Kadiki

The sun appeared in a red fiery ball hovering over the sky before setting the light. Reddish clouds shaded grey rain on the horizon. Tide kept rising with waves creating white foamy caps hitting the shores and sweeping to the undergrowth – receding fast to collide with the incoming current.

Don Beefan climbed down for wash just before sundown on this breezy day. She did the spit in the hue of the foliage crushing and tearing in the rustling wind. Frizzling waters reached her ankles while she sat squat with her kadiki tucked on the middle. She saw a sailing boat out on the sea – approaching.

She was unmarried. In other words, she wasn’t dressed in a three-part kadiki and libas. Traditionally, a girl dressed in clothes after marriage usually in puberty. A bathe in jasmine-filled water marked this ceremony termed ‘hedun-levun’ or dressing for morals following the end of a girl’s first menstruation – in the aftermath the island chief receives the girl to wrap her in kadiki and place her libas hence there begins her adulthood.

Don Beefan was tall and fair skinned – a mix of Portuguese – and like a manjé or a native girl she wore kadiki with the split to the rear. A kadiki is a black piece of square-shaped cloth usually worn by the island lass while the rich dressed in fèli and libas.

Don Beefan belonged to a parochial family, an only daughter of Sampadiyé whose real name was Salma Nafees, widowed since the death of Idris Osman – the Sidi.

She was born as Saha Osman. She desired to marry some day and maintained singularity, young as ever and shaved her pubes to appear immature. Besides, she wore gold and silver ornaments inherited from her grandmother; the late Mariam Azeza, better known as Mazara Sitti – the mother of Idris Osman.

Understandably this Portuguese mix followed from her mother, Sampadiyé, quite a distinctive feature in the north and parts of central atolls from interaction with the settlers in the 16^th century. Her father’s family originated from Arab travellers.

In this era, a number of girls were single on the island of Noljivarumfaru – unmarried girls in their teens wearing kadiki wraps and silver girdles, amulets and lockets in armbands and chains. Often the esteemed golden necklace called fattar-baì belonged to the rich and dignified.

Seven days ago, one of those girls, Nura of the Sidiq Family, the fisherman, gave birth to an illegitimate child. The baby was named Zenéa.

When Don Beefan heard the first rivaru of love, probably twenty years ago, she was impotent to return because of disability to speak. Don Beefan was dumb. She could hear well. Harisha Osman, the late aunt, then returned in rìvaru terms to convey a message to say she was ready for love.

A rìvaru contains jumbled words and phrases in short poetic verses with sarcasm as if to say, “Bitter they are…harder they fall.” Sometimes it’s sung to pass a gossip around the island or to ridicule someone. When neighbours hear a rìvaru, they relay to the earshot over tossed fences and fallen walls.

Rìvaru also happened to be the song of love in the copses to express rather obsessive feelings towards someone. In return, nastier contents portrayed greater liking and willingness to mate.

Women folk start these flirts and hoots, festival fun like water play and even the gesture of passing betel and nuts in the left palm that bear a secret message of a desire to have sex. Sign languages and flowers convey messages of love and hate.

Suddenly, the sky split in a stream of light. She saw a huge ball of fire – a shooting star – with its long tail of gas extending miles heading way down south. A huge meteoroid ignited in the deepening sky pacing to hit the ocean. The sun had gone down and the sky grew deeper red. Don Beefan waded in water knee deep for tidying and holding the kadiki over her buttocks. Blaring waves washed the shore creating foam and drilling the white sand under her feet. There was little time before a downpour she observed in the clouds. After wash she squeezed dry the kadiki and wrapped around her hips tucking under the girdle and again turned the corners under her crotch to tuck in the wrap from the rear in the manner locals called fugelun.

If it was a bit darker, she couldn’t have possibly seen what was floating yards away in inches of water. She ran across the beach to find a new-born baby with raw umbilical cord showing signs of greenish discharge. Don Beefan picked the baby and folded against her wet naked skin. Her first thought was that a mother threw her offspring. She ran up and down the beach muttering voices that couldn’t form words. It certainly couldn’t be Nura’s child but she was a baby girl. The only pregnant woman on the island was Zeena Halak and she would not do such a thing.

Quite significantly, it was 18th August 1897, a day the census was counted on the island and the Atoll Chief – Kurafi Don Kasim – sealed the envelope to be posted on Faru Batteli to the island capital of Malé along with the survey reports of other islands in the atoll.

Noljivarumfaru – two and half miles long – was the administrative island of South Thiladummathi Atoll.

Darkness was falling rapidly and a darting wind sharpened to brush her ears with clamours of the rough night ahead. She climbed ashore. It could also be likely that this baby washed overboard perhaps – the sailing doni on the sea.

Her uncle, Adam Nafees, was the oldest man in the village – a religious man with a scary white face and a white beard with greyish green eyes. Locals called him Adambé and islanders consulted him on the subject of the occult – that is to say he did charm for the diseased by the practice of fanditha in submission to black magic or voodoo.

