The Strait of Hommus
Horwitz, Tony
The Strait of Hommus by Tony Horwitz There's more to the Persian Gulf war than geopolitics. A report from the scene. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—The shipping agent from Bombay lowers his teacup...
...But the men squirrel their pay away for the three months they spend each year with their families in India...
...On the deck stands a muscular young Indian with curry on his breath...
...There are a lot more sea turtles than frigates...
...In India a man and woman are one until the funeral pyre," Kochrekar says...
...But it makes no difference...
...Each man must find his own map for the lightness and the dark ." It is midday when Kochrekar shakes me awake at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz...
...I decide to add my own eyes to the night watch...
...By the time Kochrekar returns, I'm trying to pull us out of a skid straight at the Iranian coast...
...Jesudasyn's inspiration comes from the Bible...
...By day, a mine should be obvious at 100 yards or more...
...A seagull circles overhead...
...British warship this is Soviet warship...
...Outgoing sailors pile their teakwood dhows with Marlboros, Levis, and Panasonic boom boxes for the 12-hour return to Iran...
...I point at the weak light and he smiles...
...While his mates stand watch in the wheelhouse, he shells crabs in the cabin, peppering them from spice jars labeled 'Pang, Nescafe, and Super Chunky Peanut Butter...
...Wherever there is lightness there is also dark," he says in a lilting Indian accent...
...Kochrekar is sitting crosslegged in the cabin again, studying charts beneath a 20-watt bulb...
...Neon Arabic blinks from the buildings lining the Dubai Creek...
...And the 49 miles between are an untroubled stretch of aquamarine...
...But the quiet is deceptive...
...Thousands of them...
...Nothing," he says...
...There is a shout from the wheelhouse...
...DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—The shipping agent from Bombay lowers his teacup and whispers...
...Like most Gulf proletarians, they were carried here in the subcontinental drift that swept millions of Indians and Pakistanis to oil-rich Arabian shores...
...If there is no Iranian trouble, you will reach the Strait of Hormuz after dawn ." Outside his office, along the creek that winds through Dubai and into the Persian Gulf, Iranian traders are unloading pistachios and Persian carpets, ferried illicitly from Bandar Abbas...
...He ended up lifting a corpse from the sea...
...You have never met me and do not know my name," says the agent, who traffics this night in contraband reporter...
...A recent Christian convert, he spends the morning reading aloud from a fundamentalist text written in Tamil...
...I chose the sea because it is a peaceful place," says Kochrekar, a fifth-generation seaman who sailed from his native Bombay 30 years ago...
...Then a highpitched cackle fills the airwaves...
...Here in the world's wealthiest nation, even to offer a bribe is insulting...
...The man was not broken but he was swollen with water, like a fish," he says...
...And one by one the fishing boats ignite their paper flames, fanning out like fireflies across the night...
...The Gulf isn't the sort of place where anyone wants to attract attention...
...Workers caught in war Not that there is much of an audience...
...There is a momentary flare as gas burns off at a distant oilfield, then black sea and black sky stretching all the way to Iran...
...Tony Horwitz is a free-lance writer based in Cairo...
...Jesudasyn flicks through a collection of videos and chooses The Ten Commandments...
...I am Lawrence of Goa," he says...
...Like any location that has been in the news too long, the Gulf—and the Strait in particular— is angling for some kind of record in the cliche stakes...
...I ask him what he has to write about these long empty nights at sea...
...I duck below when the Coast Guard appears and again as the harbormaster steers us into port...
...The captain knows where the mines are...
...I point toward an island on the horizon, but the bow keeps bobbing, like a compass needle...
...The rest of the crew came ashore in pieces...
...Who wants some Fil-i-peeno baNAN-a...
...A mine is like a snake," Kochrekar says, studying the dark water through binoculars...
...Already, Iran and Iraq have sunk more than a third of the total merchant tonnage sunk in World War H. Most of the 300-plus human casualties have been Korean, Indian, Filipino, and Pakistani, including one Indian mechanic killed in November by American Navy fire...
...When docked in Dubai, they sleep in bunk beds on the boat, cook curry in the cabin, and watch Indian movies on their VCR...
...Gunboats and rockets pose little danger to Kochrekar's craft, an Arab-owned supply boat that provisions oil tankers with spare parts, fresh crews, and food...
...Come and get my ba-NAAAAAAN-a...
...There is much dark and little lightness as I walk away from the water...
...I think it is Russia Roulette...
