14.2 Bedrock

Instincts told him, those four guys blew up the bedrock. Shocking! He realised that he was witnessing the perpetrators who plotted an implosion to blast off the bedrock and making their little escapade. If it was not for him, or if anyone else saw them, none could conceivably reach this conclusion.

As it was said in the old saying by the local folks, those four individuals could never ‘climb the same rock’ meaning; they couldn’t come to common terms together. They quarrelled all the time but Muaz hinted one dispute that would bring them together and it was politics. Why would they want to harm anyone other than that?

Nothing changed in the sky. Nothing changed on the road. It was dead quiet and empty. Technically, Muaz couldn’t understand the complexity of its nature in blowing up the bedrock or its magnitude but he sensed there would be major destruction somewhere.

He stepped on the lawn and told the uniformed officer, “I believe I know the people behind the blast.”

And he asked, “How do you know?”

Muaz described what he observed and why he thought they were the perpetrators. Then the officer said, “We are equipped with that kind of technology to trace TNT from forensics that may be obtained from clothes, tools, fingernails, and find evidence to make your case. It could be traced in several weeks.”

Muaz stood stunned. Something triggered in his mind of something the officer said. He mentioned ‘TNT’. It was technically too much to bear and he withdrew without a word. Beyond his knowledge – even the brownshirt national guards would not know a thing about this kind of technology he was talking about and obtainable on his British Naval ship. This country wasn’t that advanced and why should he bother. He should keep his mouth shut.

Thinking it over, none of the suspects saw him on the road. That was his bet. If so, they would not know who talked. But can he trust the white shirt police? They generally suspect the first person who talked and blame the one person they could tighten a grip. And the secret police would not keep it secret of the guy who tipped off. His conscience did not agree that anybody, friend or foe, to cause such harm to thousands of lives and get away.

When he came out, Rahim and two guys from the café examined the cracks that could be distinguished on a pink wall evidently as the concrete came revealed. Their boss walked out asking whether it was an earthquake but nobody felt it.

He kicked off on his bike to see the destruction it caused. Not too far, he saw people running south and he sped south on Alifan Magu to arrive at a spot where he saw the houses stumbled to the ground. It looked like a war battered zone. Women and children creeping out from under the roofs and debris. All covered in dust and the air filled in smoke. Dark shadowy figures of shirtless native folks moving about trying to help.

He heard the ambulance sirens and racing bikes of the white shirt police, those lorries of the brownshirts, bicycle bells and honks, cries and screams, prayers and shouts.

The tall boundary wall of Salty Breeze collapsed to its length and the green grass filled with white dust. That beautiful house that could never be seen because of the boundary, now stood bare, shattered and shambled in ruins. Windows broken, yellow light inside, beige walls with large cracks from top to bottom. The arch fallen and more destruction beyond. Even the perpetrators would not expect an outcome as nasty as this.

Muaz remained on his motorbike with its engine running. And now he was waking with an understanding that the perpetrators did it to harm this family and not because of politics. Nobody else would know. And he felt guilty up to his neck for knowing something others did not know.

A little more survey – there was this mentioning of the mosque flanking south border of Salty Breeze. Now the mosque lay on the ground in rubbles. Every stone and every timber separated. Masjid al Sharqi built in the 18^th century was often called by the folks as ‘Vaímathi Miskii’ – meaning the ‘windy mosque’. There stood an octagonal well by the southeast corner which was the entrance from the coastal road and a footpath paved of stone. Rumours led to believe that this well was deeper than the bedrock and still contained freshwater which could be technically impossible but phenomenal.

TNT bags were dropped into the bottomless well and a controlled demolition executed. If he did the math right, the triggerman on a bicycle would pass Mesquite in due time as he did after executing the blast and three of the perpetrators on foot who left the site minutes before the blast would pass Mesquite in consistent time.

Multi-Ibre stole those TNT bags and detonators from Thora reef project. That too Muaz knew. Those bags were stuffed deep underneath the bedrock and with the blast, water shot into the sky. It went straight up and took the sound of the blast with it. Nobody around this area heard a thing. Then Multi-Ibre grabbed the plunger box and fled on his bike.

It caused massive cracks in the bedrock and the reef. It took millions of years for the rocks to form and a single shake to break. The soft soil on the top produced a shockproof effect and cancelled the vibrations causing less damage to the houses built on soft soil. Typically, all stone houses were built on top soil. Mesquite stood intact – not a single crack detected on the walls of a large house built on soft soil.

On the other hand, concrete structures mounted on top of the bedrock wobbled to cause cracks and it did far and wide. All the houses near the epicentre collapsed. Very few concrete structures of such nature existed on the island.

Rapidly, brownshirts streamed out on Bedford trucks with clubs, knocking on doors, beating everybody on the road, calling to vacate streets and to get inside the houses, packing them on the bed of the trucks and taking them into custody. Curfew – Maldivian Style – immediate control.

Muaz raced to Majeedi Magu to witness chaos. He saw a tumefied brownshirt chase a shirtless guy and threw his baton to hit him in the back. This guy somehow ran away. This whole street unexpectedly turned empty. It was then close to sunset. He saw another truck heading his way. Muaz accelerated into a lane and bolted homewards.

It was deliberately targeted on Salty Breeze and the house stumbled to rubbles. Nobody was hurt because the dancers were out on a gig in a retreat on that Friday, 14^th of July.

Following this horrific incident, that glamorous Club Rehendi of the seventies dissolved and the dancers returned home.

Somehow Muaz felt he should bring about news of what he observed. Those brownshirts and white shirts were picking citizens and beating them blindly. He told Woodie about all that he experienced.

Muaz heard next day, those perpetrators; Multi-Ibre, Ashwar, Muhsin and Adam, were apprehended and held in Doonidoo Jail, bound in chains and placed in cells of five cubic feet concrete blocks. Two important founder members of Moonlight Club were among them. They were severely interrogated, tortured and harshly treated.

Four months later, they were released without a criminal record or any charge or investigation to walk as free people. Can you believe it? A new government was sworn in on 11^th November. President Capricorn granted amnesty to many criminals serving sentences in prison.