confirm that the disaster is imminent,
but when [it] will exactly happen, Allah
alone knows.”
T
he Red Sea is a natural marvel that
is sometimes known as the Baby
Ocean. The robust and relatively young
coral systems in its waters extend twelve
hundred miles, from the Gulf of Aqaba,
by the Sinai Peninsula, to the Dahlak
Archipelago, off the coast of Eritrea.
The coral reefs support a unique and
bountiful ecology. Fifteen per cent of
the Red Sea’s marine life is endemic:
many species, including fabulously ar-
rayed parrot fish, wrasses, and dotty-
backs, live nowhere other than in its
bath-warm waters. Along the coast of
the sea, and on its many sparsely pop-
ulated islands, mangrove systems abound.
(Mangroves are nurseries for young fish
and other delicate species, and provide
nesting sites for migratory birds.)
In July, I visited the Farasan Islands,
which lie about twenty-five miles west
of Jazan, the southernmost Saudi Ara-
bian city, which is fifty miles from the
Yemeni border. In normal times, the
Farasan Islands are a tourist destination,
especially for divers. But unsurprisingly,
given the pandemic and the region’s
proximity to a conflict zone, there seemed
to be no tourists on the ferry I took. The
Houthi militia frequently sends drones
with explosives into southern Saudi Ara-
bia. One had recently hit a commercial
aircraft, and others had detonated near
civilian areas. At least one had hit a boat
bound for Farasan. On the day before I
landed in Jazan, the Saudi Arabian mil-
itary had intercepted two drones head-
ing for the region.
The Farasan Islands are gorgeous,
though the weather can be oppressively
hot: it was a hundred and eighteen de-
grees when I got off the ferry. A small
town on the main island contains an
Ottoman fort and the resplendent ruins
of a pearl trader’s mansion from the
nineteen-twenties. White-sand beaches
rivalling those in the Maldives occupy
seemingly every stretch of coastline. The
ocean is lukewarm and turquoise. Every
April, there is a festival celebrating the
arrival of parrot fish into a shallow bay
called Al-Hasis. Hundreds of revellers
from the mainland join the local fish-
ermen and wade waist-deep into the
water with small nets to make a catch.
I stood in the bay with my pantsrolled up and imagined oil blackening
the water. We were about a hundred
miles from the Safer. The models pre-
sented to the U.K. government suggest
that the Farasan Islands could be hit
within a few days if a spill occurred be-
tween October and March, when the
Red Sea’s current is northward. But, re-
gardless of the current’s immediate di-
rection, any major spill would pose a
severe threat to marine species in the
region. I wondered if the parrot fish
would keep returning if the Safer went
under. The catches of fishermen in the
Farasans would be affected; the liveli-
hoods of fishermen closer to the site in
Yemen would be destroyed.
The Saudi Arabian government is
now working vigorously to mitigate the
threat of a major oil spill in the Red
Sea. Officials are concerned about the
Safer’s potential long-term effects on
marine ecology and on international
tourism, which the country hopes to
promote in the next decade. More ur-
gently, Saudi officials are anxious about
the effect of a spill on key infrastruc-
ture along the coast, including desali-
nation plants that turn seawater into
drinking water. About half of Saudi
Arabia’s drinking water is produced
by desalination.
In Riyadh, I met with the Saudi Ara-
bian deputy minister for the environ-
ment, Osama Faqeeha, and two senior
officials, all of whom were engaged in
worst-case-scenario planning related to
the Safer. They would not divulge their
precise plans, but said that they were
already procuring planes, skimmers, and
dispersants to mitigate a spill. Part of
their strategy was to place booms in the
sea to stop the oil from reaching the
desalination plants.
The men were old enough to be
haunted by the memory of Saddam
Hussein, in 1991, releasing some eleven
million barrels of oil into the Persian
Gulf, to stop a marine assault by the
United States. The oil spill was the
largest in history, and in some places
the slick was five inches thick. It pol-
luted five hundred miles of the Saudi
coast, killing tens of thousands of sea-
birds, poisoning the water column, and
creating lasting damage for the region.
A subsequent U.S. study found that,
twelve years after the spill, more than
eight million cubic metres of oily sed-“Only three hundred and sixty-seven followers?
Maria’s not an asset to the abbey.”