Floating dissatisfaction / Exile in Egypt

Today: Editor and journalist Maria Bustillos; and Moh Telbani, a writer living in Egypt.

Issue No. 105

My Boat Essay
Maria Bustillos

Life Outside (and Inside) Gaza
Moh Telbani

My Boat Essay

by Maria Bustillos

I.

There’s a tiny archipelago in Loch Broom in the Scottish Highlands called the Summer Isles, which you can tour via Shearwater Cruises, out of the pretty town of Ullapool. I went with my husband and three of the kids the other day. The guide for our voyage, Noel, a most interesting man, was easily located on Twitter when we got back (“Tour boat talker, beach cleaner, ex-fisher, kebab muncher. Fan of fish, sea, sleep & sun. Indy hoping. Occasionally wrong. Sick of the world. Peace. Love Spain”).

The harbor is tiny and peaceful; it was a mostly cloudy day, warm for Scotland, maybe sixty degrees. We had good coffee at the Cult Café before wandering down to the dock. There were maybe a dozen other passengers gathered on board, speaking softly in different languages. We had just a couple of hours out on the water, but they were magical ones.

On deck, the wind and spray were so exhilaratingly cold and bracing that I didn’t even notice it when my fingers went numb. We saw wild ponies on the nearby hills, and there were guillemots, and delicate little baby seals so insouciantly draped on the rocks (“Sixty percent of the world’s gray seals are in Scotland,” Noel said, in between dad jokes and splendid, scholarly patter, booming over crackling speakers). Oystercatchers swooped before us. We heard stories of witches and supernatural rocks and Christian services held in sea caves. Accounts of a cruel period, the Highland Clearances. I gallivanted around on the boat, listened, and took photos, but mostly I became intoxicated by the sea, and the wind, and the looking.