A thousand sails

A dying man at sea who has left his son and wife for 30 years, voyages the last; his last voyage home.

All your written letters my son some of them are ragged and bent at the corners. Some I had to adhere together with what I could find. I know more than most that some words are lost and some memories are forever gone. But your last letter left my hands shaky, my mind distressed, and my eyes teary. You said how you now forgot my laugh, my face even the way I say your name. All that was left was a far and hazy memory. Forgive me as I still speak to you as if a boy, the years tell me you are now a man, 30 years �" 30 makes a man.

Like this one dated 31, Dec, 1859. I traced your tears in this letter, when I held the rough almost brown paper against the candle light; the ink was tarnished. Though long past, it still hurts all fabrics of my tampered soul as new. Why did I not see this before? Was it that 5^th Christmas… the one I said ‘Even if the sea boils to melt our ship, or the sky angers to strike our sails… home is where I will be by 24’ knowing you, your tenacity… your unbroken tenacity you must have waited through all the hours of the night.

Did I ever tell you about the day I met your beautiful mother? Yes I did… but let me tell you again, that first story for the last. Your mother, before she became your mother was lost at sea for days, and the Duke, your grandfather, issued a sizable ransom for her body �" everyone presumed only a body could be found. I had never met her, but I’ve heard rumors of her beauty in the spoken words from the other sailors… ‘Fairest of all living creatures’ they would say, the sailors would say.

I was born at sea, I knew the waters well; the rise of the tides and the fall of the wind. What life has taught me, my son, has been this ‘Respect the sea… and she will respect you’ in my small canoe only a dingy to your eyes. I sailed into the wretched heart of the sea. Days went weeks came to follow till eventually I struck on gold… your mother, your fair mother floating on a log.

She was barely alive, simply scrounging for pockets of air… with tired eyes and tired lips. She was still as fair as the sailors had aired. I left home with one beating heart in my chest my son, I returned with two. We fell in love in the vast blue sea. I believe that is were you were conceived. It was then when I promised her, I’d always find her; a promise I failed to keep. With some of the ransom I bought a ship, and found a crew. I assure you, although I left in 29 my heart never left; it still beats in the present of you.

Does she still play her nodes and sing her verse? Does she still speak of me? Let me lie to you my son, and tell you if you write I will write. How I can I tell you this? Old man can make no promises of tomorrow, I have grown old and ill… white hair has replaced the dark, lively soul is now but a tired soul. Born in the sea to live in the sea to now die in the sea. To make one last journey; this journey home. 30 years I said too little to your mother and you about this and that, why I left, why I’m here. Let this journal to meet your eyes try to elucidate.

I embarked on a journey to search for truth, 75 spoken languages buried in my tongue to speak. I visited villages who believed I came from the stars, by the color of my skin. Tribes who killed and ate their young if they were born at night. My son I have seen the dark side of the human race. But let this not deceive you or paint putrid image in your brain. For I have also met kind souls who would not harm a fly, an ant or a stoat.

But my findings were much deeper than what I had first anticipated, in all the tribes the clans the villages I had set both my feet on to walk, one thing was common; they all had a God. I know you’ve shaken your head son and wondered 30 years at sea, is this all the old man has now to show. But if you pause to halt your mind your knowledge and all you had been taught. And think a while you will start noticing the queerness that lies buried in this journal.

They all had a God whether a crocodile in the river, a star in the sky or even a clay pot. I am sure a part of you would agree if I said not all of them could be Gods, especially the clay pot. Nevertheless, what intrigued and moved me most was an old tribe in the west �" blessed with long life. I met a chief there my ears felt deceived when he told me he was almost 200 years old, I later saw the only thing that deceived me was my knowledge of how thing s are. At a further time he became a dear friend. In his dying days he imparted on me a secret held by all the chiefs of the tribe; the story of Qiru.

‘Why is there a sun?’ a young child one asked the great chief who all believed had great wisdom.

‘To shed light of course,’ the chief said

‘Then who created the sun?’ the young one continued to ask. The wise chief was clueless, but to quench the young ones thirst and his dignity as a man of wisdom, he made up a story.

‘It was Qiru,’ young one ‘a huge snake, who spit balls of fire, planets and moons, and even made your great, great grandfather; the first people.’ Young one believed his every word, but the chief lived with this deceitful lie and he watched as the story was repeated, generation after generation a myth turning into a legend to truth and finally into religion. This truth had only been breathed from one chief to his successor.

What can I say to you but that I have now come to believe the words of the old man, not just for Qiru, but for all Gods alike? That they are all inventions of the human brain, fashioned to make sense of the world. I wish to believe that there is more beyond this world than just the ingenuity of our inventions, more than the vastness of nothingness. It would give me great comfort to know that if my breath takes to the sky before my journey home, at-least there existed that blissful idea of me, you and your beloved mother in the ambient heavens. But this is a fool’s hope… a fool’s paradise.

The violent wind and flashes of light outside are tormenting my ship, I believe I’m writing my words for the last scribbling these last pages. As the trembling and wavering ship, is hurling my week soul in varied directions. A thousand sails I have sailed, a thousand seas I have seen. But you my son still remain the greatest journey I had ever known.