This story received Honourable Mention in the Writers Federation of New Brunswick's short story competition a few years ago. It has been published in SHORTS Vol.1 (a limited edition printing). on commuterlit.com and will be featured in the upcoming short story collection - Boxes of Memories - to be published in the fall of 2018.
Ship Breaking has to be one of the most difficult jobs in the world. There are three major ship breaking yards in the world. One of them is in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Injuries and death are always around the corner and yet, there is a line up for the jobs.I was inspired to write a short story based on my research of the yards for my novel, Dark Side of a Promise.
The Ship Breakers
The Neptune
Giant is a VLCC, a
very large crude carrier.
When it was completed in 1979, it ranked among the largest oil
tankers in the world. From bow to stern, 75 Cadillacs could park
bumper to bumper. The crews used bicycles to travel the elongated
deck. With a beam of nearly two hundred feet, five bungalows could be
placed lengthwise side by side across the deck; her keel is six
stories underwater. The raw steel is covered with over fifteen
hundred gallons of paint. She’d been given a lifespan of thirty
years; instead, she had sailed every ocean of the world, berthed at
every continent, rode many storm’s fierce waves and trolled the
endless seas for thirty-five years. Today is her final voyage.
Her last port of call, two
weeks ago, was Saint John, New Brunswick, with two million barrels of
Venezuelan crude. Now, the tanker cruises the Bay of Bengal at
fourteen knots. At that speed she requires five miles to come to a
dead stop. The ship breaking yards of Chittagong, Bangladesh, are
only four miles away. The captain brings the ship to starboard,
aiming the aging tanker directly at the muddy beach. The tide is
high, which is necessary to allow the gargantuan machine to ground
itself like an aged sea lion, as near to the shore as possible, where
it will die.
The engine that powers the
ship is eighty-nine feet long and forty-four feet wide with twelve
massive cylinders – one of the largest engines in the world. It
weighs two thousand metric tons costing more than the rest of the
transport. Its thirst for fuel demands over fifteen hundred gallons
of crude every hour. Its last chore will be to power the vessel onto
the tidal mud banks, where humans who are dwarfed by its immensity
will eventually take it apart, by hand, piece by piece. The work is
extremely dangerous, with an exceptionally high mortality rate, and
yet there is no shortage of men.
Of the approximately 45,000
ocean-going vessels in the world, about seven hundred per year are
taken out of service for dismantling. Many go to Alang, India, the
world’s largest ship breaking yard, or to Gadani, Pakistan, the
third largest after Chittagong. Where the ships go, the jobs go. As
difficult as the work may be, ship breaking is part of the momentum
powering the economy of a young Bangladesh. The owners of this
particular ship-breaking yard paid three million dollars for the
Neptune Giant.
With torches, sledgehammers,
steel wedges, brute force and painstaking drudgery, it will take six
months to dismantle the ship; one man will die and two men will be
injured by a thousand pound slab of steel cut from the behemoth’s
hide. It will net the owner millions more than he paid when he sells
the scrap metal and he will provide no compensation for men that
can’t work. They toil fourteen hours a day, with two half hour
breaks and an hour for lunch, six and a half days a week. The men
will eat their supper when their work shift ends. At least one
quarter of the workers are illiterate; one quarter are children. The
average wage is $1.25 per day.
*
Azhar Uddin is gently woken by
his father. It’s 4:30 a.m.
“Come, my little man, you
must join your brother at the table. You must leave for work soon.
Come now.”
Hafiz Uddin turns from his
son, supporting himself with his only arm grasped upon a homemade
crutch; the other arm is buried beneath the muddy beaches where he
once toiled, severed by falling steel at the same crippling yards
where he now sends his two sons. He wobbles even with his lopsided
support; the left knee and lower leg, the same side as the missing
arm, were wrecked in the accident also. Unable to find meaningful
work with only a single hand, one strong leg and a defeated spirit,
he remains dependent upon his male children: Nur is fourteen; Azhar
will be thirteen next week. Because they are exceptional workers,
they earn two hundred and sixty takas
a day, just over three dollars.
Rising slowly, Azhar sits up
on the side of the bed and rubs his shoulder. The dull ache in his
muscle reminds him of the steel pipes he helped carry all day. Long
straight bangs of the fiercest black hang over his narrow forehead.
His brown boyish skin is smooth and untroubled, not yet marked by the
lines of struggle. A slight dimple on the end of his nose balances
the squareness of his jaw. The man’s work he does has not taken the
childish shine from his eyes. Blinking the sleepy fog from his brow,
he rises to find his work clothes neatly folded at the foot of his
bed. His father washed and hung them to dry before he retired for the
night, as he would have done for Azhar’s older brother, Nur, also.
There are no women in the house.
Azhar slips on his red and
blue striped shirt, the collar and cuffs worn thin bearing unravelled
threads. Wrapping a green and yellow lungi
around his slim hips, he ties a double pretzel knot to keep it
secure. He often wishes for trousers to protect his legs, but they
would be too hot for work, and he knows there is no money for such
luxuries. Every spare taka
is sent to his mother, Naju, in Dhaka. He ponders a moment, thinking
of her and his sisters. Rayhana is eleven and works with his mother;
and Tasleema is six. He hasn’t seen them for over four months. It
is for Tasleema that they all work and save whatever is possible so
that she can go to school. As he thinks of her glowing eyes and tiny
face, he remembers her promise.
“When we are together again,
Azhar, I will teach you to read.”
The thought causes him to bend
down to retrieve the tattered comic book from under his bed. In the
dim light of the bare bulb from the kitchen, he scans the torn cover.