Don Beefan dwelt with him and her mother in an old house erected on coral rocks and palm cuttings in the remote of the island where empty houses stand in ruins. Among them the Sidiqs lived in a house built of cadjan named Huvandu Maugé. He was the keyol or the captain of Kasimbé’s sailing boat. With a family of three sons and three daughters born to two sisters, he could earn no less with fish dried at home and cooked rihakru but they were the poorest family in the colony.

Don Beefan reached the girls in the vévo – a fresh water font bedded below the rise for bathers and in the island depths for women. Certain beach spots on the northern side of the island were used by women for excretion and wash – customarily maintained ethics in allocating areas for men and women separately. Some bathers caught sight of the baby in her arms and joined to follow her.

Thunder rumbled and rain hit them just in time Don Beefan and the bathers reached the house called Orchid. It was dark inside. A coconut oil lamp tinkered of alloy flickered in the blowing wind. Adambé had gone to the mosque for evening prayers. The Mazara Kamana Mosque was located further south across the settlement lying abreast the road called Handuvari Magu.

Sampadiyé wrapped the orphan in a fèli. One thing was obvious despite the darkness – this baby got green eyes and fair skin.

On the island of Noljivarumfaru there were six distinctive descends apparent to this day – namely the Nafees, the Sidiq, the Osman, the Kurafi, the Faruk and the Halak – five families of colonial descent except the Halak.

The new-born picked on the beach reminded of Saha Osman – alias Don Beefan – on the eve she marked her birthday. She was born at two-forty on this morning precisely twenty-nine years ago – a rainy day.

And it was such a rainy night that Saha Osman came with a baby who got green eyes and white skin. Apart from Don Beefan, Adam Nafees and a young girl named Firasha Faruk, there was nobody with green eyes on the island. Those three got green eyes of rather an olive tone.

Over the years people married girls from other islands. Nazarat, Asrar and Dimnasha were fair skins from other islands.

Vakol Halak was a dark person originally from Vykeredeau. He married Safira Osman – an aunt of Don Beefan – and settled in Noljivarumfaru. Mala Nafees and her daughter, Mana, got light skin. Could it be her baby? Even if she got brown eyes, Sampadiyé knew, a green-eyed baby could be born to the family. Precisely, Nala Nafees was brown-eyed and toned in skin but gave birth to a white baby girl with green eyes for Ahmed Faruk. She was named Firasha Faruk and so white folks called her Dondiyé – don means fair, diyé means daughter.

Firasha who turned nineteen sat with the girls on the bodu-ashi. She wore kadiki and fattar. The only affair she had was with Makun Halak but apparently he was building a new house to get married to Huri, one of Sidiq’s daughters.

Don Beefan explained a great deal throwing her limbs and tits at Sampadiyé who read all her mumbles – the new-born was picked on the beach floating in the water. Sampadiyé sent Firasha and two other girls to fetch Adam Nafees from the mosque.

 

Firasha climbed Handuvari Magu lying towards south with whitewashed houses and spacious gardens behind low boundary walls abreast. Esa and Moosa got their houses side by side. The Kurafis and the Faruks got pretty big houses. There stood a dozen of houses in the fading light and escalating rain. Few blocks south, the mosque stood amid the tombstones of a graveyard. Further south this road led to plantations beyond newly allocated housing lots. This settlement comprised less space than two percent of the island.

As the girls reached Firasha’s house, they heard a rumble of thunder splitting the sky across a mile so instantaneously shuddering their guts out – so low were the rain clouds.

In the wee hour between evening prayers, the island community gathered in the mosque. All men folk were there. Sunset prayer was over but rain held them arrested. She entered the mosque yard and moved up to the octagonal well used for ablution with surrounding stone that stood in the middle of the passage filled with grainy white sand. She could hear voices recite from the Holy Book. In the flicker of a faint light inside the cave she observed tall shadows of human beings cast on the walls and scarves folded on their crowns.

Shehenaz and Shirumeen, cousins of Firasha, lurked behind. She sent them up to the steps. Mohamed Faruk, their father, pulled his head out. Firasha joined and took shelter under the roof edge.

“Another one!” cried elder Faruk in disbelief. Seven days ago, Nura gave birth to a child born without a father – to the island-middle.

Faruk announced this discovery of a baby on the beach. Voices inside the mosque stopped abruptly.

In a moment grumbles grew loud and thunder rumbled. Halak pulled his beard and eyed at the topless girls wearing kadiki wraps soaking in the rain. The girls giggled.

“I have sealed the census. Tomorrow I leave on atoll tour to collect the census from other islands,” said Don Kasim – the Atoll Chief. “We have a community of 68 people on the island, 31 are men and 37 are women, one person pregnant and one person ill. I may have to amend this now. How am I going to explain this born?”

Halak retorted, “We have no new-born. None of our women is pregnant accept my daughter, Zeena. This baby isn’t ours. If Nura didn’t throw her unlawful child, she’s not ours.”

