We sailed along the coast of Algeria, with Syria the only Mediterranean country I really wanted to know, but where I was never touched.It is 8 o'clock in the morning and I am on the bridge with the captain and 3rd officer Lawrence, whose whole family I know by now. The sun is rising, right in front of us. On the radar screen the red dot of the Alessia slides 25 miles along the African coast. Algiers is approaching. With my binoculars I search the coast, looking for the white city, but Algiers hides behind the mists. Behind them are the mountains, behind the Sahara.Algiers... I am 12 years old again and the war between the Algerian independence fighters of the FLN and the French army is raging. The French pied-noirs - the so-called settlers - are furious because De Gaulle grants Algeria its independence. To turn the tide, French soldiers and pied-noirs formed the OAS in 1961: l'Organisation de l'Armée Secrète. The Secret Army. In my naivety, they are my heroes: they dare to take up arms against the organised state.
"A dirty and murderous conflict breaks out."
After a while the war chest of the OAS is empty. I listen to the radio news every day and follow their scavenger hunt for fresh money: "In Paris this morning masked men robbed three banks." "In Marseilles, two cash transports were blown up with plastic bombs, presumably by members of the OAS. In Toulouse..." Every day again, after which the attacks and murders begin again, with equally bloody reprisals by the French state.And in the midst of this filthy civil war, Albert Camus, himself a very noir, grew up in the poor district of Belcourt in Algiers. He now lives in a fancy quarter in Paris, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature and is in the left-wing circles of Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir. His Parisian clique wants him to express public support for the Algerian independence fighters of the FLN; he was born and raised in Algeria, he was always left-wing and against "L'Algerie française", wasn't he? It is demanded that he chooses and speaks.But he can't do it.The know-it-all, the bourgeois and decorator who became Camus, is silent. He's being torn apart inside. He sees the French state violence, but also that of the Algerian independence fighters of the FLN, his childhood friends. He sees the blood flowing in the Algerian streets. He is not a pacifist and yet he does not want to side with the FLN's 'freedom fighters', he cannot. Partly because he is a pied-noir himself. But the real, deep reason is purely personal: his mother, who still lives in her poor little flat in Algiers; his mother who can't even read or write.And then he wrote the words that I will carry with me for the rest of my life: "I have always condemned the terror, and I also condemn the blind terror that now reigns in the streets of Algiers, which can affect my mother and my family. I believe in justice, but I defend my mother above justice."This order of values became the key to many stories I wrote afterwards. Blood ties take precedence over righteousness. Love is above righteousness, righteousness is not an absolute value any more than peace.Since I was 12, the Algerian civil war has haunted me, even now on the Alessia. This time I brought some novels with me and one of them is 'Le Voyeur' by the Jewish Frenchman Boltansky. In the book the writer goes in search of the secret past of his mother, who gave shelter to FLN fighters in Paris.And the bank squat with which my screenplay for the TV series Salamander begins is a detailed copy of the "Crack of the Century" on the bank Société Générale, on Avenue Jean Medecin in Nice. Albert Spaggiari was the brain behind the crack along the sewers and through a tunnel. Former French parachutist. Former member of the secret army OAS.
"It will be three days before we reach the port of Piraeus in Greece."
Because I have nothing else to do but eat, sleep, read and stare at the sea, everyday life always falls into the same fold, the fold of life always repeating itself on a cargo ship on the way to its destination.It has a reassuring effect; it gets used to, it makes way for things and thoughts that are not given a chance to show themselves on land.You would be surprised how many intimate, secret thoughts and cravings in our subconscious, waiting for attention. Every day I meet the same crew members at the same times, in the same places. Some officers and sailors I never see, as a result of the tight 'four hours on', 'eight hours off', 'four hours on' - routine at sea. Or they just flash by, like the 1st driver, the RR - Giant Romanian -, eternally in shorts. I only see him late at night, when he comes to fill up with coffee in the abandoned galley at the same hour as me. One minute, a greeting and away again. I almost only see the Chief Mate during my breakfast, when he comes to grab his ready omelette; he always eats alone in his cabin after his night shift.It's daytime. We're still crossing the Mediterranean.
"Sea, always sea, no more land in sight."
