The Bones of Grace (15 page)

My first look at this scene made me profoundly sad. Or, rather, it took the sadness that already existed within me and magnified it. I felt I was made of something unmalleable, something hard and alien. It took me time to realise what I was really mourning, and perhaps I am only coming to an understanding of it now, all these years later. It was the pregnancy, of course. I hadn't reckoned with my need to be of the same blood as another person – I had never thought about that before, and being presented with the possibility, and having that possibility taken away, made my
longing acute in the multiplied hit of a desire for something that is a new, but also very old.

But more than that, I recalled the initial feeling of bitterness when I saw those two blue lines and realised that it wasn't that I didn't want a baby, it was that I didn't want a baby with Rashid. I had allowed myself to be carried away for a moment by the prospect of a child bringing us together, but fundamentally I did not want to be heavy with a being that would bind us together for ever. Rashid was not that man. The knowledge, earned on that first day on the beach, was a little grain of doubt that added, hourglass-like, to everything else. And like all the other little grains of sand, I pushed it aside and went on as before, refusing to add everything up.

Although Gabriela tried to persuade me to meet the workers right away, I wanted to become a familiar figure on the beach before approaching anyone. I spent most of the first week at the Shipsafe office reading through the documents Bilal had gathered on the industry. There were apocryphal stories about how it had all started – a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, a ship banked on the shore, a group of scavengers, the discovery of steel, and then, eventually, businessmen who turned ill-fortune into profit.

Mirza Ali, the manager of the shipyard, was my first point of contact. He worked out of a narrow building with a corrugated tin roof and windows that faced the beach. Inside, he and his staff drank tea and argued about whatever ship they were taking apart. I waited for Ali to invite me to meet him, and when he did, I knew what do to – my year as Rashid's wife had prepared me well. I dressed in a sari and sipped tea with him, setting him at ease by complimenting him on his operation. Ali reeled off statistics of how many tons of steel his yard had sold to the construction
industry. I listened politely, taking in his long white tunic and his prayer cap, the shiny bruise on his forehead that marked him as a man who prayed five times a day. He asked me repeatedly if I was comfortable, hinting at the unsuitability of the accommodations in the Shipsafe flat, but I smiled and assured him all was well. I could see why Rubana had sent me here, and it was of course because of class, because Ali would be flattered by my presence, his natural suspicion averted, and I would ease Gabriela's way onto the beach.

My arrival coincided with the purchase of a new ship called
Grace
, and soon Ali was inviting me to witness the ship's arrival. ‘The beaching of a ship is a unique experience,' he said. ‘A combination of skill and God's will.' He invited me to come and see it for myself, agreeing reluctantly to let Gabriela accompany me. ‘As your guest,' I said, knowing that Ali would want to appear hospitable in my eyes.

On the morning of
Grace
's arrival, Gabriela and I were instructed to wake up an hour before dawn and make our way to the shore. Outside my window all was black, except for a few bursts of orange from the kerosene lamps of the workers' dormitory. In the distance I could hear the sound of water swooning towards the bay.

I knocked on Gabriela's door. There had been a brand-new moon during the night, and the tide had grown higher by the hour. ‘Is it time already?' she called out.

Grace
was a decommissioned cruise ship. At almost a thousand feet, she was the biggest passenger ship ever to arrive on Prosperity's beach. Ali had shown me a photograph of a white zeppelin with red trim, gleaming decks and rows of tiny windows. It would take them three, maybe four months to take it apart. Passenger ships were few and far
between on the beach; a photograph had been passed around the office and there was much excitement around its arrival. For a few days the ship had been waiting in Chittagong Harbour, its customs inspection passed, for the tide to reach its highest peak. The reason they beached ships in this particular location was because the water was shallow for almost a mile out and then suddenly very deep, making it easy for the vessels to wedge themselves firmly into the sand while the tide was high. Then, when the water retreated, the ship would be marooned, ready for the workers to cut into its hull and begin taking it apart. This was the answer to Gabriela's question that first night.

