REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Kelly McEvers
My friends in Dubai told me I was lucky to be working down at the creek. It's the best and oldest part of Dubai, they said. The only
real part of Dubai.
When you hear the name of this booming city-state, you think of skyscrapers and construction cranes. The Vegas of the Middle East, where anything is possible and everything is fake. Ski slopes inside of shopping malls. Islands shaped like palm trees.
Even the creek isn't as real as my friends suggested. It's actually a man-made canal. That said, it's still the most vivid place in Dubai.
Hundreds and hundreds of old-fashioned wooden cargo boats — they're called dhows — painted in bold reds and blues and greens line the creek for miles.
It's been said that Dubai is a key stop on the new Silk Road, the booming 21st century trade route from east to west. No wonder, then, that you'll find boats loaded with Asian appliances, clothes, food, toys, and hardware, bound for Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.
The trade goes the other direction, too. Despite US sanctions on selling American goods to Iran, many of these boats are doing just that. Because here on the new Silk Road, politics don't matter. Profits do.
The boats on the creek are segregated into regions of the world, so the first place I stopped — along with Iraqi-Canadian photographer and interpreter, Tamara Abdul Hadi — was the Iranian section. Scruffy deck hands told us of journeys from Dubai to their home country that can take anywhere from 40 hours to 15 days.
Then a small, soft-spoken man named Hussein Ralib Esfandiari walked up and said hello. I'm the captain of a boat, he said. I've been doing this work for 15 years. My father and grandfather were captains, too. A few years ago my boat sank. Four guys died. I lost everything.
We knew we had our man.
Hussein's father used to make the same, perilous trip across the Persian Gulf, carting drinking water from Iran to Dubai. Now Hussein takes whatever will turn the highest profit. These days, that means American goods or, even better, Chinese-made goods that look American but are cheaper for him to buy.
Hussein usually spends about two weeks moored in Dubai. He passes his days trolling the open-air souks, or markets, just across the road from the creek. He buys Chinese-made shoes, dishes, blankets, and clothes. And, for this trip at least, a handful of American cell phones. His crew packed the cargo and cinched it up with hand-made nets. Then Hussein waited for the right moment to sail.
Winter in the Gulf means high winds and rough seas. Since the sinking of his boat, Hussein takes few chances. This time he waited nearly a week before giving the go-ahead to sail.
Our original plan was to travel with Hussein all the way to Iran. But even if Tamara and I had visas to enter the Islamic Republic, we could not do it on a boat. So we decided to sail with him for a while, then catch a ride back to Dubai.
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“I want to stop. I really do. After I get married, then I'll stop.” — Hussein Ralib Esfandiari, Dhow Captain
Even this proved to be difficult. That's because we weren't allowed to leave the creek on a cargo boat. So Tamara asked her friend, Nadim, to take us out in his speedboat. Once both boats reached open water, Tamara and I would jump onto Hussein's dhow, stay long enough to see what life was like on board, then head back to Dubai with Nadim.
This worked, for a while. Until we realized we were being surrounded by official-looking boats. The coast guard. Without any explanation, they ordered us all back to Dubai.
We waited for hours before we were interrogated by intelligence officers. We realized that we looked pretty suspicious: two women, American and Arab, on a cargo boat steaming toward Iran. We explained that we were journalists and, just after midnight, they let us go.
But they held Hussein. The officers threatened to sink his boat, asked him if he'd been paid to lie. The next morning, when they were finally satisfied that Hussein had done nothing wrong, they released him.
More than a week later, when Tamara and I at last reached him by phone, Hussein told us that the delay had actually saved his life. He said the night we were detained a big storm blew in. All the boats that had sailed that day were caught in it. Fifteen of them sank. But because Hussein got such a late start, he was near enough to an island to drop anchor and wait for the storm to pass. He stayed for ten days, then sailed on to Iran.
I had hoped to catch up with him in Iran, but I couldn't get a visa, so I asked an Iranian reporter named Kambiz Karimi to meet Hussein in his hometown, Ganaveh. By the time Kambiz arrived, the boat was empty. Hussein had sold all his cargo and was expecting to net about three thousand dollars from the trip.
Kambiz met Hussein's mother and sister, who rent a small, unfurnished apartment. I listened in over the phone. The family said times have been hard since Hussein's boat sank. Not only for money, but for worry. Hussein's mother, who is blind, told us she touches his bed every night, in the hope that he is at home and safe. If he's not there, she can't sleep.
Back when the boat sank, Hussein was engaged to a local girl. But she broke it off when she realized he no longer had a way to support her. Now Hussein has a new boat and a new fiancée. But she has agreed to marry on one condition: that he stop captaining the boat, and do his buying and selling on land instead.
Hussein told us he wants to stop, he plans to stop. But then, the last time we talked, he was already preparing for another trip back to Dubai, to load his boat with cargo and cross the Gulf again.
When he told me this, over the phone, I couldn't help thinking back to something one of his friends had told me. We were sitting on Hussein's boat, when it was still moored in the Dubai creek. Hussein's friend had been sailing cargo boats for thirty years. He belly-laughed at the suggestion of Hussein quitting.
"What else would he do?" he said, looking out over what seemed like a city of wooden boats. "Hussein is a crab. He likes to get out and walk around. But he always finds his way back to the water."
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