Nassir at Sea

Excerpt from a book I am working on.

He ventured out on deck and starred out over the vast expanse of ocean.  The surface was smooth as glass and there was almost no sound, save the low rumbling of the Ba Neferet’s diesel engines, and the churning of her screws.  There were also the delicate sounds of the ship’s hull cutting effortlessly through the water.  Nassir had one love in this world and she was the sea.  He had always loved her, for as long as he could remember.  He loved her when she was calm and gentle, as she was today, and he loved her when her temper would flare and she began churning, and throwing a mighty flood of herself over even the 120 foot bows of the cargo ship on which he manned.  She both gave life in abundance and indiscriminately took lives and claimed them as her own; even so, no man could ever fully embrace her or orchestrate her demise.

     She softly held him in her arms as he slumbered, and the salty smell of her breath was there to greet him when he awoke. She was his ever-present companion during the good times and the bad. 

     Nassir’s passion for the sea had always burned in his heart, like embers of coal on a fire, glowing red, and overwhelming him in a way he could not readily describe.  He had always been drawn to her, but he never knew why until a moment when all things, living and dead, logical and spiritual, came together in a pinpoint of perfect clarity. He realized that the sea was his mistress, and he was forever her servant and her lover.  As such, men like Nassir lived and died by the sea.  A woman could neither rival her passion nor win his heart the way the sea had. She was docile and contentious, comforting and rueful, sensual and vicious.  She was his best ally and worst enemy all in one. 

     Nassir had never been a man of faith in God or Godly things, but he always saw his own relationship with the sea, as a metaphor similar to the relationship the faithful had with their God; ever-present, ever-powerful and ever-knowing.  He was happy to worship daily at her pews, paying homage to her beauty and splendor, smoking his clove cigarettes as a burnt offering of sorts to lay at her alter. 

     He loved spending his quiet time in her company.  On the days when she was peaceful and playful, he spent hours in her presence, reflecting on the meaning of his own life.  He would stare across her vastness, and gaze upon the stars of the night, and he knew in his heart, that nothing in heaven or earth could ever fulfill him the way the sea had.  He was content in the knowledge that the sea had truly given him the life that he lived, and that she would also one day, be his undoing.  Consequently, he would join with his shipmates in waging battle against her when she unleashed her fury against man and beast.  He manned the decks with the others to do what he could to prevent her from claiming their vessel and their lives, if for no other reason, than to have just one more day to spend in her embrace.

     Because of Nassir’s relationship with the sea, he had few tangible relationships in his life, and none that lasted any significant amount of time.  He really had no need for a romantic relationship; in fact, the only time he even thought of such things at all, was in those precious few moments between retiring for the evening, and actually falling asleep.  During his waking hours, the need for a lover, much less a wife was pretty small and far removed from his mind.  When his need for companionship did arise, he sought it amidst the company of the women who bartered themselves in such matters.  Three was no shortage of these women in most of the ports at which he moored, and he found this to be a much less complicated way of dealing with this primal need; still Nassir wished he had orchestrated one last of these encounters before embarking on this journey.  He would surely miss the sensuality of a woman’s touch, in the darkness of what follows this life.  Yet despite the knowledge that he will never again feel a woman’s embrace, he mostly mourned the eminent loss of his mistress, the sea.