Ramazan

This past week there has been a kind of frenzy here leading up to the start of the holy month of Ramazan. I don't know where everyone is going or what they are doing, but the streets are crowded and it's hard to get a taxi. There were lots of invitations to parties for last Friday evening and there are pre-Ramazan sales in the shops. A small parade featuring a large green fish made of woven straw wound its way down the Majeedhee Magu, the main street of Male', a few days ago, though it's not clear if that was in anticipation of Ramazan or for something unrelated.

The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar in which each month begins with the appearance of the crescent of the new moon. Ramazan, called Ramadan elsewhere, is the 9th and holiest month and is marked by near universal fasting during daylight hours. This year it begins tomorrow, October 4, a holiday.

Until today, it wasn't entirely clear whether Ramazan would begin tomorrow or the day after. Traditionally, it begins when the new moon is actually "sighted". Of course the appearance of a new moon can be determined precisely using astronomical calculations, but they still go out and look for it, and it can be a subject of uncertainty, at least from a religious point of view. Lena and I went searching for a better apartment last week and we noticed that two of the landlords we visited had large telescopes standing at the ready in their offices. They are used for spotting the new moon of Ramazan. Evidently these two landlords are members of the committee that decides on the official starting date. (We didn't find anything. Apartments are nearly impossible to get in this crowded and fast-growing city.)

Eating, smoking, drinking and sexual relationships during the day are prohibited. Fasting is intended to teach patience and self-control, to recall the less fortunate in the world, to atone for personal faults and misdeeds and to help earn a place in paradise. It is also believed to be beneficial for personal conduct, that is, to help control passions and temper, and to provide time for meditation and to strengthen one's faith. During Ramazan, Muslims are also expected to refrain from indulging in violence, anger, envy, greed, lust and backbiting, and are meant to get along with each other better than normal. Pre-pubescent children, the sick, soldiers in battle and pregnant and breast-feeding women are excused from fasting. This fasting is serious business. Note that even the drinking of water is prohibited during daylight. I sometimes snack and drink tea in the office, but I am refraining from that during daytime out of consideration for those who are observing the fast.

The observance of Ramazan will greatly impact the rhythm of life in Maldives. Meals are taken twice a day, from 6 to 8 PM (the sun sets about 6 PM here this time of year) and from 3 to 4 AM. To accommodate the breaking of the fast after sunset, everything is closed between 5 and 8 PM. My workout gym will be open only from 7:15 to 11:00 PM with no daytime hours at all. Dr. Lena's duty shift is reduced from 5 to 4 hours per day.

It makes me think of the American holiday season, Thanksgiving through New Year's Day. I wonder if I'll miss it so much. I know I won't miss "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer". I will miss turkey and duck with stuffing. We don't have an oven even if you could get them, which you can't. Trying to roast a turkey in this climate would turn the apartment into a sauna.

Islam

By the Islamic calendar known as Hijri, today is Friday 27 Rajab 1426 A.H., a holiday known as "Isra and Miraj" which celebrates Muhammad's miraculous one-night journey from Mecca to the al-Aqsa mosque at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Muslim tradition states that Muhammad ascended to heaven from the mount in 621, making the mosque the third most holy shrine in Islam.

Our apartment is across the street from one of the newer of several mosques in Male'. It's normally full on Friday, the sabbath, but today it was overflowing. I was just returning from a walk around the island in the cool and breezy morning. As I stopped to chat with Biju, a doctor from India who works at the same hospital with Lena and who was passing on his bicycle, the street in front of the mosque and the nearby intersection filled up with worshipers who spread their rugs on the street and began their prayers.

Maldives is a Sunni Islamic country by law. Every citizen of Maldives is Islamic. Islamic law, called Shari'ah, is the law of the land. The overt practice of other religions is forbidden. In particular, Islamic doctrine is utterly opposed to idolatory, and the exclusion of all religious statues, pictures, icons or symbols is strictly enforced. During our vacation to Italy in July we visited Venice and brought back one of the obligatory carnival masks which hangs on the wall in our living room. When the delivery men came recently to bring a new bottle of gas for our cooking stove, it made them nervous and they wouldn't look at it. It's not religious, of course, but you just don't see things like that in Male'. If there's any wall decoration, it's more likely to be a prayer in arabic or a picture of President Gayoom.

