Chapter 12

Nearing the gates, Fareeha stopped, raised a sandal off the ground, and shook it. She puckered her lips, tightened her eyes, and sucked in air as the blood pumped back through the sore foot. ‘At least he’ll be there this morning,’ she panted as she replaced the left sandal onto the hot tarmac and raised the right. Reaching the harbour this time was taking a lot of extra steps, but she didn’t regret resisting the shortcut: she wanted to do everything right today, and part of that was to approach the port along the surfaced road and enter through the iron gates.

Before starting off again, Fareeha pulled a sleeve across her forehead, cupped a hand over her eyes, and looked ahead. Compared with its deathly stillness on her last visit, the harbour was now an awakened beast, a dying camel that had suddenly regained its feet and was shaking off the sand and dust. Movement and noise from workers and vehicles gave her the feeling of new life, resurrection. A lorry, shimmering before the stone pillars and wrought iron, suddenly roared awake and belched black diesel fumes into the hot afternoon haze. A greasy, sweaty figure somewhere in the cabin blew the air horn at the locked gates and an armed soldier, as if answering the summons, suddenly jumped into view.

Fareeha stepped off the road, keeping out of the soldier’s sight and, slipped around one of the pillars, into the harbour. She threw her eyes right. From outside she had only heard the plangent droning of its engines and seen its smoke, dirtying the sea air; now she saw the thing itself: a black, smoky funnel sitting atop a riveted, rusting hull, pushed up against the stone wall of the wharf and against which the soupy water of the harbour slopped. She made out the name of the vessel, stamped on a long plate of metal affixed on its stern and framed at each end by streaks of orange: The Maharaja.

A dock worker, swaying beneath a sack of flour, appeared from a small doorway near the bottom of the ship’s hull. He bounced with his shouldered load down a flimsy plank that linked the boat to the wharf. Like the nameplate the doorway was also framed by rust, part of a chequered pattern that comprised horizontal line of rivets, gashing forwards and aft, and vertical streaks of orange, dropping into the water. The docker let down his sack of flour; he’d already unloaded enough to make a comfortable bed for the soldier who was supposed to be protecting the food supply but who instead appeared to be sleeping. Fareeha turned her back on the sight and hurried away.

After several minutes of hot flagstones, Fareeha came to the remains of a fence and with a jump she left what should have been the cornerstone of Sa’ An’s economic future—deep water moorings, container facilities, and vast warehouses—and landed in the past. Beyond her stretched history, a natural inlet used by boats for thousands of years. She looked to her right and wondered why she hadn’t made it easier for herself and walked around the fence by stepping onto the long narrow pier that ran off into the water.

Her pace slowed as she covered the distance between the fence and the Harbourmaster’s building, and by the time she had reached the first of its outside steps her body was hardly moving. Her mind, however, had raced ahead and was already making a fool of her in front of the old man. Some of her prepared words had evaporated under the hot sun, the remainder had jumbled out of order during the long march down here, and now she was trying to give herself more time, desperately trying to put them all back together again.

She breathed deeply and started on the stairs. With each step up she managed to fix one sentence and by the time she had reached the top step and was shuffling along the verandah the little speech that was repeating through her mind was beginning to make some sense—at least to her it was.

She adjusted her headscarf, wiped her hands on her dress, and stooped to peer through the dirty glass of the door, knowing that despite its chaotic appearance the office was in fact used. She bared a knuckle, but nobody appeared out of the desolation to answer her timid knock. She turned, raised a hand over her eyes, and squinted back over at the wharf. From her elevated vantage point, she could clearly see a line of motionless derricks that silently watched the activity beside the boat: either unneeded for the small consignment of UN wheat or seized up after years of inactivity.

A man walked out in front the growing pile of flour-sacks. She strained and made out his shirtsleeves and slacks: not the clothes of a docker or a soldier. She waved, wondering where he had been five minutes earlier. ‘Muzaffer,’ she called.

Ten minutes later, the harbourmaster was ploughing along the stone verandah towards his office door. ‘Mrs. Azziz, my dear,’ he puffed, ‘I have left your bag of flour at the bottom of the steps: a bit heavy to carry all the way up—hope you don’t mind.’

Fareeha frowned. ‘Flour . . ?’ And then she remembered the harbourmaster’s offer of help any time she needed it. Her indignation came swiftly and she almost blurted out that she didn’t need flour, that she hadn’t come here to beg. But a stronger feeling leapt from the pit of her stomach and growled at her. She swallowed back her anger and turned away. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she murmured, keeping her eyes to the floor.

‘It’s no problem at all, my dear; anything for an old friend.’

Fareeha smelt the ripples of odour as the starboard side of the sweating old man brushed past her. She didn’t look up until he had manoeuvred himself inside, but she had decided that she would never again do what she had just done.

‘Come in, please,’ he called out, ‘do come in. Can’t give you much time today I’m afraid: Rashid will be over in a while with his papers and he has the foreigner with him—the doctor from England. They’re just getting his things off the boat.’