As the Bald Eagle Tries to Rule

There in Pali Hill, Bombay, many of us were avid followers of Salim Ali, the (late) Bird Man of India. Not just because the girls hanging around were cute, only, either. "Going to Khor Moosa to join a ship, Sir," was what I said one probably fine and sunny day, or rainy monsoon afternoon, I wouldn’t remember, a long long time ago. "Mostly marshes, nothing much, but be sure to see the Dalmation pelican and Imperial eagle when you are there." I had black, long, shiny hair, not as long as my South Indian girl friend’s, but long enough to need a bandana all the time. A bright yellow bandana made out of the soft stretchy wool fabric for the "Quarantine" flag all ships carried.

+++

Over two decades ago I was lucky enough to get a very well-paying job with a shipping company that had bought and operated amongst the newest, fastest, and most technologically advanced ships in the world. These ships were designed and built mostly in non-British Western European shipyards, with a few out of Japan. This is important to mention, not only because this was due to the fact that the Anglo and American influence was waning in these countries. This is important to mention because these were, simply, very fine ships indeed. Including those from Eastern Europe and Soviet Bloc countries.

This is also important to mention because those of us who had our eyes open then knew that the vast desert also known as Saudi Arabia was ruled by Aramco, that the US influence on the tribal Arabs ended somewhere near Kuwait, and beyond Kuwait lay Iraq and Iran, both fiercely proud countries, inhabited by people fighting each other for centuries, where European and Asian influences even then were on the rise. As an Indian you could, in those days, if you so desired, ride a motor-cycle from Kuwait to India via Iraq, Iran, Pakistan/Afghanistan. I know, because I tried, with a Pakistani shipmate, and somewhere near Bandar Abbas, we got kind of lazy and hopped on to an aeroplane to get back to Dubai instead.

I knew some guys who hitch-hiked this route.

It may be important to mention here that around this period in my life I also started reading Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Thank you for permitting me to jump up and down in time and space, then?

Going ashore in the late ’70s, at Abadan, Khorramshahr, Basrah, with friends, making new friends, was fun. At that age, you generally try to make friends with humans of the opposite gender, and let me assure you, we liked getting up the tidal confluence that was called the delta of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the cradle of civilisation, Sumerian. The UAE, by visible contrast, was a backward gold-trading dhow-plying illiterate people infested overgrown blisteringly hot bazaar souk with brand new air-conditioning, trying its best to replace Beirut and the Levant. Anybody who had ever been to the Levant could see how this part of the world was shaping up, or trying to. Would Dubai replace Beirut as the financial hub for the region? Who, after all, would go to that swamp called Singapore?

I mean, Singapore even needed help to start its own Singapore Airlines. The airline that helped it was called Air India. At the same period in history, Indians and Pakistanis in a variety of uniforms were teaching a vast variety of Iranians and Iraqis how to operate ships, planes, trains, guns, hovercrafts . . . not to mention those in civvies helping them out with banks and hospitals. What I remember is that they had a common name for Indo-Pakis. It was "daal Mohamed".

All daal-Mohameds played teen-pattee, which was a constant source of amusement to the nons. I mean, here is a fast game with three cards and there is another slow game with 22 people, so on and so forth. Ever wondered why cricket stops dead at Pakistan’s borders with Iran? Because they don’t eat too much daal, maybe?

+++

Entering the Shatt-al-Arab River with refineries and oil tanker terminals to both sides of a fairly well marked navigable river, capable of taking the deepest ocean going ships, as a young navigating officer, this was bliss. Bliss with a challenge. Turn-on, to use a mild word. At Umm Kasr, we took a local pilot on board, and picked up shrimp as well as dates from sailors whose ancestors helped Vasco da Gama "discover" the secrets of the tradewinds bound for the riches of Hind. We could have as easily been entering the Elbe or the Juan de Fuca Straits, everything was so pretty.

Today Umm Kasr has been renamed "Red Beach" by armies using the approaches, a beach where I have seen huge sharks sunning themselves in shallow water inches above the cool sands of Khor Musa. The Bay of Sharks, not pigs, and this is the age of irony.

This was when Iranian-Iraqi co-operation was at its best, I think. What’s more, the growing strength of the United Arab Shipping Company (UASC) as well as Arya Lines/IRIS Lines (Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines), both flying very similar colours on the funnel as well as all over, for example, with a joint fleet spanning almost every country in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, was happening at the same time in history as was the fast vanishing, extinction almost, of the British merchant fleet.

You went to any port in the world, you saw an UASC or IRIS funnel. Often both. And we always had enough daal-Mohameds on board.

+++

Soon, within what seemed like one monsoon or less, and I still hadn’t seen too many feathered birds because of a surfeit of the other kind, Saddam was all over tv on one side, Khomeini on the other. Everybody, however, listened to western music on Radio Kuwait. Debbie Harris of Blondie was a great hit. And by now, we were getting triple wages thanks to minor wars. Pakistan had colour television, India didn’t, but we had Ambassador cars. And thus it went on, as we played teen pattee through nights increasingly darkened due to blackouts.