The first thing you notice when you come to Male' for the first time is the call to prayer which is sung over powerful loudspeakers. It takes some getting used to, particularly the one at four in the morning, because it's very loud and very unfamiliar, but it's surprising how quickly you get used to it and don't even hear it, like church bells in European cities. And strange it is, something like an air raid siren with the power cutting in and out. If you're Maldivian, of course, it's all perfectly normal and not the least bit strange.

The second thing you notice is that the days of the week are all mixed up. Friday is the sabbath when the most important religious observances take place and everyone enjoys a day off work, like Sunday in Christian countries. Saturday is like Saturday, except that for most people, it's a work day because most people have a 6 day work week, including me, though the banks are closed. Sunday is the first day of the work week and Thursday is like Friday. So here, The Mamas and The Papas would sing "Sunday, Sunday, can't trust that day" and you would likely be sighing TGIT rather than TGIF.

Religious faith in Male' seems to range over the full spectrum from very devout conservatives to outright nonbelievers, and everything in between. A small number of women wear a black silk "full burqa" which completely hides the woman from view, including hands and face, though the eyes are visible. Almost all older women wear a head covering, but less than half of younger women wear any head covering at all.

Except for a very small number of women who attend, it's the men only who go to mosque to pray. It must be a very powerful bonding experience. The social interaction that takes place in the street going to and coming from prayer seems to confirm this.

Dogs are considered unclean in traditional interpretations of Islam, and so there are no dogs in Maldives, except for police dogs used for searches. So you don't need to look down and watch the sidewalk as you walk down the street, at least not for that reason. There's still the problem of loose paving bricks. And there are goats. I was walking home from work one day and passed two men unloading large sacks from the back of a truck. One of the sacks started to wiggle around. I looked in the truck and saw that there were several more sacks, each one with a live goat head sticking out of it. I don't know what they do with the goats.

Alcohol and drugs are strictly forbidden, and so you rarely see public intoxication. Foreign workers are allowed to get a permit to buy alcohol, though. Biju invited me to lunch at his apartment and we had a nip. I was very self-conscious of the fact that, walking home, I was slightly unsteady. I wouldn't have felt self-conscious of that in the U.S.

Male' has its warts certainly, as there is some prostitution, drug abuse and theft. But for the most part, people are happy and sober and get along with each other very well. I suspect that the Islamic faith plays an important part in that. It's probably the most important reason why Male' is a good place to live.

Spear Fishing

It's been raining heavily off and on for the past several days with gusty winds. If you came here this week seeking Maldives' glorious wall-to-wall sun, you might think the flight had made a diversion and taken you to New Orleans by mistake, where Hurricane Katrina is just making landfall.

I was invited by my optician to spend last Saturday fishing on an island named Huraa. He also invited another American working here in Male' who works for an Australian company that does relief aid consulting and who is here with his wife, a native of Papua New Guinea. Lena is in Siberia visiting her family, so it's a chance for me to have an adventure that she would probably just as soon avoid.

We left Friday late afternoon in pouring rain for the hour and fifteen minute dhoni ride to the island, but the rain stopped soon after we left port and it was a pleasant trip. You sometimes see groups of small dolphin porpoising alongside on such trips but this time all we saw were the flying fish. The first time you see fish fly, you think your eyes are playing tricks on you. They really do fly and they really are fish.

The inhabited section of Huraa is an island about 1 km square with one-story stone houses with tin roofs, most of which are quite tiny by American standards. They are well built though and have electricity, adequate plumbing and cable TV, and the 750 residents seem comfortable enough in them. We stayed in a guest house that was clean and adequate.

We visited the home of one of the optician's friends in the evening. After a drink of coconut milk from fruits freshly plucked from the palm tree on his property, we took a walk around the island. There's a mosque, of course. There's a "main street", 20 meters wide, with souvenir shops along each side. Tourists come to the island from the resorts on "excursions". There are two resort islands practically touching Huraa, Club Med and Four Seasons. Both are closed until next year because of tsunami damage. The loss of the resort jobs has hit the residents here in the pocketbook, but they seem to be taking it in stride and there is relief assistance from the government.