The masked man with the flowing cape, he knows, is called Batman.
One of his first jobs when he was only ten was to retrieve any usable
items from the grounded ships that could be sold to the recyclers:
rolls of unused toilet paper, cleaning supplies, pots and pans,
furniture, bedding, tools, discarded books, coastal maps, light
bulbs, cans of paint, rope, wire. The comic book had been in a waste
basket; it was torn and thick with many readings. Azhar had seen
other comics before, but he wondered where this one came from and how
far it had travelled when he found it. His boss Mojnu told him to
keep it, otherwise it was being tossed out. He was always impressed
by the colored pages, the photos of cars, tall buildings, fancy
clothes, fight scenes, smiles and scowls – and he longed to know
what the squiggly words mean. More than anything, he wants to read.
Tossing the book under the bed
once more, he tugs the frugal sheets into place neatly, as his father
expects, before joining his brother at the table. Their home is
corrugated metal divided into two rooms with few possessions, its
shape a replica of the many shanties lining the dirt street where he
lives. Theirs is different because their father keeps it clean. The
walls are painted a bright blue inside and out; their roof doesn’t
leak when it rains.
The smell of oatmeal greets
him as it drifts from the boiling pot his father is bent over,
stirring, on the Bondhu Chula, a cook stove. Oatmeal for breakfast is
not common in their home or their neighbors’ for that matter. Most
breakfasts are rice, sometimes with red or green chillies. Or
paratha, a pan fried unleavened flat bread. Yesterday Old Angus
Macdonald, the burly Scotsman who visited them sometimes, had dropped
off a bag of rolled oats. They have no idea where he lives or where
he comes from. They only know him from the story their father has
told them.
The man was almost seventy
when he commanded the Atlantic Pride, one of Canada’s largest
ferries, to the yards in Chittagong when it was retired four years
ago. He stepped onto shore after he grounded the ship and he never
left. When the torches cut a section of aged steel from the nose of
that very ship, a huge chunk crashed to the ground beside Hafiz,
pinning his arm to the sand and breaking his leg. Had the piece
fallen several inches to the left, Hafiz would`ve died. Maybe that
was why the elderly man stopped by once in a while with a bag of oats
or some other staples and a few taka notes. He never stayed long,
spoke very little Bengali. Always laughing, always a mystery.
Nur sits in front of a dish of
flatbread, resting on a makeshift table, which is a piece of
discarded plywood his father has sanded, painted and polished. It’s
the same teal that decorates the home, the same teal Hafiz got for
free. Nur looks up with his usual wide grin.
“Good morning, little
brother. Will you be having paratha or paratha for your meals today?”
Hafiz has his back to his
boys, cooking their breakfast. He doesn’t turn around when he
scolds his oldest son.
“Be thankful you have food, Nur. There are
neighbors who may not have any today, or tomorrow. Don’t make fun.
And Azhar, wash up, do your morning duties, and hurry. This is almost
done.”
Both boys answer in unison,
“Yes, Baba.”
The man that owns the property
their home sits on is the same individual who owns the breaking yard
the boys work at. Not totally without empathy, he provides running
water and outhouses. Perhaps it is benevolence that has him supply
these accommodations; it’s also his desire that his employees
should be healthy so they don’t miss work. Hence the covered
latrines and cold, life-giving Adam’s ale. Azhar goes to the
sideboard, where water heated by his father steams from an old
porcelain basin that is storied with nicks and scratches. He washes
the sleep from his face, tames the cowlicks on his head, before
taking the bowl outdoors to discard the soapy residue. Setting it on
the doorstep, he rushes to the outhouse to complete his morning
ritual. Returning to the kitchen, he finds Nur bent over a smoking
bowl of hot porridge with the grandest of smiles.
“Azhar, we have brown sugar
this morning. Our Baba is good to us.”
Hafiz sits at the opposite end
of the table, his own porridge barren of anything sweet. There is
only enough for the boys, he feels. The used plastic bag that sits
on the table holds about three tablespoons of crumbly dark crystals.
Azhar sits at his seat, an upended orange crate padded with a cushion
his mother made.
“Eat up boys. Divide that
between you.”
As Nur digs into the bag,
Azhar watches his father stir his breakfast to cool it, knowing such
a treat is rare.
“What about you, Baba?”
Nur halts his sprinkling to
look at his father.
“No, no, I don’t want any.
Take it. And hurry, Ismail will be along soon with the truck to take
you to work.”
Suddenly the kettle’s steam
whistle erupts. Hafiz sits closest to the cook stove and twists about
with his single arm to lift the heated pot to fill the three mugs for
tea. When his father turns his back, Azhar hastily reaches into the
bag, pulling out almost half of what is left. He stretches to
sprinkle the sugar about his father’s bowl. Nur grins and tosses in
what is left on his spoon. The boys are giggling as Hafiz turns
around with the first of the mugs.
He stops mid-swing when he
sees what they have done. He guesses it to be Azhar, so much like his
mother. He holds his youngest son’s gaze for a moment before
looking at Nur. Mistaking the look on their father’s face, thinking
him upset, the boys grow quiet. Hafiz briefly studies his sons, soon
off to do men’s work, still childlike in their hearts. He yearns
for them to run free, not to need their strong backs to survive. He
is overcome with this simple gesture of love; a glistening tear
zigzags down his haggard cheek.
“Thank you, my sons. You are
fine men.”
With everyone shy, the meal
passes in solitude. The boys hastily finish so they can get ready for
work.
The End
Thanks for visiting this week and I hope you enjoyed the visit to the yards and family of Bangladesh. Please feel free to leave a comment.