It was because of Ali's boss that Gabriela and I had been allowed on site. For years, Shipsafe had been campaigning for a ban on the whole industry. Rubana had won a few injunctions in court, but this had only slowed the work for a few months; soon the appropriate palms were greased, and the court orders were ignored and the ships began to arrive again. When Gabriela and her film crew proposed to tell the story of the shipbreakers, Rubana decided to try a different tack. She went to Prosperity, the biggest shipyard, to suggest a compromise: if Shipsafe was allowed access to the site to observe and report on the working conditions on the beach, she would recommend the grant of a compliance certificate by the environment ministry. As a part of this agreement, the company would allow Gabriela's team to make a film about the workers.

This proposal appealed to the owner of Prosperity, a man called Harrison Master. Harrison had, from humble beginnings, built a series of industries on the Chittagong coast: garments, cement, natural gas, fertiliser. He had bought a hill at the edge of a lake – a far bigger hill than Bulbul's – from where he oversaw his empire. He liked the idea of
being the only shipyard to be chosen as the subject of a film, swayed by the thought of rising above the other companies in the area, not just in the size of his business (he had already done that), but in the quality of his operation. Which is how I had been given my job: Gabriela and I would interview the workers and report on the breaking of one ship,
Grace
, and submit our findings. Gabriela would make her film and Harrison would get his certificate.

I knocked on Gabriela's door again, and she bolted out, her hair packed tightly into a headscarf. I took in her tight T-shirt and jeans that ended a few inches below her knee. I had mentioned something to her about her clothes, but she had somehow taken this to mean that she should cover her head.

Morning was on the horizon, and Ali was waiting for us on the beach. A few of the workers had come as well, and they formed a small party, some with their hands held up to their eyes to see who could spot the ship first. Ali brandished a bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling apple juice, ready to twist it open when
Grace
's crew descended. Further along the beach, a tent had been pitched and breakfast was being readied. The captain would weave
Grace
into the Prosperity yard, making sure she remained perfectly upright as she was beached. It was a particular skill. Ali had explained all of this to me the day before, pointing to a red flag in the water. ‘Once Captain crosses the flag, he's home safe.'

The light came in as we waited, and then there it was, a sliver on the horizon. We watched as it grew. More of the men arrived, wiping the sleep from their eyes. The curve of the ship began to appear, and now we could see the gleam of the hull, a poem of curves rising out of the remnants of dark, and suddenly it was before us, as if it had
turned a sharp corner, white, immense, violent. ‘It will seem to run us over,' Ali said, ‘but that is just an illusion.'

Grace
became audible, her high whine tempered by the rush of water as she approached; then there was a pause for a long minute before the final push to shore, the grunt of the slowing engine, the scrape of metal against sand; and all the while Ali and the others had their hands up in the air as if they were summoning her from the sky; then she banked, parting the shoreline, suddenly immense, her heaviness exposed, tons and tons of steel without the sea to buoy her up. Against
Grace
's enormous hulk, we were tiny and frail. Ali muttered a prayer under his breath, then blew the air out of his cheeks, spreading the blessing.

We walked towards her. She was painted so bright we had to squint and shield our eyes. ‘See,' Ali said, ‘I told you she was pristine.' The workers gathered three, four deep around the hull. They looked afraid. ‘They've done this many times before,' Ali had assured me. ‘They are experienced, and we will take all the necessary precautions.' But standing before the ship now, the black trim wedged deep into the sand, so tall, did they wonder how they would ever take it apart? Fewer than fifty of them, with only the strength of their arms against the mass of the ship – a ship put together somewhere else, somewhere with machines and scaffolding and helmets and time-cards and minimum wage – yet it was their job to bring on her death. They would touch every inch of
Grace
; her heaviness would imprint itself on their hands, and she might, in the course of things, despite their best intentions, take a life or two on her slow way out.

The workers clapped and cheered, sounds to make themselves bigger. After a few minutes a figure appeared on the lip of the deck. He scaled the rim and climbed over, looking
as though he was about to throw himself overboard, but really placing his foot on a camouflaged ladder bolted to the side of the ship.

