Kerala marine engineer recalls first missile sighting near Strait of Hormuz
In the early hours of a tense morning outside the Strait of Hormuz, near the Fujairah anchorage, a young marine engineer from Kerala looked at the sky and saw missiles streak past, one after another. It lasted a few seconds but it was a sight, she says, she will never forget.
Hifa Salim (24) was just months into her dream job, having joined her very first ship in Houston in October 2025, when war broke out in the Persian Gulf, scrapping the ship's planned cargo run to Kuwait in early March. The vessel was instead directed to drift outside the Strait of Hormuz, near the Fujairah anchorage, and wait. Salim later learned that arriving in the area just 15 hours earlier would have trapped the vessel inside the strait when the situation really deteriorated.
It was on one of those drifting mornings, stepping onto the deck for fresh air before her engine room rounds, that she heard a sound from the sky and looked up to see the flashes. 'This was the first time I saw missiles in real life. My hands started shivering,' she says. Terrified, she ran below to the mess room and considered asking to sign off. But once there, she found her crewmates eating breakfast, laughing, entirely at ease and something in her perspective shifted. 'If my seniors could carry their own fear and still show up for work, so could I,' says Salim.
She heard the main engine starting — a small kick ahead for position adjustment. 'I heard the starting sound. 'Tak Tak Tak.' I hear that sound every time. But that morning it felt different. It felt like the heartbeat of the ship. And that time I realised the ship is alive. We are not alone,' wrote Salim later in an essay published in the magazine of Synergy Marine Group that manages her ship.
She went down to have a cup of tea with the Second Engineer, the officer she reported to. 'He took one look at me and could read that something is not right and when I said that I want to stay on board and be part of the team instead of quitting, he smiled and said in Malayalam, '5 saab ippo strong aayi, Vaa namuk oru fuel valve overhaul cheyyam, appo ellam sheryavum' which translated to '5 saab had become strong now. Come, let's overhaul one fuel valve, then everything will be alright.' In the middle of uncertainty, those simple words gave me comfort, strength and the confidence to carry on with my work.'
As a fifth engineer everyone on board called her 'Paanch Saab', the traditional title for the ship's youngest engineer. 'I liked the name. It made me feel like I belonged, even though I didn't have a watch yet,' says Salim who also made the decision to not tell her family at home the full extent of what was happening — she didn't want them to panic. It was only after the ship had safely cleared the area that she learned her parents had been doing the very same thing for her: staying composed on their calls, masking their own fear so she wouldn't carry the weight of theirs. 'We were all trying to protect one another in our own way,' she reflects.
Hailing from Edakkazhiyur, a small town in Thrissur district, her close-knit family had always taught her to dream big while staying grounded, she says. She had once dreamed of the Indian Navy, but the engineering side of the Merchant Navy pulled her in, partly because almost no one at home could tell her what the profession even involved. 'Nobody could tell me what the merchant navy actually was,' she recalls. 'This blank space was my spark. I resolved to become the first person from my town to walk that path, so that anyone who came looking for answers afterwards could look at me, and I could show them exactly what's possible.'
With 3.23 lakh sailors (as of 2024), India ranks among the top three global suppliers of maritime workforce, and stories like Salim's highlight the human dimension of geopolitical tensions in strategic waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz.
