Start of Ramazan, DhuvaafaruMy earliest memory is coming home to our house in the trees after a surgery to improve my hearing. For the first time in my life I could hear the growl of cars on the highway.
I spent my whole year listening. So much so that I sometimes wondered if I’d forgotten how to speak. I tried to blend into my interviews - to be so open that I sloughed off my identity, my height, my beliefs, even my sex, to make others comfortable.
And the truth is I got used to staying silent. It was easier to hear the stories of others than to intone my own. After all, that’s the first thing we do as humans: listen in the womb. Before we see and touch, even think: we hear.
But in the end it’s all sound. We also have to speak, so others can listen to the stories we have heard, so we can hear ourselves.
This is the story that I wrote frantically in the days after I returned from the Watson Returner's Conference. It's long, and emotionally baring, but I think it somehow explains the range of emotions I was experiencing upon "re-entry." As one friend pointed out, in many ways I'm still traveling - navigating a new world between home and away. This story is about family, religion, recording, listening, Dhuvaafaru, the 2004 tsunami, and, I think, I hope, humanity.
I leave the airport in tears. It’s as if the scars on my body have finally begun to leach pain.
I find my Dad, shuffling through the glove compartment, looking for something. When he sees me he steps quickly out of the car and hugs me, alarmed. "Was someone mean to you?" he asks as he loads my bag into the trunk.
"No!" I sob. "They were so nice!" Shusshing (a sound I can’t describe, but one he uses when his daughters are upset), he drives.
“Smell the air, Aylie.”
I recognize it. We’ve arrived at Tony’s Donuts in Portland. I laugh. He's always had this reaction to my tears. When I was little and I would cry, he'd respond in one of two ways: “you must be hungry” or “you must be tired.” Today I’m both. But something else, too.
We enter the small bakery. A man with a red mohawk at the counter looks from me to my father and back, with no change of expression. This must be routine for him, I think, and let out a strangled giggle. Behind him, donuts are piled high on the shelves, slick with sugar. My Dad buys two molasses-glazed and we head outside to sit at an old picnic table.
I've never seen my Dad look at me so earnestly.
We are the same person on so many levels - we get lost in a familiar neighborhood, we are constantly searching for our keys or a phone, we ask questions, we dance like a family of orangutans. But when it comes to sensitivity - we couldn't be more different. He laughs as I whimper and begin to nibble at my donut, feebly picking at it as I speak.
This laughter has always echoed between us in these moments.
In the past it bothered me. I feel things very acutely, whereas my Dad holds it all in, letting it out in small phrases, sentences that only I can notice and usually surface when you least expect it. I see his eyes water for one of the first times in my life as I begin to tell him the stories of the people I have met. He wants to meet every one.
We leave Tony's after I've gathered myself and my Dad has eaten all of his and most of my molasses glazed. He’s rushing me a little. My grandparents, who moved into an assisted living home during my year away, always eat dinner at 530, and he wants me to see them before they eat.
To tell the truth I don’t want to go. My eyes are swollen, I have slept less than 15 hours in the last 4 days, and my body aches from dancing last night. Orangutans, remember?
I don’t want to face my grandparents, either.
My Grandpa John, like my Dad, doesn't really talk about emotions.
Grandpa was born with a story to tell. When the county nurse called in to the maternity ward to ask my great-grandmother what she’d like to name her first-born son, she hollered back: “Name him after uncle John!” And so she did. Uncle John Baker from Hazard, Kentucky. My Grandpa's got that musty southern drawl that winds itself around his listeners, beckoning them to hear his stories. His memory is crystal clear. His details are inventive, if at times fantastical. To me, he's one of the greatest writers who never picked up a pen.
A Colonel in the U.S. Army, Grandpa John retired to the Panama Canal Zone where he worked as a Judge for many years. And it’s there my Dad began sailing. On Christmas day, my Grandma would often announce that she wasn't ready for Christmas, and she'd shoo everyone out of the house, ignoring any whining from my aunts and uncles. “Jesus was still around on the 26th,” she'd say, and my Grandpa would take my Dad and his five siblings out for a sail. It was in Panama that my Dad, today a captain and an engineer, built his first sailboat. He was fourteen and armed only with plywood and plans he sent away for with an ad he tore from the back of a National Geographic magazine.
