Street of Thieves

IT happened in January. A blow of Fate, once more; at a point when we hadn’t seen a penny of our wages since September, when I had ended up in despair, very seriously contemplating signing up again for the dead poilus, when Judit had almost completely stopped sending me news, replying very laconically to my messages, and when I was beginning to suspect she had met someone else, one night, when we had arrived at Algeciras early that morning as usual and had waited all day for the order to cast off without understanding why we weren’t leaving, the captain called us all together. There were thirty-two of us in the cafeteria. He wore a funny expression, surprised, maybe, or defeated, or both at once. He didn’t beat about the bush. He said, well boys, the boats have been seized by the Spanish court. We can’t move from here until we receive word. The company owes millions of euros in gas and harbor rights. There you are. He raised his eyes to the room. Everyone began talking at the same time. He answered the nearest questioners. Yes, you can return to Tangier on a ferry belonging to one of our competitors, they’ll take you, of course. But that will be regarded as abandoning your post, a breech of your contract, and you’ll lose all your rights over your unpaid wages in case the ships are sold. At least that’s what I thought I understood.

It seemed completely absurd. We were stuck in the port of Algeciras. Fine, me, I’m going back, I thought. Back to Mr. Bourrelier and the War of ’14, which I never should’ve left.

The captain kept answering questions.

“Luckily the tanks are full, we have enough oil for electricity and heat for a good while. And we should be able to get by and not die of hunger. Worst case we could get our colleagues to send in supplies from Tangier.”

“I have to stay here, yes. But you. . It’s your choice.”

“Two weeks, possibly. Perhaps less. The company has to pay part of the bill for the seizure to be lifted.”

“At least we have enough room — we have all the cabins. . There should even be some spare sheets and blankets.”

“I don’t know, we could play charades. If we were in the navy, we’d take the opportunity to repaint the hull.”

He began cracking up. A lot of guys were laughing. But there were others who found it much less amusing. The ones who had wives and children in Tangier, for example. It was a strange feeling to be stuck here, ten miles from home: less than an hour by bike on solid ground.

The next day, we were news in the local paper, which the Spanish dockworkers brought us:

Un nuevo drama laboral en el sector maritime recala en el Puerto de Algeciras. Un total de 104 marineros, los que componen la tripulacíon de los buques Ibn Battuta, Banasa, Al-Mansour y Bouhaz, afrontan una situación muy precaria, abandonados a su suerte por la naviera marroquí Comarit, que se encuentra en graves problemas económicos que están motivando un drama social que salpica también a otros purtos del Mediterráneo.

There was a photo of the Ibn Battuta; you could see some of the crew on board, including me. It was the first time I had been in the paper, I’d have liked to email the link to Judit, but obviously we had no Internet. I sent her a text to tell her, she replied almost immediately Wow! Incredible! Keep me posted!

For a bit I thought she might take a bus and come see me, after all she could enter the customs zone without any problem. I dreamed of being the last crew member on the Ibn Battuta—we’d have the whole boat to ourselves, I’d have gotten hold of the nicest cabin and we’d have spent a dream vacation together, a magnificent motionless cruise, looking at the containers waltzing on the cranes and the to and fro of the transporters.

But there were still a good thirty or so crewmembers between me and my dreams. I couldn’t quite see myself telling the Captain or Saadi “I need a double cabin, I invited my girlfriend to spend a few days with us,” as if our ferry were a country house. We received a few visits — journalists or dockworkers, mainly — but no one stayed overnight, of course.