April 22 Muhammad Aisha goes home

Muhammad stood looking at the shore, his stomach churned with emotion. A musty smell clung to him like an obnoxious blanket. He watched as the small boat approached, he stood on the bow of the MV Aman, his home for the last four years. That boat represented freedom; the freedom he hasn’t felt since he first stepped on the deck of the Bahrainian flagged cargo ship in May 2017. 

Trapped onboard a floating wreck, the seafarer’s life has been on hold since the fateful day an Egyptian court assigned him as the guardian of the massive floating freighter. If he had known then what agreeing to be the ship’s guardian meant, he would have said no.

He didn’t.

He remembered the day the last crewmate left in August 2019. His feeling of loneliness crept through his body and into his soul. They took his passport and told him he had to wait until the ship was sold and the debts paid. Why him? Why did they tell him he was the one to be responsible for someone else’s mistakes. He couldn’t go home, he had nothing and they had his passport.

They put his life on hold. He struggled to remain sane. Fighting the rats and the boredom he never knew he could feel so alone, so lost. He remembered the day the big storm hit – it was the most terrifying night of his life. The vessel rocked and rolled like an oceanic concert. When the dawn came and the waters calmed he looked over at the shore. He knew that God was on his side having taken him so close to shore. Now perhaps he could swim to shore and get supplies. 

Or almost drown trying. 

Muhammad kept fighting to remain amongst the living and resisted the urge to just stop swimming. He needed to keep swimming. The man from the ITF promised to help release him from his water-bound prison. After all this time he almost lost all hope… hope finally came true in the form of the International Transport Federation. Someone was taking his place as the guardian of the ship and he could go home at last.

Four long years came to an end on April 22, 2021, and Muhammad Aisha went home. He felt joy surge through his body when he stepped off the MV Aman. His feet met solid earth with relief and Muhammad grinned broadly as his expired passport was handed to him. His next stop would be his home in Syria.  Despite his misfortune at being stranded all those months and years, the sea is in his blood and he thought one day, he would return to the ocean. 

In 2020 the cases of ship abandonment doubled. It is amazing in this day and age how many sailers are left without pay and sometimes left to their own devices on board ships in many corners of the world. Egypt is one of the worst offenders of forcing people to be declared guardian of the huge cargo vessels. The Suez Canal is a natural checkpoint in the ocean and the fees to transit the canal can cause the owners of some ships to merely let the ship go instead of incurring the cost to exit the canal.  

The Ever Givin that recently grounded ashore and blocked the Suez is one such ship that may be forced to be left to the port authority. The fines that have been levied are well above the value of the ship. The only thing that may save the unfortunate sailors is the notoriety the ship gained.

It is through organizations like the International Transport Federation that some change is coming. The hope would be some multi-national body could impose rules prohibiting abandonment of a vessel at sea and keep the port authority from condemning a sailor to be responsible for the ship. Many huge corporations are allowed to continue to operate. Even after leaving men stranded and not paying them their wages. It is an evil that needs to be ended. 

Thankfully Muhammad Aisha is home once again. Hopefully, many of the other souls stranded n such ships will be home soon.