My Grandpa's got strong beliefs about what success is and a patriotism that at times I find blinding. When Jimmy Carter "gave away the Panama Canal" he changed political parties overnight and has never looked back. When my father married a Scottish girl at 21 and left the cadet corps to study engineering in Edinburgh, my grandparents couldn't understand at first. They love him, but unlike my uncles, who’ve got badges on their shoulders, he'll always be the “architect” who took off to go sailing. The first thing my Grandpa asked me when I got home last week was, "So what was your favorite country?" When I began to fumble for an answer he interrupted me. "America, right?!" he boomed. I smiled silently.
My Grandma is another story. She knows I've traveled, but I'm not sure if she knows where.
In the last five years she's developed mild dimentia and now she’s taken to wearing the same austere outfit, hoarding packets of brown sugar from the dining room like those they had in Panama, eating unprecedented amounts of ice cream, and humming the Mexican Hat Dance down hallways. She forgets so much, but the stories she remembers are central to who she is. Aunt Ida's card table. Spooky Fooks. Mr. Catuna’s hat she wears.
Jean is one of the most beautiful women I have ever known, and it is from her I draw my sensitivity, I think. Apparently we have a Cherokee ancestor who went by "Princess Rain in the Face." Figures. My grandmother's known for bypassing the law with her good looks and a few tears. When I was three years old I won a raffle, and parents left me with my grandparents to fly south with my winning tickets to see Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. When they returned I told my mother, weeping, "Now I know how Cinderella feels! Grandma's just like the evil stepmother!" "I heard that!" my grandma bellowed from the kitchen, and burst into tears.
When my uncle Matthew left home for Annapolis, my grandmother made a lot of noise about going to work in physical therapy -- finally fulfilling the degree she'd obtained years before. My grandfather thought it might be too stressful for her. But she kept at it – even enrolling to get her pilot's license. She completed the course, but never got off the ground. My cousin Michael was born, and she flew straight from motherhood into grandmotherhood.
In the Main Street house in Castine, there are paintings that sit abandoned in dark corners. Only the dust motes see them. When I join her for watercolor classes and other ladies look on in awe at her paintings, she giggles, embarrassed. "It's just a hobby," she insists, reapplying her red lipstick.
When she was young her mother forbade her from keeping a diary. My great grandmother was the youngest of many children, and her brothers were always getting into her things. Jean always regrets taking this advice.
She's the one who told me to keep a journal when I left. In case I forget.
We get lost on the way to The Woods, but when we finally arrive there are several old ladies sitting and chatting in rocking chairs, lapping up the last of afternoon sunlight. My Dad makes some joke about the “Costa del Maine,” and we enter in a cloud of laughter.
I’m wearing one of my favorite t-shirts. “Sail Fast” it says in big letters on the front. “Sail…” my Grandpa reads slowly, moving closer to read.
When I got back to the U.S., my parents told me he’s nearly blind.
Grandma wakes up and reads it too, and smiles. “Hey, that’s a great t-shirt,” she says and settles back on the couch. I turn around. “Live Slow,” it says on the back. She giggles, and when I join her she slaps my knee. She looks so tiny next to me, close to the bone. Her green eyes seem bigger, her smile wider.
“What’s that? Aylie’s not been crying has she?” My grandfather says, chuckling, but not necessarily surprised. “There’s no need to cry.”
“Come on, Aylie,” he says. “Tell us a story from this year.”
But I can’t speak. I beg a moment to myself and retreat to the bathroom.
I stand there, looking in the mirror. I’m exhausted. I hang onto the sink and examine myself for the first time in months.
My skin is scarred by sun and wind and acne. I trace a finger under my swollen eyes, lifting flecks of mascara from my cheeks. I got back only ten days ago, but my skin’s already starting to heal.
