Iranian captain Hassan Rostam has braved the Strait of Hormuz aboard his lenj for four decades, but now watches with despair as the wooden ships are being replaced by cheaper, faster boats.
The sturdy vessels, built by hand, have sailed Gulf waters for centuries, their potbellied silhouette emblematic of regional maritime traditions like the dhows of the Arabian Peninsula.
These days, “there are fewer and fewer” of them, said Rostam, 62, who has spent his life traveling the waterway between Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
Photo: AFP
With a lean body and weathered face, he gazes at the calm seas that are crisscrossed by huge tankers taking Gulf oil to the world’s markets, and naval vessels patrolling the strategic waterway.
Qeshm Island off Bandar Abbas is also home to the much older tradition of building wooden boats, about 30 of which were resting at low tide in the coastal village of Guran.
This small port has long housed several shipyards specializing in their maintenance and repair, but that morning, fewer than two dozen workers were there, barefoot in the mud.
A half-built lenj hull propped on beams would not be finished for lack of money, as its owner plans to dismantle it and use the boards for other projects.
“Today, a new lenj is very expensive,” because “the wood comes from abroad” and construction is done entirely by hand, said Ali Pouzan, who supervises the Guran site.
Each lenj is unique and the ships vary in size, with the craft “transmitted from generation to generation,” he said.
UNESCO back in 2011 recognized the lenj as intangible cultural heritage requiring “urgent safeguarding.”
As modern alternatives have taken the wind out of its sails, “the philosophy, the ritual context and the traditional knowledge linked to navigation in the Persian Gulf ... are gradually fading,” the UN body warned.
In their golden age, the rustic lenjes were used to transport cereals, dates, dried fish, spices, wood and textiles across the Gulf and as far as the coasts of East Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
Commercial shipping has been taken over by engine-powered boats made of fiberglass or steel, navigating the turquoise waters where huge oil tankers now roam.
Lenj vessels were also used for fishing, as well as the lucrative pearling tradition, which has nearly disappeared altogether.
Younes, a 42-year-old Guran resident, has been repairing lenjes in his native village for more than 20 years.
“It’s a painful job,” he said in the baking heat, as he used an old technique called “kalfat koobi” to waterproof a vessel with strips of cotton soaked in sesame and coconut oil.
Recognizing the demise of shipbuilding in Guran, Pouzan is betting on tourism instead, a promising sector on Qeshm as the island attracts a growing number of visitors.
“We have restored several boats to adapt them to sea trips,” he said.
An old ship was being repurposed into a cafe, and there are plans to transform the scenic port, with colored lenj hulls lying in the sand, into an open-air museum.
Near mangroves on the beach, Pouzan plans to build lenj-inspired huts for tourists. Each would bear the name of the most famous destinations the ships once reached — from Zanzibar and Mombasa to Kolkata.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS