Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

The Maldives has (HAD…) lots of islands, most of them at risk of flooding, so the government had been pushing for years to get the population to relocate to the biggest, best-fortified atoll. By coincidence, there was a TV documentary crew making a film about a few islanders on one of the smaller atolls who were protesting at being rehoused. The cameras were rolling when the tsunami hit. I’ve seen clips on my phone. You cannot believe what you are seeing. One second, an American anchorperson voice is saying something about papaya groves, and the next second, a zillion tons of seawater smashes across the screen. Rescue crews saved some of the Americans, a few tourists, a few of the locals. And the cameras, of course. That sounds cynical. I think they did what they could.

Our church is considering what we can do to help. Sending people over there isn’t an option. There’s nothing we can achieve. Most of the islands are wiped off, there is nothing left except humps in the ocean. Even the biggest islands are probably never going to recover. All the fresh water has been fouled. There is not one fully intact, usable building. There is nowhere safe to land, nowhere to set up a hospital, no way of burying the dead. Helicopters are buzzing around like seagulls over an oilspill full of dead fish. At this stage, all we can do is pray for the relatives of Maldivans everywhere. And maybe, in time, there’ll be refugees.

I’m sorry to start this way. You can imagine my head and heart are full of it. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking of you.

Peter leaned back in his chair, lifted his face to the ceiling. The electric light was still on, superfluous now that the sunshine was beaming in, almost too bright to bear. He shivered, feeling the dampness in his clothes turning chilly in the air conditioning. He felt grief for the people of the Maldives, but, to his shame, the grief was mingled with a purely selfish pang: the sense that he and Beatrice, for the first time since the beginning of their relationship, were not going through the same things together. In the past, whatever happened would happen to them both, like a power blackout or a late-night visit from a distressed friend or a rattling window-frame while they were trying to sleep. Or like sex.

I miss you, wrote Beatrice. This Maldives thing wouldn’t have upset me so much if you’d been here. Tell me more about your mission. Is it horrendously difficult? Remember that unexpected breakthroughs often come directly after everything has seemed impossible. The ones who insist they don’t want or need God are the ones who want and need Him most.

Joshua is still playing his tricks. I’m seriously considering slipping him a Mickey Finn in his evening milk. Or hitting him on the head with a mallet when he wakes me up yet again at 4 AM. Alternatively, maybe I should make a life-size dummy of you to lie next to me in the bed. That might fool him. Sadly, it wouldn’t fool me.

The Mirah situation is under control now. I got together with a Muslim social worker, Khadija, who liaises with the imam at Mirah’s local mosque. Basically we’re trying to sell it to the imam as a human decency issue (the husband’s violence/lack of respect) rather than a religion vs religion issue. It’s hardcore diplomacy, as you can imagine, like brokering a peace deal between Syria and the USA. But Khadija is brilliant.

I got a message from USIC saying you’re fine. How would they know? I suppose they mean they can verify you didn’t get vaporised. The message was sent by Alex Grainger. Have you met him? Tell him he can’t spell ‘liaise’. Or maybe there’s a simplified American way of spelling it now? Bitch, bitch, bitch. But I’ve been tolerant all day, honest! (Very difficult new patient on the ward. Supposedly transferred down from Psych for medical reasons but I think they were just desperate to get rid of her.) Anyway, I feel like being outrageously unfair to someone for just three minutes, to let it rip. I won’t, of course. I’ll be very nice, even to Joshua when he wakes me up AGAIN in the small hours.

Seriously, I’m missing you terribly. Wish I could spend just a few minutes in your arms. (OK, maybe an hour.) Weather is better, lovely sunshine today, but it’s not cheering me up. Went to the supermarket for some comfort food (chocolate mousse, tiramisu, you know the sort of thing). Turns out lots of other people had the same idea. Everything I wanted was out of stock, a blank space on the shelf. Settled for one of those rollette things with the fake cream inside.

Head full of Maldives tragedy, stomach full of dessert. What fortunate people we are in our Western playground… We watch the footage of foreign dead on video clips and then mosey out to the supermarket in search of our favourite treats. Of course when I say ‘we’, I can’t speak for you right now. You are far from all of this. Far from me.

Ignore this self-pitying prattle, I’ll be fine by tomorrow. Let me know how you’re going. I’m so proud of you.

Kisses, hugs (I wish!)

Beatrice

PS: Want a cat?

My dear Bea, he wrote back.

I hardly know what to say. How dreadful about the Maldives. The scale of such a tragedy is, as you say, almost impossible to imagine. I’ll pray for them.

Those sentences, short as they were, took him a long while to write. A full three to five minutes for each. He racked his brains for an additional sentence that would make a dignified transition from the disaster to his own glad tidings. Nothing came.

I have had my first meeting with an Oasan native, he went on, trusting that Bea would understand. Contrary to my wildest hopes they are hungry for Christ. They know of the Bible. I didn’t have mine with me at the time — that’ll teach me never to go anywhere without it! I don’t know why I left it behind. I suppose I assumed that the first visit would be basically reconnaissance, and that the response would be negative. But as Jesus says in John 4,’ Say not ye, There are yet four months before the harvest; behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look upon the fields, for they are ripe already!’

The settlement is not at all what I expected. There is no evidence of industrialisation, it could be the Middle East in the middle ages (with different architecture, of course). No electricity, apparently! It’s also in the middle of nowhere, a long, long way from the USIC base. I don’t think it will be feasible for me to live here and travel there on a regular basis. I will have to go and live with the Oasans. And as soon as possible. I haven’t discussed any of the practicalities. (Yes, yes, I know… I really need you with me. But God is well aware that I’m clueless in that area.) I’ll have to trust that everything will fall into place. There seems plenty of reason to hope that it will!

The Oasans — assuming the one I met was typical — are average height and look remarkably like us, except for their faces which are a gruesome sort of jumble, impossible to describe really, like foetuses. You don’t know what to look at when you’re talking to them. They speak English with a strong accent. Well, the one I met did. Maybe he’s the only one who speaks any English, and my original assumption — that I would spend several months learning the language before I made any headway — will still be borne out. But I have a feeling that God has been at work here already, more than I dared imagine.

Anyway, I’m going straight back there as soon as I can. I was going to say ‘tomorrow’, but with the periods of daylight being several ‘days’ long here, the word ‘tomorrow’ is a problem. I must find out what the USIC personnel do to get round that one. I’m sure they have a solution. I’ll ask Grainger during the drive, if I remember. My mind’s a bit over-excited, as you can imagine! I’m just raring to go back to that settlement, take my place amongst these extraordinary people and satisfy their thirst for the Gospel.