After our walk we returned to the home of our host's friend for a delicious dinner of Maldivian lobster and snapper, both prepared to perfection and, of course, fresh caught that day. I’ve eaten in some very good Michelin-star seafood restaurants but this was certainly the best seafood I’ve ever tasted.

The aid consultant and his wife stayed up for massages from the owner of the guest house, who works as a masseuse at one of the resorts, but I went to bed. I was up earlier than the others the next day and sat in front of the guest house watching the island residents come and go. There is a strong community life and the people are mostly family-oriented. They smile easily and laugh together as they meet to begin their daily activities. A woman was showing off her newborn to neighbors while a couple of smartly-dressed teenage girls sat and gossiped. Male’ is more stressed than this laconic island, but even there I’m struck with how much happier people are in general in Maldives than in the U.S. despite, or perhaps because of, the material disparity. Life here is the antithesis of American materialism, paranoia and alcoholism, though a small minority are moving in that direction. The strong Islamic faith keeps the focus on family and community. People live thrust together in close proximity in the same community over long periods of time in contrast to western-style mobility, isolation and egotism.

We were supposed to wait at the guest house for our host to come at 9:00, but the aid consultant and his wife left early for coffee. The fisherman arrived for me on his motor bike, one of only about a dozen vehicles on the island, and I rode on the back the 300 meters to the restaurant. We could well have walked, of course, but no self-respecting Maldivian male would think of doing so if he has a motor. As we ripped along the narrow sandy roads and weaved around palm trees at about twice the speed I would have considered prudent, I calculated my chances of getting to breakfast without suffering a serious injury, but we arrived intact.

The average Maldivian's idea of organizing things is roughly comparable to the Italian philosophy of life pre-Berlusconi: don’t worry, everything will work out in the end. In fact it usually does. I ordered coffee, but it never came. Instead, a number of plates of breakfast foods arrived. Some had been ordered, it seemed. There was one extra and it was assigned to me. It turned out that it had been ordered by the fisherman, who left and returned, but they just fixed the same thing again for him. I never did get any coffee. Sometimes life seems to know better than you what you need or don’t need. Coffee tends to bring on motion sickness and we would soon be on a small boat tossing about in rough seas.

But not before waiting out a torrential rainstorm that lasted two hours. We sat in the restaurant and talked politics. That can be unwise in a country ruled since 1978 by an elected president usually described as "autocratic", and where interference by foreigners in local affairs is most unwelcome, but people do want to talk and I don’t exactly have radical ideas. The country mostly needs investment to make good private sector jobs for young people, I advised. In that way, it’s not so different from Kalamazoo, Michigan where I lived before coming here, or from Germany or Brazil or China for that matter. I suggested looking at Singapore and trying to understand how their model for success can be applied here. They said that they thought Maldivians were spoiled and lazy compared to Singapore. I countered that it’s the prospect of good jobs that make people ambitious, and if they had them, they would be as ambitious as anyone, perhaps too much so.

Finally the weather cleared and we set out in the fisherman’s nine meter dhoni powered by a five horsepower outboard. There was just room for the five of us in the open deck boat. The sea was rough after the storm and the salty spray splashed over us as we slammed into the waves. Being soaked and with a stiff breeze in my face, it’s the only time I’ve felt at all cold in Maldives. After 30 minutes we reached a reef. The fisherman put on goggles, mask and fins, took his three meter home-built spear, and set off fishing.

The aid consultant and I also took to the water to have a look around the reef. There were the usual reef fish—bright blue and yellow surgeon fish that have a scalpel-like fin but are very docile if you leave them alone, parrot fish that really do have a face like a parrot and which chew on the coral for the algae, and the many others that make snorkeling the reef like swimming in a tropical aquarium. The water was cloudy from the storm. Usually it’s crystal clear. It's usually a constant 28C and today was warmer than the air. I did tire of it after a while, though, and came back to the boat. Forty years ago I used to hoist myself up over the end of a canoe in open water with ease. Since then I’ve put on weight. The aid consultant, in worse shape than me, had already been hoisted aboard. He and our host, also heavy, positioned themselves on my side of the boat so that the edge was practically at water level and I managed with all my might to struggle back up ungracefully. Five beautiful red fish about 15-20 cm lay on the deck of the boat, four soldier fish and a reef trout.

