Once upon a time, in another life, I went on holiday to the
Maldives. Ninety bumpy minutes by
speedboat from the capital Male is the island of Nakatchafushi. On our side of the island, the sheltered
side, there were round bungalows; pristine white with thatched roofs. The queen size beds were scattered with rose
petals, and each rondavel had a sandy little pathway through exotically flowered shrubbery
to a private little beach with white sand and palm trees. It was picture postcard paradise.
The east side of Nakatchafushi is rocky and the north side
windy, but our beach on the southern side, segregated by lush vegetation, had
the impression of being miles away from this exposure, despite only taking
fifteen minutes to pad barefoot around the island to the western tip. With the exception of a stroll to the northern side before dinner to feed the rays that gathered in the shallow waters at
this time, most of our days were spent lazing on the beach, eating club
sandwiches by the pool or snorkelling.
The pool is situated mid-way between the restaurant in
which the breakfast buffet is served, and the main restaurant also on the
southern side of the island. A wooden
deck looks out into the Indian Ocean, past the house reef, on the other side of
which is an abundance of fish in Glorious Technicolor.
Shallow waters surround the island and enclosing them, lagoon like, is
the house reef; dead coral which is sharp and rocky. Channels in the rocks allow you to swim to
the other side of the reef without shredding your skin and give access to a
whole new world. At first I could not
hear the parrot fish munching on the coral, the only sound was my own rasping breath
as my cognitive faculties tried to cope with the dissonance of breathing with
my face in the water.
But as the vivid colours swam before me and the shoals of fish
darted and moved as one, I gradually relaxed and the vision became
addictive. The brightly coloured coral,
the fish that looked like Groucho Marx, the clown fish, and the bright blue
parrot fish with red painted lips became part of our lives that week. We looked for eels and for octopus and came
across the dead eyes of a small nurse shark, speckled and leopard like.
This beautiful other world dropped sharply away to the
south. By swimming just a few feet out
there was nothing underneath our prone bodies but the utter blackness of the
Indian Ocean. Panic regained control if
I drifted too far and I kept close to the reef and held on to my husband’s hand
as we floated.
And this became our routine in the cooler hours of the day,
and usually in the mornings we were alone out on the reef whilst others lounged
on the deck or on their private beaches.
And I relaxed and my breathing became even and now I could hear the
sounds of the parrot fish; and something else…
…shouting.
We both hear it and, treading water, look up out of the
world beneath us and back to the deck. A
line of people standing, shouting, pointing into the vastness behind us and my
heart seems to stop and then race and I can’t seem to gather my thoughts. We can’t just swim to the beach, to safety. We’ve swum a fair way from the channel we
used to gain entry to the reef, and to swim directly back from our present
position would risk ripping legs and arms on the rocky coral, would risk a drop
of blood that could be smelt from miles away. It took me a whole month to even paddle in the
shallows of the water in Australia with their nets and their lifeguards, and
here I am in the middle of the Indian Ocean a metre away from water so deep
that light cannot penetrate it, cannot illuminate what is lurking in its
depths.
It takes far less time for these thoughts to hurtle through
my brain than it does to write them down, to read them back. I can see from the look on my husband’s face
that similar thoughts are racing through his mind. We’re still holding hands.
On the deck they are all still there, shouting and pointing,
but I can’t hear what they are saying.
We’re too far out, and I’m sure some of my senses are being overwhelmed
by the adrenaline pumping through my body.
I can’t remember at what point we turned to face what was out there, but
it can’t really have been more than a few seconds…
It would only have taken a half dozen strokes to be swimming
with the dolphins; their graceful and gleeful dipping and diving into the sea,
the sunlight catching the splashes of water from their rise and fall. How many were there I can’t say; they wove in
and out so deftly it was difficult to tell and they were gone in what seemed
like an instant. Torn between a longing
to be with them and more than ever needing the security of the reef we didn’t
join them. I’m not sure my legs were
fully functioning.
I’m not sure my breathing has ever fully recovered.
Sharon
Sharon
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