On my finger a scar swells pink at the knuckle. I cut it grating potatoes in Chiloé at Doña Nena’s house. I remember Lorena laughed when she saw the blood trickle down my wrist. “She doesn’t know anything!” she’d shouted in hysterics. A schizophrenic, that morning she was having one of her episodes. A few hours later she would refer to me as her brother’s future wife.
Cooking Mermelada de Ciruelas (Plum Jam), Calen, Chiloe
Another scar, faded now, just above the bone of my wrist. Where I burned myself on Thanksgiving in Palau. The day I spilled a pumpkin pie down my front and it rained until I thought the green might lift from the leaves. Obak, my host and chief of the village of Ngetkib, laughed too, and together we cooked our first turkey in that oven with a mind of its own. He became my father that day.
Obak and Ann: Parents, Mentors, best friends in Palau!
I’m thinner than when I first arrived home. The night when I broke the fast in not one, but ten houses, on the tiny Maldivian island of Thulhaadhoo, is far away now. I feel my stomach turn in memory. How many kilos did I gain and lose in an attempt to build trust this year? I laugh. Ramazan starts next week. Maybe I’ll fast.
Breaking the fast, morning after end of Ramazan, Kuda Eid, Utheem
I take a deep breath and step out. It’s not the home I recognize. The quiet stacks of old magazines and postcards, hanging baskets, molas and musty furniture are all gone. Their apartment is small now. It’s not sterile necessarily, but it’s too bright, no room for memories to lurk in the shadows. The only object from before is an old black trunk in the corner. My grandmother still recognizes it.
When I sit down my Grandpa tries a different tack.
“So how about the other folks. What did they do?”
I tell them about the bats, and the migrants, the musicians, and the poets and the puppets. About time and trash. The refugees, the clouds, the wolves, the whales and the gardens. Mountains, rivers, cultural artifacts, stars, diasporas, memory. Even abandoned houses (I think of the Main Street house and wonder if my Dad does too). Even a rubix cube!
“Now wasn’t there a fella swimming the channels?” Grandpa asks.
“But he did so much more than that, Grandpa,” I say. He smiles. He seems more awake then I’ve seen him in years, and he’s looking straight at me.
“And what did the other men do?”
“One explored religion and baked bread in the Middle East. One danced with refugees. And one tracked animals. Another biked. One built a multi-religion temple inspired by the spiral. One explored rivers. This other guy chased hurricanes. One walked a thousand miles! One guy even lived in slums for a year, Grandpa.”
“He did what with plums?” my Grandma surfaces from the corner of the couch, sifting the air for an answer.
“He lived in slums, Mom. Slums,” my Dad says, throwing me a wink.
“Ohh.” she says. I see the milky green of her eyes shift to a shiny blue. Her arm’s on my knee again. “Why would he do that?”
“To understand how and why people struggle, Grandma, and how they define success. He wants to be a doctor to help people in poverty,” I tell her.
“And how tall was he?”
“Grandpa.”
My Dad lets out a belly laugh. He’s stretched out on the floor, arms folded behind his head, watching the ceiling.
Grandpa squints at the clock. 20 minutes to dinner.
“And what about those fellas that lived with the Muslims, what did they say?” he asks.
I pause.
“Let me tell you a story about the Muslims I met,” I say.
“Alright. Let’s hear it,” He replies and eases back into his chair.
“The Maldives is an archipelago of islands in the Indian ocean. In Dhivehi, the local language, Maldives means necklace of islands. There are over 2000, Grandpa, but I’m going to tell you about just one. Well, two.”
“When I began to research the Maldives a year ago, I heard about Dhuvaafaru – an island in Raa atoll. But the residents of Dhuvaafaru actually come from Kandholhudhoo, an island directly across the atoll from Dhuvaafaru, on the western edge of Raa. Kandholhudhoo was once one of the happiest islands in this region. In the lagoon around the island, fish were so abundant fishermen did not need to travel far for food, they stayed at home and lived happily with their families.”
