On: I survived a missile strike in the Strait of Hormuz, but my friend has not been

Another missile strike in the Strait - another life lost, another friend vanished. The reports speak of a war beginning, but I see something else: a confusion of jurisdictions. The missile is fired by a state claiming sovereignty over waters; the sailor dies serving commerce that crosses all boundaries. The political question and the human question are not the same. One concerns the authority to control passage; the other concerns the value of a life. To speak of the one as though it answered the other is the gravest of errors.

Sunil Puniya - on his first sea job, they say. The young go to sea for wages, for experience, for the horizon. They do not go to become tokens in a dispute over jurisdiction. The missile does not ask which question it is answering; it simply strikes. But we must ask. We must distinguish. The political theorist may debate the legality of the strait; the theologian may speak of martyrdom; the philosopher must insist that no political claim justifies the extinguishing of a life that was seeking only to work, to learn, to sail.

My heart aches for the friend who has not been found. The sea swallows what it takes, and the authorities will write their reports. But in the library of human suffering, each loss is its own volume. We must not let the commentary of statecraft bury the original text: a life, a hope, a friendship - gone.