The fisherman dropped us off at a small island about 30 meters across while he and our host went off to try their luck elsewhere. We were still cold and there were dead tree limbs around so we tried to build a fire on the beach. Everything was still wet from the rain except for some reeds that had already dried in the wind, and the inside of a dry coconut shell which, when broken open, made a good kindling. Dried coconut shells are the cooking fuel of choice on Huraa. With some effort we got a nice little fire going.

The boat came back for us before long but they hadn’t managed to catch anything else. It was no problem, though, the five fish were plenty. We had an absolutely marvelous meal of them at the fisherman’s home.

Before returning to Male’ we visited a Frenchman’s wooden safari boat under construction on the beach for the past 16 months. Safari boats are live-aboard boats that cruise the islands taking divers and surfers to remote locations. This one is big, 35 meters, with three decks, and is beautifully designed and appointed. It’s supposed to go into the water in two weeks, to be christened “Ocean Dancer” and promoted to Florida divers and surfers. We speculated as to how they were going to get it into the water. The owner, David, told us, “they know how, they do it all the time”. I’d like to see it.

To get home, we needed to catch the speedboat from Club Med that takes construction workers back to Male’ at 6 PM. I was sure we would be late for it. In Maldives, there is no past and no future, only the present. It’s not unusual for people to find themselves at some moment in time not in the place where they ought to be at that moment, confused and disoriented as to how to be in that other place. The motor bike came for us at the guest house and took us, one at a time, at breakneck speed, to the fisherman’s boat which would ferry us to the speedboat. As we set out across the water, the only thing that surprised me was that the speedboat was still in sight by the time we got there, making it’s way out of the harbor at low speed, and that it stopped to wait for us. We lept from the dhoni onto the speedboat, both of them tossing about in the light waves of the harbor. I stood on the deck of the speedboat as the sun set and the stars came out, talking idly with my optician until the heavy spray drove us below decks. We were back in Male’ by 7 PM.

Hello from Maldives

A year ago I didn't know there was a country called Maldives. Today I live and work in Male', an island 2 km by 1 km with 80,000 residents, the capital of a country made up of a string of atolls in the Indian Ocean consisting of 1900 tiny islands stretching 800 km in a line due north from the equator to just west of the southern tip of India. "Waterworld", I call it. I fell in love with salt water when I was a young teen living for a time in Florida, but during the 45 years I've spent since then in places like Cleveland, Rochester NY, Chicago and Kalamazoo, there's been only the fresh water of the Great Lakes. Until I came here for the first time last January, I didn't realize how much I missed for the sea.

And what a beautiful ocean it is, calm and clean. The islands of Maldives can rightly be called a kind of paradise though the place is not without its warts. The 90 or so luxury resorts here attract millions of visitors every year, mostly from Europe but also from Asia and the Americas. Tourism is the number two industry after tuna fishing and the income from it keeps this Islamic country of 400,000 relatively prosperous and stable compared to some of its neighbors in this region of the world. Divers come for the coral reefs, sybarites for the sun and the beaches and the spas, and there's even a bit of surfing.

I didn't come here for the sea and the sun, though. I met my fiancee, Lena, on the internet, and she is an obstetrician/gynecologist here. I love her. I would have gone anywhere to be with her, even to Siberia where she was born and lived until two years ago, but it was a bonus to find her in a place that defines the meaning of warm and sunny.

However delightful the tourist resorts may be, Male' isn't paradise. It's a crowded and chaotic Asian city. It is so built up, in fact, that as small as it is, there are relatively few places on the island where you can actually see the water. From our apartment window on the 5th floor we can just barely see a tiny patch of deep blue, and unless you walk along the shore you might completely forget you're on an island. Two Fridays out of three we take a day trip to Giravaru, a small resort island located 45 minutes due west of Male' by dhoni, the open 20 meter wooden boats that ferry most local people around the islands. For six hours we are on tropical vacation--snorkeling along the reef, basking in the sun on pure white sand, frolicking in the surf and enjoying a simple lunch at the outdoor restaurant overlooking the lagoon.