“That’s nice, honey.” Grandma purrs, folding her hands in her lap.
“I had been living in the capital of Maldives — Male’, for almost 5 weeks. Male’ is one of the most crowded places in the world! Some people even sleep in shifts there, Grandma.”
View of Male' from the Villingili Ferry(Male' is 2 square miles, 150,000 people)
“There’s not enough room to sleep, Grandma. So some people have to take turns.”
She nods.
“So I decide I need to get out, get some perspective, some fresh air, and a break from bustling city life.
“I get a contact for the island councilor of Dhuvaafaru and decide to go visit for a few days. For about a week, I had been waiting for a ferry, calling various captains and checking with the Maldives transport authority, MTCC – all with no luck. Launches were too expensive, and besides, I was eager to see how the average Maldivian traveled.
“Finally, one Monday at 10 p.m., I’m just returning from playing basketball with a group of boys in Villingili when I receive a call from my friend Saffah at Bluepeace, an environmental NGO. There’s a boat leaving for Dhuvaafaru at midnight from the fish market!
“Quickly I do a mental check. Due to the rain I’ve put off doing laundry – but I can do that in the sink. I’ve arranged a few interviews for the next few days – but they can be rescheduled. I haven’t even had a chance to pick up any money from the post office – but I run and ask in the living room, and Sarah and Alexa offer to pitch in. I’ve done no preliminary research. All this, and I go for it.
“I take a shower and head down the stairs with my pack. Outside the wind howls, humidity falls off the palm trees and is whipped into thick, steamy currents. So much for smooth sailing, I think.”
“The boat is slightly delayed, so I don’t arrive in Male’ until 1:30 a.m. Saffah meets me off the ferry at the Villingili terminal with his motorbike and together we drive to the fish market. I wish you could see him, Grandpa. He’s this tiny man with glossy black hair, really curly. And I’m the biggest woman in the country!”
Grandpa chuckles. He gets up from his chair by the phone and slowly shuffles over to sit in the armchair beside me. His eyes are bright, and open wide. He tells me to speak slower and to take a few breaths.
“The fish market is an incredible place. It’s where cargo boats traveling to and from the atolls come to stock up on food stuffs imported into Male’ from outside, in exchange for products from the islands – coconuts, rope, toddy (A coconut tree’s version of maple syrup), dried fish. The ship is large, 1.5 stories. Together we tiptoe down a wooden plank and into the cargo hold.
“‘Make sure to keep your things close,’ Saffah warns. And I nod, I’m so excited and nervous I’m sweating.
“The cargo hold was packed tight with big, bulky duffles, boxes piled up to the ceiling, water tanks, even a motorbike. There’s dates from Jordan. Seedless Grapes from Egypt. Apples and oranges from New Zealand. It smells like bananas in there, and fish.
We climb a small ladder, upwards. It’s dark as we enter the sleeping hold, crawling on all fours in the shallow cabin. The room couldn’t have been more than 3.5 feet tall, filled with some 50-60 people splayed out on the floor. There’s one empty space at the stern, waiting for me near the hatch. I squeeze in and settle next to a sleeping woman, her dark curly hair cast out over her pillow. I say goodbye to Saffah then and settle myself with an arm slung through my pack. Alexa’s given me a sleeping pill. I pop it and try to sleep. It’s going to be a nine-hour journey. When I wake up I will be in Dhuvaafaru.
“But three and a half hours later I awake to someone tapping my foot!
“Light leaks through the open window behind me, and I can barely make out the figure standing on the ladder at my feet. We are moving now, and the waves rock us back and forth. I sit up and bump my head, clinging to the ceiling with one hand. The guy hands me my wallet. And I freeze.
Opening it, I shuffled through its contents. All that is left are receipts and discount tickets. Just like that! 1500 rufiyya gone. 100 dollars gone. More than 200 dollars! More than I’ve spent in four weeks on food!
