago. Flat, encircled by mangroves, marshes and shifting intertidal zones, its perimeter punctured by long, circuitous creeks, Pate is half inundated at high tide. Sailors need to know their business here.

Less accessible and far less popular with tourists than Lamu, Pate is nonetheless thick with Swahili history. Over the course of a millennium, numerous city-states have risen and fallen along its shores; palaces and great mosques have been built, forts erected, Byzantine political games of war and trade played out. Today’s peaceful, shrunken settlements belie its stormy past.

Paul asked Husni whether they could go ashore and visit one such ‘city’. The two men bent over a chart. The skipper suggested that, given the high tide, Jamal might just be able to get close enough to Siyu and Nuru duly altered course, aiming for a gap in the mangroves.

Soon they were sailing up a long inlet towards Siyu, once a famed centre of Islamic scholarship, now a forgotten village with some very impressive ruins. Jamal tied up to a jetty deep inside the creek. Husni and Paul went ashore and strode through coconut plantations towards the town while the dhow headed back out to sea, lest it be grounded by the ebbing tide. Reaching the outskirts of Siyu, they came to an Omani-style fort dominating the anchorage. Paul thought the tiny bay, with its Camelot-like castle, must be one of the most picturesque spots in the archipelago.

A man named Isaam — pale skin, receding hairline, goatee — offered to be their guide. ‘Here is the city wall, but as you can see, there is very little left,’ he said. ‘Inside the walls were thirty thousand inhabitants; now we are less than five thousand. We were once a big, famous city; now we are a poor fishing village.’

They wandered among the overgrown vestiges of houses, mosques and the sultan’s palace. ‘The ruling family, the Famaus, produced many famous poets,’ said Isaam. ‘The “Utendi wa Mwana Kupona”, written by the wife of Sheikh Bwana Mataka, is the most beautiful of all Swahili poems.’ He recited:

Wanangu Waislamu

Ninenayo uhikimu

Mutimizapo yatimu

Na peponi mutangiya.

 

O my children of Islam

Attend to the words I speak

If you fulfil them completely

Then paradise you shall enter.

There were a few pillar tombs and the odd domed vault still standing. African vernacular architecture, adapted by the Arabs; once, they would have been inlaid with hundreds of Chinese porcelain plates. Only smashed ones remained. Children played among the ruins, ignoring the illustrious ghosts who watched them.

At the town jetty, Husni and Paul found a fisherman who agreed to ferry them back to Jamal for a small fee. His vessel was a long, narrow, double-ended dau. She was fast and the ebb hastened their progress. With two passengers on board, her crew was showing off, constantly adjusting the yard and main sheet, tweaking the preventers, making sure the sail caught every ounce of a fluky breeze that whispered through the tops of the mangrove trees.

Back on board Jamal, they upped anchor and headed north.

 

CHAPTER 21

 

‘Kizingitini is a very devout place,’ said Husni as they rounded the top of Pate, on course for Husni’s hometown. ‘You can’t even bring alcohol ashore.’

‘And it’s okay to bring a Christian?’ asked Paul.

‘Oh sure,’ chuckled Husni. ‘No problem. You know, I was making a voyage here on a friend’s dhow last year with some Catholic missionaries. It was a funny thing. The crew prayed to Allah on the aft deck, the missionaries prayed to God on the foredeck and the atheist passengers sat drinking beer amidships. It was a little bit strange.’

As they approached the town, loudspeakers broadcast a melodic incantation from the Koran, followed by a sermon that echoed across the water. ‘We lost time going ashore at Siyu, so we should not land here,’ said Husni. ‘We must push on to get to our anchorage before dark.’

They sailed through Kizingitini’s roadstead, passing close to the pier. Fishermen and childhood friends waved to the crew and called greetings. Once clear of the anchored dhows, Nuru was instructed to set course for Kiwayu Island. Jamal bore off on to a beam reach and picked up speed. Half a dozen dhows were approaching them, racing back to Kizingitini, laden with their lobster catch. Sailors sat out on trapeze boards, calling challenges to each other and coaxing every last knot out of their mashuas. It seemed that even bringing in the day’s catch was a chance to score points against a competing boat.

One dhow caught a heavy gust and heeled too far, water pouring over the leeward rail. A hand quickly freed off the main sheet, the skipper tried to bear up into the wind and the crew leant out madly, but it was too late. Within moments the dhow was swamped, the sail flogging loudly. There was pandemonium on board.

By the time Jamal drew alongside, only the tops of the gunnels were visible and eight men were in the water. A small fleet of dhows gathered around the stricken vessel. Only Jamal had an engine, so she would have to do the towing. The mast and yard of the swamped vessel were unshipped and secured to the bowsprit and thwarts by her swimming crew. Husni tossed a line to the skipper and soon the semi-submerged craft was bobbing along behind them like a weird, Da Vinci-designed submarine. At times the dhow disappeared completely, with only eight torsos wearing masks and snorkels protruding above the surface. Paul pulled out his camera and took a photo of the bizarre scene. It was a slow, tedious chug back to Kizingitini. When her keel eventually touched bottom, the shivering men