The Moor

The sailor’s salted diary

Photo by Maël BALLAND on Unsplash

“Will you ever tire of it, Younes?” he whispered to the wind.

“Twenty-eight years old, and you have seen more horizons than the oldest gulls in the harbour.”

He leaned against the ship’s railing, that same old wood which had cradled him since boyhood, its planks silvered by salt and sun — a mirror of Younes’ own skin.

“I looked out at the vast blue sea, the sun just beginning to dip, painting the water in streaks of gold and bruised purple.”

“No,” I answered myself, my voice lost in the rhythmic pounding of the green sea waves.

“The land has its gardens and its stone walls, but the sea… the sea is just borderless.”

A rope-tier since he was nine, he could barely grip the hemp. Now, his hands are calloused and strong, knowing every knot and fray by touch alone.

“My life circles the world like the tides. I have seen the sea when it is a flat, turquoise mirror. So calm, one could hear a fish leap miles away. I have seen it rise in mountains of dark, jittery waters.”

Through it all, the sea remains the same. The shores change — passengers aboard change. Forests disappear, but the blue heart of the world never ages. Younes knows these waters better than a friend.

“I can feel the change in the air when the land is near; I know the exact moment the ship will crest the final wave before the harbor of a distant port appears.”

But while his hands work the ropes, his mind sees life’s stories. He often wonders why men build houses when they could have the whole earth as their floor. Younes carries a brown diary, its pages made of thick brown parchment.

“Every evening, I sit on the deck and write. I write about the sun and the moon. When the sunlight first touches the spray, or the kindness of a stranger I met in a spice market a thousand leagues ago.”

When the moonlight hits the paper, the parchment glitters. It is not magic — just the salt from the waves pounding, that has dried on the pages over the years, catching the light like tiny diamonds.

“Steady now,” I murmured as the ship approached the stone pier of a familiar southern town.

“I find a deep satisfaction in the heavy weight of the rope, the swing of the arm, and the solid thud as it loops around the bollard. It is the moment I tie the sea to the land. A black furry cat — I often see her on the docks; she could be a tired traveler, also. I share my bread with her sometimes, throwing away the green fungal part into the sea. I have little, but the sea has taught me that we are all just small boats in a big storm, needing a port now and then.”

Photo by Zeki Binici on Unsplash

Yet, as much as he likes the click of his boots on the cobblestones, Younes loves the untested waters more. The maps in his head have gaps — wild, open spaces where the water is a shade of blue no man has named yet.

“When the sun sets, I sit by the flickering lantern in my small cabin. I open my diary, and it is now too full of sea stories. The salt-crusted pages crunched softly. I thought of my younger self, the boy who first stepped onto this deck with small, fearful eyes.

Younes is older now, perhaps a little lonelier, but he is at peace. Tomorrow, we sail again. He looked at the moon through the porthole and smiled, thinking, “I don’t need a house on a hill. I’ve a ship that knows my name and a sea that never ends.”

(The moor is a short story inspired by real-life events.)