“Oh no!” my Grandma exclaims. And I notice silver tears are beginning to form where the corner of her eye meets the rim of her cheek. This is the grandmother who asked my Jamaican roommate if her first language was English. Who said, “I guess they’re pretty intelligent, aren’t they?” when I played her recordings from child soldiers in Northern Uganda two years ago. I bite my lip. But I keep going.
“Remember when I lived in Buenos Aires, “world capital of crime,” for 6 months? 6 months, Grandma! And not a peso stolen. But here I was on a boat headed to an island with no internet, no ATM, and my phone credit was maybe 5 RF – enough for a few texts and maybe a phone call.
“So I begin to explain to Shaheedu – that was his name - what had happened. He was wearing a red shirt, over his shoulders, the words “Rule #137 of College: Don’t remember anything,” and green cargo pants. He was sympathetic, actually, running me through the course of events before disappearing to tell the reef captain my predicament.
“He returns with coffee but little resolution. We step outside where the horizon is flat but for a few islands and these huge dark purple clouds that mushroom from the southeast. The sea was rough.
“I can’t even cry. I’m standing there wondering, How am I going to pay for my passage? How am I going to stay on Dhuvaafaru? But all I can think about is the way the sunlight catches in Shaheedu’s eyelashes. No one else is awake. With nothing else to do but wait, I try and go back to sleep.
“When I get up, the lady who was asleep beside me is awake and gazing out through the sliding window, past the balcony and towards the horizon. Her legs are cocked up beneath her somewhat awkwardly. Since waking she has donned her buruga. It’s lime green, pinching under her chin. She’s wearing a long dress with a blue flower pattern, and teal track pants with purple stripes underneath. Her round cheeks are slightly pockmarked, her eyes tired beneath tinted glasses.
“Kihineh? I say to her.
“What?” asks my Grandfather. His eyes were closed, but he opens them to look at me.
“It means, ‘How are you?’ in Dhivehi,” I tell him.
“She smiles. She’s well, she said, and she returns the question. “Do I speak Dhivehi?
“Kuda Koh,” I say, pinching my fingers like my Grandpa would. “A little bit. A very little bit.”
“Her name was Rugiyya. She was 41 years old, and she was from Dhuvaafaru. She had only just returned to Male’ from India where she’d been for a checkup on her brain tumor. She pulled down her glasses to show me her eyes. The sockets were all swollen.
Grandma’s cheeks are glistening now.
“Eventually I tell her about what’s happened and I listen as she relays it to a group of old men dozing in the traditional sarong, or mundhus, just kitty corner to us. Soon a crowd has gathered round. There’s a group of women (including two also named Rugiyya), a four-year-old, several 20-something men. The cook even pokes his head up from downstairs.
“‘Don’t touch your wallet,’ Rugiyya eventually says to me after considerable chatter and gesticulating among the group. Others are peering on now, wiping sleep from their eyes. ‘We’ll get the fingerprints at the police station!’
“I don’t want to be rude, but I have to stop myself from giggling. Fingerprints? are you kidding?
“’Is there somewhere I can get some money?’ I asked. Someone I could send money back to? Here on the island?”
“Rugiyya shakes her head slowly, her swollen eyes are deeply troubled. “Noonu” she says, drawing the word out in a long sigh. “Don’t worry. I will take care of you. You can stay in my home,’ she says. “You can call me Mum.”
“It takes us 36 hours to reach Dhuvaafaru.
“The seas were really stormy and we had to stop periodically to wait for better weather. Outside and above the sleeping cabin was a wide deck open to the sky, spanning the whole ship. A group of ten or so young men are sleeping up at the bow, under the shade of the captain’s cabin. We stopped and anchored at Meeru Island resort for breakfast. A few tourists roamed the beach, no doubt miffed by the heavy rain clouds, which had not figured into their vacation plans.
Grandpa chuckles. His eyes are closed again.