Kurafi Koì Kasim uttered, “Send the child to the Sultan.” He was the island chief who dressed the girls in puberty.

“You will send the child nowhere,” cried Adam Nafees. His green eyes sparkled in the darken cave. At that instant lightning lit their faces and thunder struck at once. “In this weather you send the child nowhere.”

“Who will take care of an unwanted child?”

“I will,” said Adam Nafees and hastily stepped into the rain. Two of his sons, Moosa and Esa, followed. Firasha’s father and his brother joined.

And the girls treaded in the flood water back to their houses.

Kurafi Koì Kasim picked the island midwife and visited all the houses in the rain to check every island woman for recent delivery of a childbirth and if anyone was hiding something. In given time there were fourteen houses of dwellers, four plots given for house building and nine vacated in the old settlement area.

In about an hour, he checked every woman but failed to find one in recent labour. Hence it was believed that the orphan probably washed ashore from a sailing boat or dumped from another island.

Don Kasim – the Atoll Chief – would investigate on his atoll tour.

 

Thunder and rain ceased by dawn. None of the two sailing boats left for fishing. The big vessel or the batteli was scheduled for an atoll tour in the morning. Don Kasim opened the sealed envelope and amended the census surveyed on 18^th August – the abandoned child picked on the beach was included and the count reached sixty-nine.

By daybreak, flood had risen four inches and thunderclouds covered the sky. It caught by the surprise of the Noljivarumfaru community – a murder of black crows hovered above. Hundreds and thousands of birds migrating in wrong course direction gathered over the island. Some took to the trees and some on the rooftops cluttering and cawing. Some colonised the low boundary walls. Crows disturbed the folks in an unusual manner pestering in their faces. Rookeries were a noisy bunch but this day they arrived in great numbers. Rooks flew behind the villagers or directly to their faces and took flight vertically into the sky. In grouped dozens rooks teased passers-by on the narrow lanes. Little kids threw stones at them. Some children used catapults and killed the birds. Rookery darkened the sky and islanders got bewildered. By midday the surrounding filled the spill.

Significantly, rooks were lesser in the outskirts of the tiny hamlet where the houses of Nafees and Sidiq were located, the empty house of Osman and the vévo remained tidy. Crows had not gathered on the roof of Nafees – the house called Orchid – but they were in the trees around. Adam Nafees obtained a bird from one of those stalking kids and examined.

Adambé applied sihr – black magic practiced in their beliefs of fanditha system. He scribbled on paper, heated in the smoke of scented flowers mixed in herbs and ambergris. He tied the talisman to the right limb of the bird and set free to join the rest. On the second day of the great crows that shook the community, cats were falling dead. This island accommodated a large group of stray cats and they were dying in great numbers. It was hardly assumed, given the time, that birds could carry a harmful disease that could infect animals or mammals and there was no way of knowing. The rookery cleared after three days and not one cat survived.

In his practice of religion, Adam Nafees never treated a child beyond what was required to call a name. Ever since the learned Halak arrived from Vykeredeau, it was not his duty to name new-borns. Adambé – as the folks called – sat down in the shimmering light studying his scriptures and came up with a name that was most incongruous to be called among a faithful society. The girl raised in the lap of Saha Osman was named Anzala Fahsha – sent down to fulfil desire.

 

Under the Maldivian Salvage Law this orphan would now belong to the Royalty as exclusive property of the Sultan of the thousand islands and many seas – all wrecks invariably did.

In the reign of Al Sultan Muhammad Imaduddin VI ruling in the capital of Malé, Indians called Borah – Merchants from Bombay – monopolised trade indebting the archipelago.

On the 16th of December 1887, Maldive Islands signed agreement recognising the Suzerainty of the Sovereignty of Great Britain over the archipelago, there-by independent, yet not wholly independent, sovereign, yet not absolute sovereign – the islands belonged to the Crown of England.

Adam Nafees was granted an amnesty by the Sultan after defying law that could have been treason if not for his reputation – he was permitted to keep the orphan girl.

 

Seven years later, this girl called Anzala Fahsha grew up in good health. She looked just like Don Beefan. Nobody would dare cry about the angelical phenomenon of Virgin Mary in that regard to a half-naked Maldivian finding her daughter on the beach of Noljivarumfaru. Adam Nafees gave a name that dug about the meaning of Fahsha – lust. Vakol Halak was on his cross to blame for blasphemy.

Anzala Fahsha spoke fluent Divehi Language and she played in the sand with her friends down on the beach. She attended a recitation class conducted by Esa Nafees. She was a grace of beauty in dainty skin, yellow limbs and an olive tan with reddish young nipples. She got emerald green eyes apparently fading colour as she grew older from a goyé to a manjé – child to adolescent. She got long black hair straight down to the waist. Don Beefan loved nothing more than this child she raised – a name she knew, a name she heard, a name she couldn’t utter.

She even got the fastest legs and proven to be a clever swimmer. She fooled her friends with tricks she mastered. Some of her abilities were quite appalling at times. She could dive deep and hold her breath for to