we’re walking on the beach in baa hibalhidhoo, which will be a resort one day. two bangladeshis are taking care of the island till then. behind me, some dhaththas who’ve come to collect kaashi and fan. they’ve taken off their burugas so we have to backtrack.

i’m with saththaaru whom some of you have already met. anyway, he’s a young man from an island down south, and he’s explaining coastal features of hibalhidhoo to me. he’s also an environmental scientist who, let it be known, has been published in some american journal for engineering. a small contribution to science from this giant of a man.

‘the waves are big here, that’s why the beach drops off so sharply,’ he explains.

‘you don’t want to be building your water villas in the lagoon here, that’s what it means in YOUR world.’  

then he points out a kind of furry orange growth on top of the kuredhi.

‘they’re love vines – used as an aphrodisiac. my mother used to send us kids out to collect them,’

i laugh.

‘we didn’t know what it was for obviously. whether my dad was a poor lay in bed. or whether my mum was a – oh, you see that?’

he points at something and i zone out for a bit. when i come to he’s still talking.

’…geomorphology. we mention it in all our EIA reports and i bet no one at the EPA knows what the hell it is, but they’re too embarrassed to ask at this point.’

my stomach feels a bit funny. i think it’s the curry from the night before.

we were in a cafe called layers right behind our guesthouse, the violet inn, in dharavandhoo.

they prepared our meal from scratch. meaning it took them hours. i had chicken curry with roshi, and it was really good but very oily. i was with some friends and my sister and we’d just learnt that the mantas weren’t gonna be around and that we should’ve waited a week.

‘why do they call mantas gentle giants? for fuck’s sake they eat baby animals.’ i said.

‘no you dumbass,’ said saththaaru’s gf aminadhi, who’s also some kinda scientist. ‘they eat plankton.’

‘and some baby animals are plankton, right?’

‘no they’re an entirely different kinda organism,’

‘your opinions have gone unchallenged for too long in this world,’ declared saththaaru.

‘look it up goddammit.’

‘YOU look it up.’

soon it was just me and saththaaru and my sister, fathumaafulhu, the rest have left to take a walk.

‘see?’  plankton includes stuff like the larvae of eel and also krill.’ i said.
‘and how does it feel to scream your vindication into the void? no wait, that’s your whole life isn’t it?’ laughs saththaaru, a man constantly amused at his own wit. it doesn’t help that other people find it funny either, including myself.

back in hibalhidhoo, we’ve almost reached the place where we have set up camp. but to our dismay, it’s being ravaged by a flock of crows. saththaaru makes a run towards the hut and scares off the birds.

‘fuck!’ he says. ‘they’ve got my lunch.’ he runs off with a bag into the bushes.

i inspect the damage. they’ve tossed a bunch of things on the sand.  

‘fuck!’

it’s my sandals! there is crow shit on them!

and one of the beach towel has a suspicious stain.

‘is it shit?’ i ask saththaaru when he returns.

he takes a look.

‘no, it doesn’t look like it.’

then he takes the towel into his hands, brings it right to his nose and sniffs it.  

‘no, it’s not shit, just a stain.’

you can take a man from the atolls and educate him in adelaide but…

‘the fuck you grinning at?’

‘nothing,’ i say. ‘nothing at all.’

…the man will relish any chance to plunge his nose into shit.