Aboard his boat moored along the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian fisherman Mohammad Amin mended a torn fishing net after a long day in waters that have long sustained his livelihood, but are now shadowed by the threat of death.
It has been less than a month since the 47-year-old resumed his routine of waking before dawn, heading out to sea and returning hours later with the day’s catch – a routine he had to put on hold during months of fighting between Iran and the United States in and around the strategic waterway.
During that time Mohammad Amin exhausted his modest savings, all the while fearing that his small boat, anchored alongside dozens of others on the Bandar Abbas waterfront, would be destroyed by strikes.
“We had been idle for more than three months; it was simply impossible to go” out to sea, he said, as he carefully stitched nylon twine through his net.
Nearly a dozen fishermen were killed off Bandar Abbas and nearby southern islands, and 17 others from the neighbouring Sistan-Baluchistan province south of Hormuz went missing during months of fighting, according to Iranian media.
“It’s been about 20 days that we have been going back to sea,” Mohammad Amin said, adding they could wait no longer.