on a ship, northwards

She paid, and occupied a cabin with two portholes on the port side. The passage northwards from Madagascar was a utopian drift. The ship (The Geral Abreu) a slow line of flight, it leaves a wake of two lines that fade… the diesel engines make the ship vibrate, the waves make it sway. Cruising northwards. The last moment of the old history, hums. The ship docks at Zanzibar, it is an outdated container ship, nearly extinct and overrun with dinosaurs coming to an end. In Zanzibar local cargo containers were offloaded, and new containers bound for Europe stacked on the ship. She doesn’t leave the ship whilst its docked. The other passengers spend a few hours in the local shops, walk in the park, perhaps drink in a bar. Whilst she rests and waits in the cabin or watches the loading from the deck. The passengers return from their excursions carrying bags of purchases from the shops and markets of Zanzibar. The ship is docked for half a day, in the morning, around dawn, the engines begin to vibrate and it leaves the docks and gently heads out to sea and turns northwards. She asks “How long would it take before we arrive and disembark?” The crew didn’t know. The ship has guards on board now. Armed, heavy machine guns, a 100 mm cannon has appeared on deck. Pirates, criminals, death. The ship heads past the horn of Africa. Untroubled it cruises to Suez and waits for the pilot to take the ship through the Suez Canal. The guards and their unused weapons transferring to another ship. The insects had changed on the ship as they headed north, the large red cockroaches displaced by smaller black ones. The seagulls and the ships mammals prefer eating these insects. She sits on a deckchair and watches the canal walls and the desert pass by, playing with the child under a sunshade, talking to the other passengers and the crew, a mix of Portuguese and African sailors. The pilot leaves them at Post Said. The ship cruises out into the Mediterranean. A huge storm in the east Mediterranean caused the ship to creak and crack, rise and fall. The noise. They could hardly hear one another speak or scream. The ship holding its course into the storm, the wind modulating its noise, half scream and half howling. The waves highest from the front, sometimes the water came, from the left, the right, in high waves and low ones, rain fell in torrents. Anti-photons making the world black in the storm. She wonders; Is the universe rejecting us, judging us as wanting? Saying in its wrath, blowing , howling with its waves, that its too early for non humans to come into existence? In the endless movement, the other passengers groan and complain at being seasick. It was not so bad that she couldn’t sleep and eat. Eating in the ship’s canteen with the sailors, enjoying the moving horizon, feet sliding and shuffling across the floor. The child laughing and sliding. The depression passed as we approached Greece. From storm to low waves and calm. It was nice to see land again. She was excited at the thought of seeing Europe again. Soon we might see Cyprus, or is that Crete? passing south of Sicily and north of Malta. “Look that’s Italy” she tells the infant as the vibration runs through the deck up her legs. There was no day of wrath, the containers did not move, they had only creaked a little in the storm. Eventually the coast of Spain, the mountain of Gibraltar. Off the coast of Portugal she said to her child “Will you remember playing with me on the deck of the ship?” She was unique in not using the ships internet, she communicated with nobody. Others spoke on their phones though the network to their distant others. She watched the seagulls, the plastic in the sea… Who will clean this sea, she wondered. A not human woman travelling back up her line of flight, carrying her not human baby with her, determined to defend herself, a noble calling, against those who would kill the sea. As the shores of Portugal became visible, she wondered who would be waiting for her…