“Later we stop for lunch, garu dhia — (it’s traditional fish soup, I say before someone asks – fresh fish which we catch mixed with rice, chili, lime and raw onions). As we eat, a pod of dolphins paraded past us, their dark bodies slipping in and out of the sea with ease. That night we moor in the northern reaches of Male’ atoll, waiting to brave the passage, Kaashidhoo Kuda Kandu in the morning.
“That’s the thing. There was this outpouring of kindness from my fellow passengers as we made our way to Dhuvaafaru. Ali, a fisherman from Maakurathu, the island just south of Dhuvaafaru, made it his personal goal to see that I was well fed. He wore a green checked shirt, and his dark beard was cut short, swirling at his jawbone. He didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Dhivehi. But he would come up and tap my foot as I was sleeping, offering water, biscuits, supari – these dried betel nuts.
I think he also made it his personal goal to take me as a wife, but, don’t worry Grandpa,” I say, winking at my Dad. “I told him he wasn’t tall enough.”
“Shaheedu and his friends Ibu, Hassan and Amadey would check up on me periodically. “Do you need anything sister?” they would always ask.
“The ship captain even waived my fare. Finally, Ali – a different one this time, long curly hair dyed with henna – presented me with a handful of small bills assembled by the passengers. They had raised over 1000 rufiya for me!
“1000 Rufiya?” Grandma repeats.
“That’s almost 90 dollars, Grandma! I tried not to accept it but I couldn’t refuse, they were too nice. But by the time we arrive in Dhuvaafaru late Wednesday afternoon, I had so many new friends.
“I can't tell you what a wonderful time I had there. My host family, remember, the lady with the brain tumor, Grandma? My host mom was Rugiyya, her brother Ismail, his wife Anthu, Maama the grandmother, daughters Mayaa and Mahiyaa.
“Mahiyaa ran away from me when she first saw me. I don’t think she’d ever seen a white person. But they all treated me like one of the family. Anthu taught me to make roshi, curry and mashuni. Ismail introduced me to like the whole island. Turns out their family makes up over 1/3 of the population of 4,000! Even Mahiyaa — by the end of the week — she was feeding me food from her fingers.
10 minutes. I can see my Grandfather begin to shift. I speed up a little.
“In the Muslim world there’s a month called Ramadan. You don’t eat or drink during the day, only when it is dark outside. To bring you closer to God, and to give up worldly possessions. Or at least that’s how I understood it.
“Nothing?” asks Grandma. I wonder if she’s thinking of the icecream she gets everyday between 3 and 315.
“Nothing. Sometimes I would sneak water in the bathroom because it was so hot, but only sometimes, because I felt guilty if I did. You wake up early, before sun, around 430. And you have to wait all day until the sun sets and there’s the last call to prayer. When you’re hungry, that’s the most beautiful sound in the world.
Dawn, Dhuvaafaru“All of my new friends invite me to eat at their houses. So many that I find I can’t keep all of my dates. And they won’t even let me spend the money they gave me on the boat.
I hear my Grandpa laugh and I look down at my Dad. He’s lost in the carpet, his foot grazing the stain my Grandma spends every morning trying to clean even though Anh, who works here, has explained it will never come out.
“And did they try and convert you?”
“They did, Grandpa. They were worried for me. When I told them I didn’t subscribe to one faith, some of them begged me to reconsider. One night I met with a group of sixteen-year-old boys and we had a debate about religion. I told them I didn’t believe in eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And they listened and then they countered. One boy, with a shadow of a moustache and liquid brown eyes, he asked me every question he could think of about other religions, and then he told me: ‘Islam is peace.’
“When the wave came to Kandholhudhoo that day in 2004, he ran to see it, and was almost swept away. Every building was destroyed, Grandma, every building but the mosque. That mosque saved them, Grandpa. Hamza, that was his name, he was known as the lost boy. That night he left us early, to go pray, and he told me he’d bring me a qur’an the following day.”
“A wave?” Grandma asked, face stricken.
“Yes, a wave. In 2004, remember the tsunami in Indonesia, the one we raised money for at basketball games? That hit Maldives too. And it hit Kandolhudhoo the hardest.”
