Ports are transitional: the places where countries merge, before coexisting on boats. Men had staggered clumsily through the pitching Ulysses, which took us from Rosslare to Cherbourg. They drank Guinness in the cabaret bar, and watched wide smiling dancers perform can cans or off balance jigs. On the less bumpy journey from Brindisi to Patras, men in fitted suits fingered worry beads, and the ship’s menu offered espressos and my first muddy Greek coffee.

At Aqaba, where we were to board a ferry for Nuweiba, two lazy lines and the Red Sea met: Claire and I could see four countries. To our south was Saudi Arabia. Egypt was visible across the water, pulling us west, away from Shanghai; next to it was Israel. And we were in Jordan, where shouting men moved household furniture and awkward, heavy sacks from the roof of a bus to the trailers behind a haggard tractor. The tractor belched greasy black smoke; it would later drag these trailers to the ferry’s hull, where they would be stacked behind trucks and a few out of place private cars. (Read on …)