...Only in their money...
...The plight of Kochrekar and his crew is made more cruel by their not being a party to the IranIraq war...
...The Gulf of nightly news clips is a cluttered bathtub, with tankers and warships packed so tightly they barely have room for incoming Exocets...
...From the Dubai Creek at three...
...Except for a lonely coast guard patrol boat sweeping past us in the dark and a few container ships at anchor, we sight no other traffic for the first two hours at sea...
...Oh what I'd give for a net...
...The voice, he explains, belongs to a renegade radio hacker, code-named Filipino Monkey, who likes to break in at tense moments with obscenities and animal noises...
...We could be sailing through an inkwell...
...And I feel a sudden urge to go swimming in The World's Most Dangerous Waterway...
...What would happen to this boat if it hit a mine...
...Lawrence cries...
...To Lawrence of Goa it is mostly tedium...
...It is as if they've never really come ashore...
...He nods his head toward the door...
...Playing captain proves much more difficult than it appears...
...It's the Mon-KEEEEE...
...Ship on starboard, please identify yourself, and what is your intention...
...Maybe...
...is Engulfed and All at Sea and Steering into Rough Water because Iran might mine the Oil Chokepoint, Straitjacket It, -Run Off the Tap on the Free World's Energy Lifeline...
...We are not so barbaric as this," Jesudasyn says, showing me a news clip from Dubai about an Arab man who has two wives and 32 children—and wants more of both...
...It reminds me of walking to kindergarten with my older brother...
...Cheers, captain," a toffish voice replies...
...My God...
...It's the Fil-ipeeno Mon-key...
...Battleships and fisherman Supertankers, some the length of several football fields, are indecently exposed in waters so open...
...During a typical week last fall, I read that the U.S...
...Each night, a workday fleet of fishing trawlers, traders, and supply boats jostle for moorings between shifts on the open water...
...The crew's salary—$900 a month, plus board—is far more than what they'd earn in Bombay...
...In eight hours, they will take on supplies and head back to sea to service oil tankers off Fujairah...
...He knows this is the highlight of his passenger's journey...
...Certain arrangements of a financial kind can .. . ." ". . Please, no," the man says, his face wrinkling in disgust...
...Stepping onto the deck, the breeze tastes fresh and salty, the sun is warm and soothing...
...It is in Dubai, too, that television networks rent helicopters for $2,000 an hour, to hover above the water for shots of Iranian speedboats and burning oil rigs...
...Still chewing on Lawrence's "maybe," I ask him about the danger of traveling through the Gulf at night...
...I have come to Dubai like a thousand other journalists to see the war firsthand...
...The chart shows a legion of penciled circles stretching from Dubai to the Hormuz Strait...
...At night they burn paper fires so other ships won't run them over," Kochrekar says...
...As I watch through binoculars, six men in white robes and turbans drape hand-held lines in the water, calmly reeling in one red snapper after another...
...Ahead lies a low concrete hut marked "Immigration," then the long trip overland to the journalists' ghetto in Dubai...
...This is the U.S...
...Like this," Jesudasyn says, brushing crumbs from his trouser leg...
...It is here, in an oil-rich port 50 miles from Iranian territory, where shellshocked supertankers limp in for repairs...
...Lawrence of Goa unties the boat and Captain Kochrekar steers us toward the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf...
...When he isn't stirring curry, Lawrence adds to an already epic-length letter to his wife in Goa, on India's west coast...
...Then the last bit of light drains away...
...The men are smiling...
...A circle of light flashes in the water, just off our port bow...
...Flowery language is the Muzak of Arab officialdom...
...I know a vessel that leaves the Gulf tonight," he says...
...Kochrekar even lets me take the wheel while he goes below for breakfast...
...Perhaps I have caused some inconvenience by arriving at this late hour...
...Silhouetted against it is a wooden Omani fishing dhow, with a broad white sail and upturned prow, like a miniature Viking ship...
...We wish you a bon voyage...
...But the relationship has always been one of economic convenience, which is now being threatened by falling oil prices and by the tanker war...
...Economically at the bottom of Gulf society, the Indians consider themselves morally and culturally superior...
...The boat is directly over it now...
...It occurs to me that no matter how simple, Kochrekar's statements seem lifted from the Upanishads...
...Offshore terminals blink back...
...In the gathering dark, the sea and sky wash together in a canvas of blue...
...It has been a peaceful day on the water...
...Kochrekar tells me that on his last trip south another supply boat exploded a few hundred yards ahead of him...