I hear my Grandma gasp, but I continue.
“On my last day, we take a dhoni to Kandholhudhoo. Rugiyya and her brother Ismail want me to see it, and we go with a few friends on this little fishing boat back to the abandoned island.
“Kandholhudhoo was a happy, prosperous island, remember? But they were also very crowded. It got to the point where there were so many people, they had to reclaim the lagoon, fill it in, to make more space for houses. Even then, there were only 150 homes. And 4000 people! Over time the trees vanished to be replaced by tall, concrete buildings. When the children wanted to play soccer, they had to leave and go to a neighboring island.
“As we approach, the island seems to rise out of the sea. In the Maldives there are multiple names for water, to describe the depth, the fish that live there. Here there’s no faru, the electric aquamarine that sparkles in the shallow lagoon of most of these coral islands. Just murky olive-jade.
“When they filled the lagoon, they built a seawall, but it wasn’t enough. The wave pushed right through that barrier and reclaimed the island as it’s own.
“On the third floor of the school, there are signs, nearly faded, painted on the walls.
Actions speak louder than words.
A hungry man is an angry man.
A closed book is an empty book, just a block of book.
For man, nothing is completed until he dies.
You have to respect others.
Do what u can, with what u have.
The worst man often give the best advice.
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
“Looking out over the abandoned island, I shiver in the heat. Ismail is already descending the stairs. I follow, and we head to the mosque.
“There’s a minaret that floats upwards towards the clouds. Its intricate blue designs are barely discernible, but the half moon perched at its top still glitters as it opens to the sky. The guilded gates are thrown open and there are a few Bangladeshi men praying inside. They’re here to dry the fish. Now that they live across the atoll, men from Kandholhudhoo must leave their homes for up to a week to return to their fishing grounds. They’ve outsourced their labor, and have stopped making traditional fish sauce, rihakaru, in their new western style kitchens. Ismail enters and prays silently with the Bangladeshi men.
It feels inappropriate to take photos, so I stand in silence in front of the building that saved this island.
Bangladeshi men dry fish, Kandholhudhoo“I’ve brought my microphone with me, too, but I can’t seem to press record. The sound is hollow here, echoing from the past. In the center of the island, wind can’t penetrate the maze of alleyways and the air tastes stale. Not even the vines breathe. Rugiyya leads the way with her pink silk parasol, and she smiles when she looks at me.
Rugiyya, Kandholhudhoo“We have to break through the undergrowth to reach their house. It’s the first time Rugiyya’s been back in five years. There are gaping holes in the pale blue walls and the wooden stair that leads to the second floor is nearly white from the sun. There’s a mattress splayed out on the floor surrounded by broken glass and a few other items. I watch her pick them up slowly, and wonder what she is thinking. “Our home,” Ismail says, stone-faced, but no more.
Their home, KandholhudhooWe begin to push our ways through the vines to leave, and tucked into a hole in the wall, there’s roll of paper, maybe a letter. Somehow it’s escaped the monsoon, and it’s in delicate Dhivehi script, pitch black on white paper. I wonder who wrote it, who it’s for, and what it says.
Grandma whimpers.
“Some thought it was the end of the world. That God had sent a curse. But when it came time to evacuate, many didn’t want to leave.
“So what happened to them?” asks Grandma, her eyebrows pinned to her forehead in concern.
“They lived in tents for five years, scattered over five islands in the atoll, waiting for a new life, on a new island. They couldn’t go back to Kandolhudhoo.
“But why Dhuvaa… Duvaaa…?”
“Dhuvaafaru? Supposedly it means running reef. But I’m not entirely sure, Grandpa. It’s a bigger island, for one, and slightly higher elevation. But I like to think it’s fate. They say the residents of Kandolhudhoo actually emigrated from Dhuvaafaru many years ago. In Maldives legend, one of their heroes, Dandahelu, comes from Dhuvaafaru.
