06.1 Deeni

Her tan was gone, her fashion changed and looked young with a new hairstyle parted in the middle. She wore no makeups and no gold chains. She appeared in a teal green flare dress – buri-hedun – that reached her thighs, fitted waist and vertical front darts on both sides from the breast, short cap sleeves and a scoop neck. A silver bracelet braced to an elbow-tight and leather peeptoe shoes.

February 8^th and schools reopened for 1958 after the annual holidays. Ashvis School faced Ashvis Road located in the middle of the island. Fresh breezes rolled down Ashvis Road lying across and the surrounding full of palms and green trees. She reached behind the house to a shack of three classrooms fabricated of cardboard. Classes taught up to sixth grade in four subjects of English, Mathematics, Divehi and Religious Recitation. Pupil numbers hiked this year due to an invasion.

She glanced for a door sign.

“Miss! Miss!” cried the primary school students, “Are you our class teacher?”

There stood a tubular metal seat without a desk for the teacher. Poorly dressed boys and girls sat on wooden chairs by the rows of desks.

“Good Morning, class!” she addressed.

“Good Morning, miss!” echoed the class vibrantly.

“I’m Mariam Mala and I’m your English Teacher. You can call me Miss Deeni.”

“Miss! Miss! What is your country?”

“I am from Huludu!” she was caught in surprise.

“Miss! How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven…”

“Miss! I saw you ride a bicycle!”

“Hold it now! I want you to write your name and address on your notebook…I write down on the board and you fill the blanks.”

Into the tenth line, teacher bent over to reach the bottom half of the blackboard, her glutes exposed, when the sheik appeared by the door.

“Miss! Sheik Ashvis!” alerted a student.

She straightened and reached. “How is your first day?” the sheik handed her a note.

“Good. I need a desk,” she said.

“They are making desks for teachers. A number of parents are complaining because we don’t have enough space for all the pupils. Evacuees from Gandu are not happy with their settlements. First, central government wanted to send them to Gan of Suvadiva. Nobody was happy with that. I run Ashvis School so I am spared to stay. This is my authentic home. The rest moved to Dooran in the east of Maradu.”

“When was the move?” asked Mala.

“Started last year, 6^th November. Fifty houses moved. Gandu folks are still coming. Six hundred residents would be here.”

“Two hundred students!”

“More,” said Sheik Ashvis, “I am cutting down those trees to build a new row of classrooms. Well, Deeni, carry on!”

“Thank you.”

She sat down on the stiff broad chair to read the note.

A while later, she got up feeling soggy in the legs. Her haunches left a wet mark on the Bakelite seat.

When classes were over, Mala rode on a Raleigh bicycle that her father brought for her on the trip on a boat to Suvadiva. A boat that arranged a special bunk for Ali Takhan. She slept on the deck. Ali Takhan never asked about her secret mission.

They set sail by the end of January on an odi to the Suvadives. Then on a batteli to Huludu and eventually on a doni to Feydu. On their way, this small wooden boat passed by a nau called Xarifa. This yacht left Addu waters on eighth February.

This house called Finiveli located in the wooded southwest belonged to her father’s trusted friend; Finiveli Naseer. A whitewashed house with a clay shingle roof standing on a narrow lane covered of trees. Naseer refused to move to Maradu because he just built this beautiful stone house. Two brothers and three sisters in the family. Sister Ruksan’s husband and kids stayed here.

This family vacated a room for her to stay on her own. Floors finished with polished concrete and two-leaf doors and no window leaf. No gap to bring in sunlight because of the canopy of trees.

Her room was large with a queen’s bed and none other furniture. Carpenters worked on fixing the doors and only the rich could spend at a time like this. Best part of the house was a wooden deck outside a wood-frame wall with beach lilies planted around. A large clay pot filled with rain water to wash sand from the feet. This open deck was built from timber removed from the causeway that linked Gan and Feydu. Since the British left after the war without leaving a single wheeled vehicle, the bridge lay idle. Folks removed planks to build houses.

It was hectic on the island as relocation took place. They were building homes rather than houses to find shelter. Abreast the sandy roads, those huts stood hidden behind trees. Mala cycled up a narrow Fansvis Lane to climb Ashvis Road.

Another ease was a women’s wash behind the thickets on the shore. Mariam Mala had company of Muskan to go bathing in the water though murky with seaweeds in the vast lagoon. House reef lay hundreds of feet away. Few tiny bushy islands lay in the lagoon and sandbars appeared everywhere. Fishing boats floated beyond the waves.

Adduan prepared delicious dishes and among the finest cuisine.

One night she lay in bed with a piece of sheet on her body, mosquitoes biting heavily. A shadow moved behind the window. A chap approached her bed. Dropped his pants and fell on top of her, “Nuzhan!” He began to kiss her. Mala stayed calm. He removed the blanket and dug in. Then he felt different. “Nuzu!”

“Seen what you come looking for!” she muttered and the guy flung out of bed. Pulled his pants and disappeared into the night. No doors shut and none locked in the houses.

Mala entered the water with the topless brown girls – head shaved and brows inked to join with kohl. All the girls wrapped alike in black kandiki and silver girdle called fattar on the hips, gold on their necks and wrists.

She mentioned innocuously that a man entered her last night. They began to laugh.

Ruksan said, “That must be Ali Huzeir. He enters her regularly,” pointing to her sister.

Nuzhan emerged knee-deep in water, firm tits and pointed dark nipples, amused in her brownish tan. She was twenty-three, still single, with long hair and teeth filed.

“You’re sleeping in her room,” prattled Ruksan, “he’d not know. Nuz is now sharing with Muki.” A profane moniker they lovingly called Muskan.

“Muki come sleep with me,” proposed Mala, “and leave her for prey.”

Muskan was sixteen and a fifth-grader at Ashvis School. Mariam Mala was her teacher too. She began to sleep with her in the tubular spring bed with a weighty mattress – another British supplement.

To speak of Feydu women; they were disposed to a high level of exhilaration in pleasure seeking. Some could hardly sleep without intimacy – the brown girls of Feydu.

Seven years to date since former Prime Minister Cancer passed a nationwide ban to stop women from appearing topless and most of the native folk never heard of. Even if they did, they cared less. Prime Minister Cancer on a tour to the islands saw a woman with uneven breasts. It affected him.