With the view on the horizon, Gleb says: "You don't get more than this here. You have the sea, the sky and the occasional clouds. I like to look at that, clouds, I find a completely blue sky really boring. And at night you have the stars. Every night we check with the diopter and the stars to see if our compass deviates; mandatory cost of the shipping company. For the rest you have little more to do than look around. Sailing at night is lonely. Either you get used to it and after a while you can't live without it, or it drives you crazy. If you're worried, for example."Moments later a tanker crosses our imaginary line from right to left, set out to pass it on the left. "That's the second time now," says Lawrence. "Is this guy really gonna zigzag?" He's checking the ship by satellite. The nationality can't be traced, the tanker's heading for Djeddah in Saudi Arabia. Lawrence has the horn blowing: "Maybe he doesn't know he's abandoning course or he's just restoring it now."On the outside platform I look through the binoculars with Gleb. The tanker is a lot smaller than our 85,000-ton Alessia and sails one and a half nautical miles ahead of us. In the meantime, 3rd officer Lawrence starts a conversation over the radio with the zigzagger, an Indian as it turns out. Gleb looks a bit ironically at the small Philippine that is showing itself inside. "Doesn't make sense. Talk. Nine out of ten the other person doesn't even understand what you're saying. Besides, there's a chance that other ships will think you're talking to them and they'll come through, it's all a waste of time".What would he do? The Romanian would shrug his shoulders: "Ignore and set the course. Assume yourself. Just honk your horn and just pass the guy according to your own plan."I'm standing here on the bridge with two sailors of 25 and 22, each full of maritime and technological knowledge and honorable, and yet their style differs day and night.The Filipino Lawrence works with the dedication of a watchmaker and is an all-checker. Gleb is only a cadet and runs on his Romanian swagger.Moments later the captain comes standing next to me. He smells like aftershave and has a beautifully ironed light blue shirt on. We talk a little. The youngsters are inside and together they keep an eye on the course. The captain keeps Gleb in his sights and tells me quietly, "That boy's going to take it far."
"It's afternoon, the sun is shining hard on the deck and to starboard the coast of Tunisia slides past."
We are now sailing near the Tunisian Sidi Bou Saïd, the former Carthage. Years ago I stood on that spot, from where Hannibal started his elephant ride against the Roman Empire.From now on, from this point on our trip, the history of the Carthaginians, Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans will not leave us until Istanbul, the "gateway to the east" : Constantinople.The sea through which our ship now sails has had all the emperors and rulers of antiquity over it, eager as they were to conquer even more power, even more land 'on the other side'. At home I still have a few history books from my humanities period and I promise myself to refresh my knowledge. But yes, that is what I have promised myself many times.
*
By the way, there are much more interesting events on the Alessia: at five o'clock the barbecue is on deck D!In Hamburg and Bremerhaven a number of new crewmembers have come on board and that is celebrated. The only passenger is cordially invited. Francis and some companions drag a sound system through my hallway and on deck tables, benches and BBQ sets are set up."Sir, what nationality are you, sir?" asks a sailor I've never seen before. Belgium? Fine! He disappears and five minutes later he hangs with strings a Belgian tricolour next to the flags of the USA, the Philippines and most of the countries usually visited by Alessia. Someone has made a poster to welcome the new arrivals. I'm standing there too. I have to swallow something.At 5 p.m. the flame goes into a huge BBQ-trough, beer and wine is being poured out of garbage bags with ice cubes and the music sounds loud to drown out the engines and the container coolers.Except for two men on duty, all the Philippines, Romanians and the one Pole throw themselves on the sausages, satays, steaks and chicken legs that Irwin has prepared. We can't stop having fun. The Philippines are the real amusement makers of Alessia and the chef sets the tone: he appears in bright red trousers with black squares.
"The sun shines over the noisy feast on deck and all around us the sea ripples on forever."
The captain shows himself to be a gentleman and a feast among the lowest sailors in rank. For the first time in my life I eat two gigantic rags of beef in a row and in doing so conquer the respect of the two colossal Romanians on board: the first and the second driver, next to me at the table.By eight o'clock the party is over. The Philippines had hoped for an evening of karaoke, but the installation doesn't work. The silent Romanian electrician who shares my table in the mess does what he can, tries and tries, but it doesn't work. Yet it has been beautiful. At nine o'clock I'm already in bed; after a few beers I really don't feel like reading anymore.The engines buzz deep into the belly of the ship and I fall asleep when eaten around.
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