...When I look through binoculars again, the boat has moved off and all I see is a flash of white robes and red fish against blue water...
...But the Tennessee drawl on warship 993 is still questioning its starboard stranger...
...A man must make his own map for the shadows...
...Nearby, a more collegial show-and-tell is in progress...
...It is mines strewn indiscriminately across the shipping lanes that threaten destruction...
...I do not understand these Christian gods," Kochrekar confides as Jesudasyn mumbles in Tamil...
...I must see the real thing before I drown in the metaphorical one...
...It does not think before striking ." The captain's engineer, Jesudasyn, studies a nautical map while munching a chapati...
...Every war has them, little people, caught in the crossfire...
...Otherwise, the fishermen carry on as they have for centuries, oblivious to mines and missiles...
...I force a smile...
...But at the creek in Dubai, there is another Persian Gulf, one that doesn't often appear in nightly newscasts or geopolitical thinking...
...And the water remains astonishingly empty...
...I turn to watch the sun sink into the Gulf...
...It is the most contented vision of labor I have ever clapped eyes on...
...I turn around to find Jesudasyn pointing at the water, just ahead...
...Captain Kochrekar, a fine-boned man with long black curls, sits crosslegged before the wheel...
...You see, even in wartime a man can find laughter," Kochrekar says, turning off the radio...
...But this is, what do you call it...
...Then we are swallowed up by the night...
...The tension on board has eased with the passing of night...
...The men tie up at the dock and settle in for another evening aboard their odd little capsule...
...Even more contemptible, the crewmen feel, is the Islamic law that permits Arab men to shed their wives by saying "I divorce thee" three times in succession...
...We come ashore in Fujairah at dusk, just as a small fleet of fishing dhows heads out to sea...
...Kochrekar swings the wheel and Lawrence rushes to the rail to peer over the edge...
...The reality is an azure expanse almost twice the size of New York State...
...The Gulf looks clear enough to drink...
...What I find, staring into the midday sun, is a seasnake slithering past our bow and a dolphin poking its nose above water...
...A long, grey supertanker crawls through the Strait, spitting water and belching black smoke...
...Kochrekar laughs...
...the voice shrieks again...
...warship 993," crackles the party line on Kochrekar's radio...
...At the oil boom's peak, "guest workers" in the United Arab Emirates outnumbered natives five to one...
...Each dot marks a mine the crew spotted before...
...The Bombay agent's boat is a 65-foot workhorse, snub-nosed and broad across the beam...
...The dockside customs official weighs my passport and visa in his hand, barely glancing at their contents...
...The rugged cliffs of Oman rise on one side of the channel, the softer hills of Iran are shrouded in haze on the other...
...Your papers, I think maybe they are not in order," he says, looking as if he might bite one corner to test for counterfeit...
...So I write how I love her and how I count the days until we be together in Goa again ." Today's count is 210...
...Do not be afraid...
...He pauses to show me a snapshot of his sari-clad bride, standing in what looks like a tropical paradise of white sand, blue water, and waving palm trees...
...Sardines...
...Only a few emerge from the flames to ascend towards a shimmering crown...
...Kochrekar navigates without lights...
...Next time we meet in Goa, with my beautiful wife," Lawrence says, offering me some incendiary curry...
...At daybreak, the Gulf becomes a whitish haze, and we churn across it as if through a giant bowl of milk...
...Through the eyes of the crew the conflict looks completely different...
...He waves toward the water...
...The cover shows a crowd of copper-colored sinners, moving towards a burning pyre...
...I am not interested in these Arabs," says Jesudasyn, a sturdy Tamil from Madras...
...The Strait of Hommus, one colleague calls it...
...Lawrence starts a fresh round of curry...
...As the mist clears, the water turns a brilliant cobalt blue, the color a child paints the ocean...
...A safe journey to you and your crew...
...It is not surprising, then, that when a morning rush hour finally forms on the horizon, the tankers are bunched in convoys of three and four and tailed by battleships bristling with cannon and radar...
...Who are you and what is your intention...
...I do this for you only, as a favor...
...Thank you for identifying yourself...
...Shippers have been trying to trace the Monkey for three years, without success...
...There is an ominous silence...
...I joined a supply boat carrying dried goods to ships off the coast of Fujairah...
...Tomorrow there will be more shadows...
...You must let no current move you from the path you have chosen," he says, taking the wheel...
Vol. 20 • March 1988 • No. 2
