The Eastern Desert
Hassan and his father would go riding off the dunes of the desert by car. The fun would stop when he would beg his father to stop for him to vomit out of sea sickness. The great sea of sand is merciless to its sailors.
One dune is especially broad and high. Hassan would always throw his sandals down the slope and then himself. He would bounce off the great pillow of the desert. Then he would run up again and repeat. He and his friends would mimic the jerboa and jump after the big ears of the rodents as they dashed across the rough rocks in the mountains.
Many say the desert once was green. Some say it dried up long ago and some say it became inhabitable as the ports were built. That the mountains rose out of the ground to shield the rest of the land from the inhabited coast.
The ports of the red sea were once small and insignificant. The romans who built them left eventually. Now a different flag waves over the port. Hassan examined the many different flags hanging outside the offices when he gets to work. He still drove his father's old car which was used for dune-skipping once.
Now he and every one of his friends in the village, Amin, Irshad, Ismail, Mahmood and others had exchanged the sand with concrete. They were driving lorries with cargo at full speed and operating cranes without a license. Hassan was said to be lucky as he had been placed in the "square" without any need for a vehicle. He shipped smaller weights around using hand trucks and checked boxes on a paper. Within a few years he had gotten used to his hammered feet. Not so that the pain would cease to exist, but so that his complains would. He had gotten so used to the pain that he had stopped admiring the strikers sitting outside the gates.
With no hesitation he would climb the containers and forget his ear muffs. He stopped hearing the locusts long ago. Seeing the locust swarms slowly migrate from the desert plains was quite enough he thought. He wasn't whipped. Nor was there any shouting patrons behind him. All there was, was a black printer giving him picking lists every 15-30 minutes.
Spilled items could steal several minutes. Often he would work with 2-3 picking lists at the same time and hopefully finish these at the same time. Driving home across the desert was constantly in his mind. However establishing an income, honoring his dead father, was also in his mind. As such, both of these instincts stretched his legs longer during busy days.
But his long legs could slip. Another look back at the dust that accumulated on the container freighters' decks and the visiting military ships and his long legs would slip. One day he would climb a coal container, as he should not do at any time but did so anyways knowing that 'any time' could still be very late in the western companies. His long legs slipped, and his teary eyes would go blank as he swirled through the dust in the air, fell a distance shorter than any dune and smashed into the concrete.
USS Trent
Captain Aaron Hughes of USS Trent of the Fifth Fleet Area of Responsibility did not respond right away. He was distracted, as often happened during the month of August. When one of his sailors asked for him a third time, he turned his face slightly to the left.
"Captain, we have something brewing up over land. Seems like the temps are uneven, so our plan might get some modifications during the following hours." The lanky man from Georgia was never afraid of taking too much time in his briefings.
"Thank you Officer Naj. You are dismissed." Captain Hughes sighed and made his calls.
Whenever there was time he would spend it on shore. He would desperately attempt to reward himself with recreation and rest at different gyms and nature experiences, but there was little to be found in Port Sudan. Blank walls and pavement with a thin layer of sand acted not as distractions but as a canvas for his thoughts.
Three days until their second anniversary apart. Like the high waves the thoughts would always come back. The further he walked, the faster the wind got. He met up with commotion and saw the young dockworkers gesticulate. Maybe he should get back to his office, the only distraction that really worked, after all. A crowd of bobbing heads moved past. Overworked and tired, he would dutifully force himself to take these walks. He'd regret it, after seeing the passing dockworkers carry a stretcher covered in a canvas felt.
The following day was windy, but approachable, and so the vessel left Port Sudan at noon. She would first pass onto the highway of the red sea to later continue toward the Port of Alexandria. The brewing weather, a forming cumulonimbus, had moved west into the desert. However, Captain Hughes could feel smatterings of sand against his hands far out.
Something about that canvas felt made Aaron Hughes sweat with weary. The vessel was granted permission to travel at 20 knots and Captain Hughes still wanted to go faster. In that canvas felt he had seen his little girl wrapped before school. At rare occasions, they would ride the asphalt highways together to school, and joyously howl when going down steep hills just like on a roller coaster. She'd have her feet on her seat and hug herself in her favorite position.
Back in the desert, the insects and snakes were finding new dwellings as the warm air lifted the sand of the dunes. Somewhere the body of the young Hassan is being washed with warm water heated by the sun. Amin is shrouding the body of his old friend in a white kafan. The grains of sand were lifted from Hassan's eyebrows and made their way toward the ocean.
Barely 80 nautical miles out, radars had picked up dust particles moving at a ferocious speed. Naj, the navigational officer, wasn't worried. It was captain Hughes that first sensed the eerie presence in his berthing. No matter whether he was activated by the dimness over the sea at the corner of his eye or by an otherworldly intuition, he was nevertheless lured outside. His gaze stuck somewhere over the stern.
There was no horizon. Instead, there was a dark mound. Usually, the sea would act as an open space with multiple ways of passage. Now the mound was seemingly blocking off the ocean. Captain Hughes had never seen it, and so he was stuck outside. He had to move closer, and finally settled by the railing on the stern. He ignored the voices in his earpiece and watched the mound slowly grow larger.
At this point the billions of particles of dust and sand had passed over the Red Sea Hills, brushed the containers in the harbor and left Port-Sudan. The arch widened and moved at a significant speed towards USS Trent. However, its silence and its nature was not worrisome for the crew onboard. Officer Naj who saw it through one of the cameras on deck exclaimed "It's just a dust storm" at the inexperienced sailors moving outside.
But it did look menacing the way it towered itself higher and higher. The younger lads who were usually resting at this time were reasonably fascinated by the event. Captain Hughes on the other hand, saw the canvas of his late daughter in the gray wall coming towards him. He had already started to feel grains of sand brush his cheeks, even though they were the ones going 20 knots in the opposite direction. He was the only one who sensed the danger, and swiftly moved back to fulfill his duties.
Soon, ventilating latches were shut, the deck was emptied, and masks were prepared. The wall was upon them, and in a matter of minutes, the malfunctioning started.
Spanning across August and September in 2018 US destroyer USS Trent was stationed in the red sea port of Port-Sudan.
Image taken 2018/09/09 on board USS Trent. Captain Hughes pictured on deck.
The great sea of sand is merciless to its sailors.