There are ruins close to where I lived. Fluted and dovetailed they rise through the greenery, held together without hammer or peg. No one knows anything about them. But this hero, he helped save Maldives, Grandpa. Saved them from the Portuguese who wanted to change their way of life. He was only a young boy. If history repeats itself, maybe it will be Hamza, or Mahiyaa who rises up to save Maldives from new threats.
My Grandpa smiles. On the floor I can see my Dad staring blankly and his glasses flash liquid.
“Rugiyya is tired when we return home. Here eyes are more swollen, clouded, and she walks as though she might be in pain. Even though we’ve been in the shade, the sun seems to find us, teasing energy from our bones.
“But I’m leaving that night, and she wants to take me to her uncle’s to break the fast. On the soccer pitch boys zig zag back and forth, and their skin turns pink in the failing light.
Football and Clouds, Dhuvaafaru“The sky is enormous there, Grandpa. I can’t get over it. Huge fluffy clouds scud across an expanse of blue so large, I think I have never seen the world before. I am keenly aware of how small we are. In a country pinned flat to the horizon, the clouds form the topography. One’s shadow can engulf and entire island for hours, or mere seconds. But it’s not only their magnitude and great volume, their fluffiness, that throws me. It’s their reach. The way these clouds fall back towards an indecipherable horizon.
“If there is a God, I think he lives in one of these clouds.”
My Grandma giggles, her cheeks are shining.
“Time for dinner,” my Grandpa says, breaking the silence. He gets up and hobbles over to his walker. “You ready, Jean?”
I watch her comb her hair, dry her eyes and apply her red lipstick.
We begin to make our way down the hall, past the paintings that my Grandmother uses as guides. But I continue speaking.
“In those last few minutes before the sun set, Rugiyaa took me to the north beach and we walked through white sand so fine it clung to my toes like powder. We didn’t speak much, because we couldn’t. But we pointed, and gestured, and took in that sunset together.
When we rounded the point and turned back to face the stands of palm trees, I stopped. I sensed the moment was ending. My departure was reaching out in long, slippery shadows.
“’What do you think, Rugiyaa?” I asked. ‘I’m not a Muslim. But is that okay? Can we still be friends?’”
She smiled, breathing exhaustion from her lips. “You are my daughter, and I am your Mum.”
She reached up to touch her neck, tracing the folds of her veil, before reaching to my shoulder. “I am human. You are human.”
I hugged her then, and she staggered back for a moment, and I worried that I’d been disrespectful. But then I felt her fingers on my spine, and could hear the tears welling in our eyes.
The call to prayer sounded, and we left the sunset and entered the trees.”
Rugiyya, Anthu, Mahiyaa, Maama, Me, Dhuvaafaru“Looks like Joan of Arc is going to let us in,” my Grandma says, glancing at the portrait of a woman dressed in white robes beckoning beside the elevator. The doors open, and I think the moment is over.
“I am human, you are human.” My Grandpa repeats, moving his walker over the metal grate. He’s smiling and I can see his mind whirring. I wonder how many people he’ll tell this story to at dinner.
My Grandma wafts in like a black moth behind him, humming the Mexican hat dance.
“I hope you will write this down, Aylie,” my Grandma says as we reach the first floor. “You know my mother never let me keep a diary. Her brothers got into hers, see. I’ve always regretted it.”
“Wow Grandma. I'm sorry that happened. I’ll be sure to do that.”
“So you won’t forget.”
“I promise, Grandma. I won’t forget.”
We left them sitting there, lifting their forks in a dining room that my grandmother likens to the belly of a cruise ship. My Dad wrapped his arm around my shoulder as we parted and my tears returned. He chuckled.
I cried for the scars that will heal and the lessons that will remain. I cried for my family, for the people I had met, whom I will meet. I cried for myself and this person I have become.
Nothing had changed and everything had changed. I cried and my Dad laughed, but this time I didn’t seem to mind.
Sailing with family and friends, Dad background
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A beautiful story Aylie - you have made me cry too! I am so glad to have met you and been a part of your year of adventures. Much much love... Alexa xx
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