Gatecrashing Paradise by Tom Chesshyre

Author:Tom Chesshyre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The ferry passengers quickly dispersed and I found myself rolling my bag towards a little customer-less café next to a picnic area with a lawn. A man was slumped half asleep on a chair behind the counter. Birds cooed in wide-leaved trees by the picnic tables. The café attendant roused himself when I ordered a Holsten, which looked like a beer from the famous brewery but was in fact fizzy apple juice. Then I asked for directions to the Fuana Inn guesthouse. The attendant mumbled something and pointed vaguely in the direction of a junction where there was a choice of three empty, tree-lined roads. Hulhumale was only half finished and had a ghostly quality.

I sipped my Holsten. ‘What is life like on Emergency Island?’ I asked the first resident I had met.

The attendant mumbled something more, and in English added: ‘This nice, but more nice: home.’

He was from Bangladesh and had lived in the Maldives for seven months. In two months, he said, he intended to go to Italy or England, although he did not say how. ‘Not good money,’ he muttered, referring to his wages.

After wishing him well, I took off down a long road beyond a sign that warned ‘DRUGS DISRUPT FAMILIES’. I kept to the shade beneath tall fir trees I had not seen elsewhere in the country. Camel cigarette packets and plastic bottles were scattered in the verge and on the other side of the trees I glimpsed deserted plots of weed-filled land. The air smelt of herbs. Other than the sound of the birds, all was silent. I was, I soon realised, totally lost.

I retraced my steps and tried a second road. A man walking towards the ferry port appeared and I asked him the way. ‘I don’t know, I’m from Male,’ he said.

A seaplane buzzed above. A fly-poster on a tree near a plot with a half-built structure advertised a ‘BANGLA MUSIC CONCERT NIGHT’. Another walker materialised. He too was unsure of the hotel’s whereabouts. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made some sort of mistake.

After a while I came to a row of shops in a modern two-storey building with a pharmacy, a mini grocery market, a computer service centre and the Cappuccino Café. At the latter Indian cricket was playing on a television and a few men sat chewing areca nuts. This stretch turned out to be the island’s epicentre, with a hospital on the opposite side of the street and the headquarters of the development company behind Hulhumale in a tower connected to one end of the shops.

Two teenagers near the café made a beeline for me and said they knew the way to the hotel and would take me there. One was named Nawal and the other was Zimaam. Nawal was spindly with a bouffant haircut, a bead neck-chain and a T-shirt with a slogan saying ‘ROCK’. Zimaam had a deliberately ruffled hairstyle, rolled-up jeans and looked as though he could handle himself in a fight.

When I asked why they liked the island, Zimaam said: ‘The beach, the weather, the girls.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.