I got my first lessons on Shiite-Sunni and Arab-Persian rivalries when I was deputed to be present on behalf of the company for the release of some Iranian sailors from a Kuwaiti jail, after a particularly invigorating evening out by some of them. I was selected because as a Hindu it was presumed that I would secure justice from the very very upset Kuwaitis. You simply did not speak about introducing Iran style revolution in Kuwait even then, especially during Friday prayers.

I also got my first lessons in geo politics then, as I saw the American fleet creep up into the North Persian Gulf. The furthest Americans could have been said to have an interest in those waters, non-Saudi, could have been Kharg Island, at the most. But otherwise, there simply wasn’t an American naval presence of any sort then, in those waters. But there were growing numbers of Soviet and Chinese merchant marine ships then.

And Diego Garcia was an abandoned island with three goats and a goatherd occupying the abandoned British quonset huts from the 2nd World War days. Salalah was an anchorage port off Muscat where even as late as the mid-seventies, we were taking and reporting depths to the Hydrographer’s Offices. The Suez Canal had just re-opened, and the forthcoming years belonged to the Indian sub-Continent. Atleast, that’s what Kim Y. Suh, our very elderly and respected Korean "battee saheb" or Electrical Officer, told me as he taught me the finer points of handling electricity safely, rules that hold good even today.

Suh knew a lot. He had seen Japan and Korea in the ’50s. He felt we Indians and Pakistanis, we had a better chance, at least we ate the same food and also spoke the same language and didn’t have a sea between our lands. Also, we played cricket and not baseball. Suh learnt cricket from us, day and night on the jetties along the Shatt-al-Arab, with a singlepoint mission, to go back and teach South Korean youngsters the game.

+++

Inspite of years of sanctions, Iraq today has a population of about 22 million people today, a male/female ratio which is about equal, and life expectancy for women at 68 years is more than that for men at 66. There is no other country in the region where women outlive men.

+++

95% of its foreign exchange earnings in 1979 were from petroleum, often paid for and traded in dinars, even on the floor in Rotterdam, and the Iraqi dinar then was worth much more than an American dollar. Would it be true to state here that the world oil trading business moved and stayed in Rotterdam because of the Iraqis, single-handedly? It may. There is no end of theories on this, for those who believe the world is run by oil and diamond interests.

Even the fresh drinking water sold by Iraq to Kuwait had to be paid for in Iraqi dinars in those days. Saudi Arabia and UAE, in the same region, worked the dollar. Please recall that it was the Indian Rupee that was the dominant currency in this part of the world till the late ’50s. The Iraqis and Iranians would accept a rupee currency note from us, Indians and Pakistanis, but would turn their nose up at the dollar. We could travel from Kuwait till India by road, using Pakistani or Indian currency in those days.

Post Shah of Iran departure from Iran, Kurds fled towards Iraq from Iran and Turkey for safety and security. Nobody else would have them. That’s what my friend Shahryar Agighi, who taught me how to "dance Kurdish", told me, as he helped me buy a motorcycle without a numberplate in Khorramshahr. For cash in rupees.

+++

Punting about in a small leaky boat, Ali Aghiani from Shiraz, and I, trying to figure out how they "caught" shrimp and prawn in the marshes, we are suddenly asked to stop making noise by our fishermen guide, stop breathing loudly, ya Allah, Hindi, you have brought us luck, see there, a pelican, it is almost as big as a man and with jet black curly hair like yours, this is the mother of the roc, the big bird that carried Sindbad away, uh-oh it has heard you, now see it, flap away. Keep quiet Hindi, why do you breathe so loudly you son of a ?

I think the wingspan on that big bird must have been 4 or 5 metres.

I wonder where they are now, as the bald eagle tries to rule there?

+++

I don’t know if young seafarers even know where Khor Moosa is anymore.

+++

Many years later. Many many.

The good Motor Ship "Strong Roc", Veeresh Malik in command, slipped through the Straits of Hormuz. Challenged by the American fleet in international waters. "Bound for Bombay, Sir, out of Ras-al-Khaimah with a cargo of scrap. Indian officers and crew, Sharjah flag. No stowaways, no illegals and nothing more than what we have on the manifest, Sir." Static static, mumble mumble, twang. "Thank you Sir, good hunting to you, this is Strong Roc, out, and full ahead Southbound non-stop for Bombay."

Next to me, on the bridge, Ali and Shahryar take a deep cold breath, heading for a new future in a land unknown to them. Some day, Insha-Allah, maybe I meet them? I know Ali reached Japan. I think Shahryar went back to his people through Turkey, after reaching England.

And I don’t even want to talk about the other batchmate of mine who repainted the funnel, changed the name of his ship and gave it a Norwegian port of registry as he slipped it out of the Persian Gulf with a full load of banned crude oil. For South Africa. And then back again. Three times in three months. Everybody knew, everybody kept quiet.

+++

"They" could have, if they wanted to, gone in and taken Saddam out. Everybody knows.

+++