Ali pushed against the crowd, but the workers wouldn't budge, taking in the prettiest, newest thing they had ever been asked to dismember. Ali told me that
Grace
had drifted for five days on the Atlantic after the previous captain had died aboard, setting himself on fire in the engine room. Two tugboats were sent to pull her to shore, and a week later she landed in Portsmouth. Then, after a few months, she set sail again, only to be struck by a virus.
Grace
had stood in the harbour for a month, her passengers quarantined while food and medicine were dropped by helicopter. The owner of the company, a Swede with a superstitious streak, had decided to cut his losses, and
Grace
was decommissioned, a footnote in the history of unlucky ships.

The captain was helped down by the many arms that reached for him, cushioning his landing. He wore a white uniform with blue-and-gold lapels, tight around his shoulders and thighs. He reached out and shook Ali's hand. ‘Welcome, captain,' Ali said.

‘Call me Jack,' the captain replied, taking off his hat and smoothing down the fine mat of hair underneath, his forehead already streaked with a band of red. ‘Hot here, isn't it?'

Gabriela rolled her eyes. ‘It's not an Arctic expedition,' she said.

The bottle popped. The rest of the crew descended, and Jack introduced a pair of Koreans, an engineer from India, and three Nepalese men who had boarded in Lisbon and been offered a free ride in exchange for cooking and cleaning.

‘So, madam, what do you think of her?' Ali beamed. The
others were already making their way up the beach towards the tent. Gabriela was walking with Jack, her headscarf lifted by the wind, revealing the copper swirl of her hair.

‘It's hard to believe it will be gone soon.' I said to Ali.

‘In four months, it will be nothing but scrap.'

I stopped, turned my eyes to
Grace
, imagining her in pieces, like the
Splendour
. ‘Is it true that she's exactly as they left her?'

Ali reeled off the soon-to-be-destroyed virtues of the ship. ‘Casino, cinema, restaurants, swimming pool.'

‘What's going to happen to all that stuff?'

‘Sold, madam. People coming from Dhaka tomorrow, they're going to give us a price.' He crossed his arms over his chest, a satisfied note in his voice. ‘Hotels are interested.'

For some reason, this made me very sad. I kept stopping and turning back.

‘Madam, this is the cycle,' Ali continued. ‘One ship sets sail, another comes here.' He looked over at me. ‘You are unhappy, madam.' He considered me for a moment. ‘What about I take you for a personal tour, you would like that?'

I eyed the narrow ladder to the top. I had always been a little afraid of heights, and the thought of being alone with him on an abandoned ship did not appeal. ‘I don't know.'

‘I will personally ensure your safety.'

‘I'm not the adventurous type,' I said, repeating my own catchphrase of defeat.

We ate breakfast in the tent, sitting on wooden chairs at long, rectangular tables. The air was stale inside. Ali insisted I join him at the head table, which was decorated with a red-and-white tablecloth and a small bunch of roses, resembling a shabby version of my wedding. Gabriela was showing Jack how to eat with his fingers, rolling up his sleeves for
him and explaining how important it was to get close to the food, to smell it on your hands. Ali opened a bottle of mineral water and filled my glass.

‘Is it true the ship is cursed?' Gabriela asked Jack.

‘That's what they say.' He tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in his curry.

‘Bad luck is finished, now you are on Prosperity Beach,' Ali said. Then, eager to change the subject, he told Jack that I had lived in America.

‘So what are you doing here?' Jack asked.

‘We're making a film,' Gabriela said.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Hope nobody dies taking this thing down!'

Gabriela tapped his arm. ‘That's a fucked-up thing to say.'

Ali took a bite of his bread. ‘Shipbreaking is important for Bangladesh. We need steel. Lot of construction everywhere.' He pointed south, towards town.

‘Hey look, as far as I'm concerned, you got a giant recycling operation here,' Jack said. He had finished eating. A waiter was summoned with a bowl of water and a small piece of soap.