9.1 Grand Devil's Claws

For substantial reasons, Grand Devil’s Claws did not take place until 1978. During this time schools were closed since January due to a cholera epidemic sweeping through the archipelago.

This year six more girls joined the dancing club including Gulish who got separated from Ashwar in the recession. Other five girls formerly belonged to Sunlight Club. Heads of two societal clubs were agitated for Farida ran a very successful Bandiya business in the capital and picked all the girls. In the meantime, she sustained resort bookings and collected twice as much for indecent gigs. It was rumoured that both Sunlight Club and Moonlight Club tried indecent gigs and it did help to obtain a few bookings.

Farida designed a bottom pair of shorts for the girls in the style of a féli with black and white stripes for topless shows.

Also, to be noted that two dancers and a singer from Rehendi left and got married to some rich folk.

A lot of families in Moon Ward remained in the dark as electricity was cut off from the houses because they failed to send a female member to participate in the dance. Muna’s two half-sisters were in Club Rehendi but Muna saved the house by joining Moonlight Club. Mantha who recently turned against the heads also stayed in the dark. A lot of people in Thora began to dislike Farida.

Tailor Don was without a light since none of his daughters wished to join Bandiya. He raised a small fund and came to Malé, bought a 5kVA second-hand generator, petrol and cables. It cost him a lot. At that time, it could barely handle the essentials but two years later he would become a leading power supply to the island.

Muaz bought a Honda CR250, a red-colour bike, and now he wore long hair, wide leg denims patched up with Peace symbols, Victory crests, CSM badges, chains and beads. All motorists compelled to wear helmets and he chose a glitter gold.

At home it was very quiet, his half-sister also left abroad on a scholarship and mother continued work at the Ministry of Home Affairs. Shina left the shelter and now occupied by a small Kudahuva family. A mother who wore short frocks and attended the mosque every prayer time including at dawn. Every time she would pull on a long blue skirt and carry a musola mat under an arm to the mosque. Inside the folded mat, she would carry her doli – the prayer garb which was a white shawl dropped over head that reached the toes and leave only the face revealed. Women were allowed to attend the mosques for prayers since last Ramadan. Her daughter sometimes attended mosque carrying her musola. They had to go to Black Coral Mosque since Hadeeja Kamana Mosque was demolished for reconstruction.

Then one day Muaz heard a girl scream breaking the silence in the house at noon around eleven. He saw a young man run out of the gate. Muaz rushed to the backyard to see Firasha standing beside the banana plants in complete nude in broad daylight. Her father grabbed her arm and twisted behind her back. He was yelling at her and loud. She cried in pain. Her father who usually won’t be home at this hour came unexpectedly and found his daughter naked in bed with a cousin brother. There were other folks who rushed out of the huts and observed the altercation.

Muaz told her grandmother how he hurt the girl and she retorted, “Don’t go there!”

“Ma!” he sometimes called her ma, “But he can’t hurt her! Someone must stop him! You must talk!”

“She is a naughty girl. He just sized her.”

“Noxious!”

Since then, Muaz would glance twice at the girl if he came across her. A couple of times she turned back and looked at him but she never talked, never smiled. She normally wore straight-cut leg covers unlike her mother. Therefore, he always tried to capture a glimpse when she went to school in that tiny uniform. She attended school in the afternoon because she was a seventh-grader. Muaz stayed out most of the day. He learned soon that she was madly in love with that cousin staying at another place.

And it was a habit even after he got employed to watch the roads on breezy days when girl students go to schools because the answer blows in the wind.

In Thora, katib got his upper hand and removed Ashwar, Gulish and Multi-Ibre. Gulish who wanted to go to Malé sent a letter to Farida Ikhtak. Muaz saw this letter on her table and read it. A note from Gulish. It was a short note written in blue water-based ink and on a small sheet of rose paper. Muaz remembered at once, the note that Ashwar passed him in Thora with the message; meet me tonight in the moonlight.

Ashwar grabbed the letter in Gulish’s hand and fumed at her shaking it in his left hand, “I don’t want you to perform in Naked Bandiya!”

“Give it to me!” demanded Gulish.

“No! Let me read!”

“That’s Farida Ikhtak’s reply she wrote to me.” On which Farida wrote to say she would welcome her and any girl, pay well.

“I know. See this! Dancers get tips. What does it mean?”

“It’s life,” she argued, “they make money. You do not have a job. I do not have a job. What are we supposed to do? Rehendi girls wear beautiful dresses and gold.”

“Listen to me!” he grabbed her wrist with his left hand, “I will not forgive you if you join them. Gul!”

“Don’t hurt me!”

Ashwar flicked her hand to slam on her face but she rigidly held back before it did. “Loosen up!” he cried, “Loosen up!”

“I will divorce you if you hit me.”

“I am not the one who will hit you.” He did again and she locked her arm in the instant he tried to slam on her face. “Relax! Relax! Money is not life!”

“Then what is?”

“Life is after death.”

“Then you better die!”

Ashwar slammed her hand on her face. Tore the letter and left.

Gulish scattered to the island court and told the magistrate that she divorced him, “I have repeated three times, divorce, divorce, divorce.”

“If you have repeated three times, then you are legally divorced,” assured the magistrate.

Gulish left with another girl and arrived in Malé one year after their marriage. They did not get a child.