A few hours of peace
in a troubled land

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It was 20 years ago this summer I spent a whole day staring at the Middle East.

Beyond the murky brown waters of the Suez Canal below me, lay the fine sand of the eastern Egyptian desert. On the shimmering horizon, mapped in my mind's eye, were Jordan, Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.

It struck me that I was about as far away as I could be from Hawaii (Botswana is actually our antipode) and the closest this Kalihi boy would get to what was Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization.

As a 19-year-old seaman assigned to the now-scrapped USS Coral Sea (CV-43) on the carrier's 1983 world cruise, I spent more than 12 hours quietly gazing at this biblical landscape, simultaneously awed by its ancient culture and shocked that there was so much fighting in an arid land that seemed to have so little to offer.

In my reflections on that serene day, on the waters where the Red and Mediterranean seas meet, I found peace in the Middle East.

Pat Omandam
pomandam@starbulletin.com