More than three years after setting sail for Dubai, five of the 22 crew of the hijacked ship Iceberg 1 have finally returned home. Suryatapa Bhattacharya reports.
NEW DELHI // The crowd rushed to embrace Jaswinder Singh, bringing garlands and bouquets of flowers as he exited the Delhi international airport.
Mr Singh touched his father's feet - a traditional sign of respect - embraced his brother, Rigan and patted his three-year-old son on the head.
His son was 11-months-old on November 9, 2009 when he left for Dubai to join the crew of MV Iceberg 1, as their second engineer.
"How are you?" is all he could manage to say to Rigan, who for more than three years has campaigned tirelessly to obtain his brother's release.
Mr Singh and his fellow sailors had been held hostage by Somali pirates since March 29, 2010 until they were freed in a 13-day long military operation earlier this month.
Of them, five of the six Indians on the ship landed in India yesterday.
Jagmal Singh, Mr Singh's father, held his son's hand tightly as more than 20 relatives, all men, jostled around him.
"I want to go home and see my mother," said Mr Singh. "In all this time, I never lost hope, I never lost faith. I just wanted to be with my family again."
With that, Mr Singh began the last leg of his reunification with his family, who travelled 200 kilometres yesterday from the village of Sherpur in Haryana to welcome him home.
Rigan, waited outside the terminal for five hours from the time his brother's flight landed in Delhi throughout the debriefing by unidentified security personnel.
When he finally embraced his brother, he was lost for words.
"When I last saw him off, I did not expect this would lay ahead for our family," said Rigan.
For more than three years, Jagmal Singh had also waited for his son to return.
"No one after this will leave the family to go abroad," said Mr Singh, the family patriarch. "He was the first to seek an education as an engineer. We respected that. We were proud of his ambitions but we never thought it would it take him so far away from us for so long."
Mr Singh's son, Abhimanyu, only recognised his father from photographs.
"If you ask him where his father is, he points to photographs of the family," said Naresh Dhull, Mr Singh's brother-in-law. "Slowly, now he will get to know his father."
As Mr Singh was told of all his favourite dishes being made at home to welcome him - rice pudding, fluffy deep fried bread, a curry of chickpeas - his father grew concerned all of a sudden. "Is he warm? Shall we get him a jacket? We must get him a new jacket," he said.
The 22 freed crew members - seven Yemenis, four Indians, four Ghanaians, two Sudanese, two Pakistanis and a Filipino - were freed by the Puntland Maritime Police Force after a siege which began on December 10. Three pirates were killed, three were captured and nine fled the cargo ship.
Puntland is an autonomous region in north-eastern Somalia.
There were originally 24 crew members aboard MV Iceberg I. One Yemeni crew member committed suicide in October 2010. Another Indian, Dhiraj Tiwari, the ship's chief officer, remains missing. Hostages reported that Mr Tiwari position as first officer meant that he bore the brunt of the pirate crew's anger, frustrated over stalled ransom negotiations.
When ransom negotiations between the pirates and the Yemeni owner of the ship fell through in July, family members feared for their loved one's safety.
Not all reunions had a happy ending yesterday evening.
Purshottam Tiwari, Dhiraj's father, said from the northwestern city of Pune: "All I want to ask the released sailors is to give me a clear picture of what happened to my son. I just want some clarity on the situation."
sbhattacharya@thenational.ae
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
FROM%20THE%20ASHES
%3Cp%3EDirector%3A%20Khalid%20Fahad%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EStarring%3A%20Shaima%20Al%20Tayeb%2C%20Wafa%20Muhamad%2C%20Hamss%20Bandar%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3ERating%3A%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Coming soon
Torno Subito by Massimo Bottura
When the W Dubai – The Palm hotel opens at the end of this year, one of the highlights will be Massimo Bottura’s new restaurant, Torno Subito, which promises “to take guests on a journey back to 1960s Italy”. It is the three Michelinstarred chef’s first venture in Dubai and should be every bit as ambitious as you would expect from the man whose restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, was crowned number one in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Akira Back Dubai
Another exciting opening at the W Dubai – The Palm hotel is South Korean chef Akira Back’s new restaurant, which will continue to showcase some of the finest Asian food in the world. Back, whose Seoul restaurant, Dosa, won a Michelin star last year, describes his menu as, “an innovative Japanese cuisine prepared with a Korean accent”.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
The highly experimental chef, whose dishes are as much about spectacle as taste, opens his first restaurant in Dubai next year. Housed at The Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will feature contemporary twists on recipes that date back to the 1300s, including goats’ milk cheesecake. Always remember with a Blumenthal dish: nothing is quite as it seems.
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
25%20Days%20to%20Aden
%3Cp%3EAuthor%3A%20Michael%20Knights%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EPages%3A%20256%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EAvailable%3A%20January%2026%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
PROFILE OF INVYGO
Started: 2018
Founders: Eslam Hussein and Pulkit Ganjoo
Based: Dubai
Sector: Transport
Size: 9 employees
Investment: $1,275,000
Investors: Class 5 Global, Equitrust, Gulf Islamic Investments, Kairos K50 and William Zeqiri
The specs: 2018 Mercedes-Benz E 300 Cabriolet
Price, base / as tested: Dh275,250 / Dh328,465
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder
Power: 245hp @ 5,500rpm
Torque: 370Nm @ 1,300rpm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel consumption, combined: 7.0L / 100km
The more serious side of specialty coffee
While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.
The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.
Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”
One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.
Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms.
Scoreline
Al Wasl 1 (Caio Canedo 90 1')
Al Ain 2 (Ismail Ahmed 3', Marcus Berg 50')
Red cards: Ismail Ahmed (Al Ain) 77'
Biography
Favourite drink: Must have karak chai and Chinese tea every day
Favourite non-Chinese food: Arabic sweets and Indian puri, small round bread of wheat flour
Favourite Chinese dish: Spicy boiled fish or anything cooked by her mother because of its flavour
Best vacation: Returning home to China
Music interests: Enjoys playing the zheng, a string musical instrument
Enjoys reading: Chinese novels, romantic comedies, reading up on business trends, government policy changes
Favourite book: Chairman Mao Zedong’s poems
Fifa%20World%20Cup%20Qatar%202022%20
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EFirst%20match%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENovember%2020%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFinal%2016%20round%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDecember%203%20to%206%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EQuarter-finals%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDecember%209%20and%2010%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESemi-finals%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDecember%2013%20and%2014%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFinal%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDecember%2018%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Blackpink World Tour [Born Pink] In Cinemas
Starring: Rose, Jisoo, Jennie, Lisa
Directors: Min Geun, Oh Yoon-Dong
Rating: 3/5
HOW TO WATCH
Facebook: TheNationalNews
Twitter: @thenationalnews
Instagram: @thenationalnews.com
TikTok: @thenationalnews
