Description
Mid-forties, from Chittagong, eleven years in the Shah Alam. Compact, unhurried, and entirely certain of his ground. He runs the deck absolutely — Aratoon gives orders to Ismail and never to the men.
He does not raise his voice. The crew move on a flick of two fingers, and they move fast.
His image (deploy once): the first time a PC gives an order on deck, Ismail does not hear it. He waits — without insolence, without apology — until Aratoon repeats it. He is not being rude. He is being correct.
Background
A serang is the boatswain and effective head of a lascar crew — a permanent gang who ship together season after season and who answer to him rather than to the master. He recruits them, he disciplines them, he speaks for them, and their wages pass through his hands. The arrangement is older than the Company and works entirely without European supervision.
He speaks enough English to take an order, and enough not to need to.
Motivations
- His men. Not sentiment — obligation. He brought them aboard and their families know his name.
- The berth. Eleven years is a career. It is also the thing he would have to spend to defy Aratoon.
- A properly run deck, which he regards as a moral quality rather than a professional one.
Connections
- Serves under Manoug Aratoon in the Shah Alam; the chain runs captain → serang → tindals → crew, and never skips a link.
- Directly commands Sona Mia, Jumman, Faraj and Domingo Rozario, among some thirty lascars.
Appearances
As Played — Session 7
Ismail went ashore at Socotra rather than staying aboard, and led the watering party himself. He told the party the island was a reliable stop the ship had used before without trouble.
When Jumman failed to come back from the spring, he stopped the entire operation — casks down, everyone called in — and organised a search rather than waiting on the captain’s opinion of it. When the cliff face proved unclimbable by Holt’s method, it was Ismail’s crew who fetched ladders and ship’s rigging and got everybody up it properly. His men formed the human pyramids that put Emma and Holt within reach of the cocoons, and his men carried the torches that held the drones back.
He never had to choose between his berth and his men, because nobody made him. Aratoon did not refuse the rescue and the party never had to argue for it. What Ismail owes them, and what they owe him, is entirely undischarged.
Relationships
- Located at Shah Alam — Aboard for the Suez → Calcutta passage
- Serves Shah Alam — Eleven years in the ship; runs the deck absolutely
- Serves Manoug Aratoon — Takes every order from Aratoon and gives them all onward himself
- Rival of Nathaniel Holt — The deck's chain of command is the one hierarchy Holt's commission cannot enter
- Participated in Socotra Cave Rescue — Led the shore party, halted the watering, and organised the search that recovered both men
- Rescued Jumman — Went back into the cliffs for the boy he shipped, and got the ladders and rigging that made it possible
- Serves Shah Alam — Serang; runs the deck