The Aral is dying. He dies like a cancer patient, slowly but inevitably. The land devours the sea, the sand steps on the water. The islands are connected to the mainland, the peninsulas rise from the desert like gravestones. The dredgers have stopped deepening the fairway because the fleet is no longer there. Abandoned ships rust on the shores and are eaten away by dry Aral salt carried by the wind. Sailors work as clerks, lighthouse attendants as watchmen. The sea went almost a hundred kilometers from the eastern coast. What remains is the bottom, which has turned into a terrible salty desert.