Thundi

Early in the week, after a whirlwind day of interviews in the island office and atoll office, a lunch at the local restaurant, Ashraf Nooman, another cousin of Sobah and a wonderful help while I was there, organized a barbecue on the north beach, called Thundi. On the way we stopped at home and I changed into my swimming clothes. We drove out to the north of the island, weaving through the streets.

On the way we met Rafeeg, idling along the craggy path on a bicycle, his cane strapped over the handlebars. I’d interviewed him the night before. What an active man! He grinned and waved at me as he passed.

We were joined by Nuss, Ashraf’s sister, his young daughter Laisha, or Lai, and Thaahi (check), his wife, who was heavily pregnant, due in three and half weeks.

We drove along a sandy road lined with palms, affording short glimpses at the sea, light falling out in rays through the swaying branches. The sky above was bright blue speckled with scudding clouds – mackerel skies, we’d call them at home, fading into large thunderheads in the north.

Thundi. The beach is like nothing I have ever seen. Due to the pressure currents here, and the large crashing waves, the grains of sand are large, anywhere from the size of a corn kernel to a walnut. When the waves crash on the beach, water rushes out, hissing, and large swathes of milky white foam shift the stones like glass beads in a jar.

With the falling sun, the light caught the stones and they seemed to glow, orange and pink. Lai trundled off and set about collecting shells, bringing them back to me in handfuls. The shells here have been tossed smooth, rendering them almost unrecognizable. The majority are smooth, purple discs, which upon close examination reveal dark purple lines cutting through beautiful white shell. They are the heads of shells, torn asunder by the waves, and polished into coins. Fingers of cowry shells, speckled brown or white or orange, and rods of coral, beautifully rounded. I imagine they would look like moon stones. Small black frogs, the size of my thumbnail, ambled over the white stones.

Shortly Rafeeg appeared on the beach, ambling down with his cane, framed by a lazy palm teetering on the edge of the island behind him. We stood together for a moment and watched the horizon. He pointed with his cane to the dark ocean, called maakandu, some 50 feet beyond the shore. The beach used to reach the dark sea, he explained. “I have seen it.” Then he swung his cane round in a hook, and explained that with the Iruvai season, and the shifting winds, the beach would shift westward.

It seems I’ve come at a historical moment in Fuvammulah. Just last week, a group of concerned individuals came to the island office and petitioned to have the beach closed to mining. Because there is no other aggregate in the island, the equivalent of the length of a football pitch, used to be removed daily, used for the calcium carbonate cement and for gravel in local houses.

Rafeeg reckons that in 20 or 30 years without mining the sand will return.

As the sun began to dip below the clouds hugging the horizon, I joined Ashraf for a swim in the waves, ducking through the large swells, feeling the cascading momentum roll down my back. The stones were hard beneath my feet, catching in between my toes. It was an incredible feeling – The beach is such that the force of the waves pushes the sand high above the sea. So swimming just a few meters out, you turn and you can hold the island in your outstretched arms. Lai hovered at the top of the dunes, drawing different figures and then digging us over to look. The water was a beautiful cerulean gold, frothy surf, as the waves rose they took on the color of the sun, and were no longer dark and foreboding, but lighter in color.

After the sun had set, we wandered over to the northeastern shore, where Ashraf and his friends had begun to prepare a fire, carving out a hole in the sand, and ringing it with 4 large coral pieces, a metal grate over the top. They started with coconut shells, pouring them out and arranging them in a pyramid, then adding dry palm fronds and the gauzy coconut innards. After the fire had burned long enough, they doused the flames and Ashraf brought over the fish, a jack fish I believe, to smoke over the coals. He covered it with a mixture of chili, salt, and lemon, and the spice was so culi (hot) that the smoke stung my nose.

When it was sufficiently cooked we gathered round and picked off small pieces, eating out of magu leaves that his friend had gathered. Someone brought out the mature coconut, or kaashi, which we roasted over the flames. They unearthed a few smooth coral pieces to serve as platters, and we set about eating.

It was so spicy my tongue burned, only tempered by sucking long draws of sea air and gulps of cold water. Above the full moon rose high above the island. It looked like one of the stones on the beach. Around it, flooding through the clouds, were two rings: deep purple and dark red. Lai and I called it a moonbow. The stones shone in the moonlight, and just like that, it was gone. Every piece of fish was eaten, the bones and coconut shells discarded, the sand overturned. Someone placed a palm frond on top of the mound. “Is that a tradition?” I asked. “They laughed, if you say so.”

Thanks again to everyone in Fuvammulah for their wonderful kindness and generosity! I will never forget it.