Whoever Fears the Sea by Justin Fox (english novels to improve english txt) 📕

CHAPTER 10

Early the following morning, Paul was woken by a commotion outside his room. It sounded like an invasion by the Pate islanders. Half asleep, Paul stumbled to the window. Pushing open the shutters, he stared down on a jovial horde embarking and disembarking from a pair of overloaded motor dhows. Sunsail Inn evidently overlooked the water-taxi rank. Just my luck, he cursed, inserting earplugs and ducking back under the net to try and find a few more hours’ sleep.

He emerged mid-morning and set off along the promenade, photographing the dhows and trying to get a feel for the town. Much of the documentary would be filmed here, so he wanted to find plenty of potential locations. It wasn’t going to be difficult: everywhere he looked were beautiful images. Paul used his notebook, camera and annotated map to keep a record.

Initially, dhows were his main interest. They stretched the length of the waterfront, often moored two or three deep. Vessels were being built, repaired, caulked, talked about and compared. Paul decided that the Swahili, left to their own devices, could not design an ugly boat. No one built from plans. Everything was done by hand using eye and instinct. Large jahazis, workmanlike mashuas, flat-bottomed daus or tiny hori dinghies: all of them graceful.

The government buildings and double-storey homes along the waterfront received the full face of the morning sun. He paused to jot down the details: colonnades, crenellated walls and studded Zanzibar-style doors. All these elements would make for a good town-montage sequence. Architecturally, little had changed in centuries.

However, the signs of the new millennium and its troubles were there. Down with the power of money, read one graffito. USA is dead 2001! shouted another. Beside them were crudely drawn American and Israeli flags with red lines through them.

At the northern end of town, Paul looked over a wall and saw a dozen mules lounging in the shade. A sign read: Our sanctuary treats ill and injured donkeys, and works to improve harnesses, reduce overloading, and generally promote good husbandry and care among Lamu’s donkey owners.

He was busy trying to coax one donkey into a more accommodating pose for a photograph when a woman tapped him on the shoulder. She lowered her scarlet veil briefly to reveal a lined face and vacant eyes. ‘You go with me, back in your hotel, good price,’ she said in a whisper. He shook his head and returned to photographing the donkey.

Paul was one of the few foreigners on the waterfront that morning. World events had crippled Lamu’s tourism. In the absence of clients, every available tout, guide, dhow captain and facilitator set to work on Paul, sometimes singly, often in pairs. A simple ‘no’, or even a complicated one, did not deter them. They offered a range of services, the most useful of which appeared to be keeping other touts at bay. He continued to fend them off all morning as he strolled up and down the promenade. Even on his sixth pass, the same questions would be asked, and the same conversations struck up using the same refrains. Paul grew irritable. His idea of an old-world, embalmed Lamu slipped a notch with each pass.

Then he chose another tack and began to play the game. ‘Do you have a dhow going to London?’ he asked.

‘Mister, you are being unreasonable. All our boats are going to Paris today.’

‘How about a cruise to visit the pirate dens of Somalia, then?’

‘But sir, October is their time of rest, before the season begins. We do not like to disturb them.’

When it came to prices, Paul also played hard to get. ‘I never pay more than a dollar for anything!’ he’d say. Or conversely, ‘I’ll give you ten times your asking price and not a shilling less.’

It became a game of wit and banter that would be picked up where it left off each day for the rest of his stay in Lamu. Their refrains grew increasingly tongue-in-cheek and his stock responses more jocular. He asked for camel trips to the Yemen and flights to Afghanistan, and the touts responded with equally absurd offers. They reached an impasse of sorts, like an old, nagging couple. The agents weren’t going to get any business out of him and he wasn’t going to persuade them to shut up.

When the incoming tide was high enough, dhows began to make sail all along the front, cleaving away from the shore and beating down the channel towards Shela. Paul came upon Fayswal at the end of the waterfront. Instead of sailing straight home, the crew were making ready to head north on a fishing expedition around Pate. Husni was going to visit his parents, who lived in a village on the north shore of the island. Paul climbed down a flight of stone steps for a chat. The crew were awkward with him, perhaps feeling, as Paul did, that he’d somehow broken ranks. There were a few pleasantries, before he climbed the steps and walked on.

Paul left the promenade to explore the back streets. A warren of narrow alleys and closely packed buildings offered a window on the workings of a traditional Swahili town: tiny cafés, hole-in-the-wall fabric stores, courtyard markets and carpentry workshops. Peeping into darkened doorways, he saw hookahs and coffeepots for sale, Persian carpets and Indian brassware. Some buildings had annexes that bridged the lanes on mangrove-pole beams. This was the heart of stone-town, a private quarter whose grand coral houses were owned by the waungwana, the patricians. These fortress-like suburbs with their inward-looking homes kept the outside world, and modernity, at bay.

Paul was soon lost in a maze of labyrinthine alleyways. He didn’t mind. It was charming and intimate: whitewashed steps, glimpses of courtyards and small gardens with pomegranate and tamarind trees. A strangler fig climbed out the window of a derelict house,