An Ocean of Silence by Nefes Kayra Karabal
An Ocean of Silence Sören and I were on our second month following the survey ship on a mission to find drill spots for oil. Our guard boat was humble, its wooden deck always slick as we did not have much to do so we busied ourselves with cleaning and making up stories to tell each other. We had become really good friends after a few duties out in the sea, spending most of our last years together, alone, two to three months at a time. Sören was not much of a talkative guy. Even with me, after years of being alone in small ships together, I was always the one doing the talking. He also had a hard time hearing, he was not all deaf, but I had learned to move my mouth more while talking so that when he couldn’t catch my voice he could read me. He knew how irritated I got when asked to repeat myself, so that was our compromise. When you live on a seventy-year-old diesel work boat, sound is the only thing keeping your mind on the ground and not up there with the Old Man. Th...