Maldives: Mystery Island
As we made the approach to land, spread below us was green necklace of small islands framed by the bluest coral reef. It looked as if the plane was going to land on water, such was the absence of land. But if you were going to die, what better place than
Alittle over six hundred years ago, the original (Abu Abdallah)Ibn Battutah made a long stop over in the Maldives, a group of Islands the Arabs called Dhibat al-Mahal. Even in those days before mass tourism was invented, the allure of these beautiful Islands was well known to travelers. This is how Ibn Battutah introduced them in his TRAVELS.
“These Islands are one of the wonders of the world and number about 2000 in all .... Most of the trees on these islands are coco-palms and they provide food for the inhabitants along with fish. All these products of the coco-palm and the fish they live on have an amazing and unparalleled effect in sexual intercourse, and the people of these Islands perform wonders in this respect. I had there myself four wives and concubines as well and I used to visit all of them every day and pass the night with the wife whose turn it was, and this I continued to do the whole year and a half that I was there.”
What helped this stranger from far away North Africa to assimilate so quickly in a small island in South Asia, was that Maldives, then (as now), was an Islamic country. As a scholar and jurist of some renown, he quickly found work and became part of the ruling elite. But this proved to be a double-edged sword. He was dragged willy nilly into the local politics and soon clashed with the powerful Vizier (or prime minister) of the reigning queen.
As he had done in many places during his journeys in the Muslim world of the 14th century, Ibn Battutah decided not to over stay his welcome. Obviously most attached to Maldives, of the many places he had been, he left a touching account of his precipitate departure.
“When the night fixed for my departure came, I went to take leave of the Vizier, and he embraced me and wept so copiously that tears dropped on my feet. Having divorced my wives, I set sail. We came to a little island in the archipelago in which there was but one house occupied by a weaver. He had a wife, a few coco-palms and a small boat, with which he used to fish and to cross over to any of the islands he wished to visit. His Island contained also banana bushes, but we saw no land birds on it except two crows, which came out to us on our arrival and circled above our vessel. And I swear I envied that man and wished that the island had been mine, that I might have made my retreat until the inevitable hour should befall me.”
Since then there have been many accounts of travel to the Maldives, but this was probably the oldest and one of the most insightful. I read it many years after I had caught a glimpse of these jewels in the Indian Ocean from the air. My flight was to Colombo in Sri Lanka, but the plane made a stopover in Male, the Maldivian capital, to drop off some passengers.
It was early in the morning, after a 10-hour flight from London. As we made the approach to land, spread below us was green necklace of small islands framed by the bluest coral reef. It looked as if the plane was going to land on water, such was the absence of land. But if you were going to die, what better place than a tropical paradise!
Somehow the giant bird found the runway that was built on reclaimed strip of land in a vast blue ocean. “Welcome to the Maldives”, some air hostess announced merrily, and I felt as if she was specifically addressing me.
But as if sensing many of us might succumb to Island fever and wander off into the blue, we were told not to get off the plane and had to watch the palm fronds swaying in the near distance as the plane refueled.
To be continued