Читать книгу Outcasts of the Islands: The Sea Gypsies of South East Asia - Sebastian Hope - Страница 12

The greatest luxury ashore was access to a bathroom, though I had quickly accustomed myself to arrangements on the boat. You pee over the side, you crap through the gap in the stern boards, left for that purpose. Sarani would say, ‘Mesti buang tahi, must throw out shit,’ as though ditching ballast, and move aft to the dark stern with the baler for company. Minehanga always had the cover of her sarong. The children were sat over the edge of the gunwale while they off-loaded, their bottoms washed with sea water, the planks washed down with sea water when they did not quite reach the gunwale in time. Sarani could pee over the side from a squatting position by the gunwale, lifting up one leg of his loose fisherman’s trousers. I did not have the balance to be able to do this on a rocking boat. I was forced to stand. My appearance on the bow deck at any time would draw curious stares from the other boats. To stand up there with your old boy out, trying to keep your balance and ignore the watching eyes, the comments ‘Look, he pees standing up!’ – cannot pee, more like – was not an easy matter.

Washing was done at the stern, sluicing with sea water and rubbing with the free hand, a rinse with fresh water if stocks allowed. Sarani’s skin felt dubbinned to the touch, oiled against the sun and the sea. The bundles of clothes gave off the smell of clean unperfumed bodies; the boards were smoothed by the rubbing of skin, and held the odour of people; the pillows had the comforting scent of hair. In the Semporna Hotel, the foam bedding smelt of night-sweat.

I met Ujan and Mus at the Marine Police post, and the three of us adjourned to the bar. The conversation turned to fish-bombing.

‘You know what they use? These,’ said Ujan, indicating the beer bottles. ‘Maybe you will see these ones again at Kapalai in a couple of days. They fill them with a mixture of fertiliser and petrol. Then they plug a detonator into the top, light it, wait a moment, throw it into the water, and boom.’ He laughed as he tapped the top of the lager bottle with the bottom of the other and froth raced up the neck and out, Mus hurrying to tip it into his glass. ‘You have seen the men who waited too long? In the market maybe? No right arm and a lovebite on the side of their face?’ Ujan poured half-and-halves, Carlsberg and Guinness.

‘It is very difficult to catch these people,’ Mustafa confided. ‘On the sea, they can see us coming a long way off. They just throw the bombs overboard, pick up their fishing lines, and move onto the shallow reef where we cannot follow them. The materials are so cheap and easy to find. You can make one at home. You have to get the proportions right, or else it is very unstable, but they know how to mix it. The detonators come from the Philippines, but they are home-made too, made from a bundle of matches around a small charge of explosive. You can buy them here for one ringgit each. We try to catch the people who bring the detonators across, but they are very small,’ he held up his little finger. ‘You could fit ten into this cigarette box. Oh yes, we catch plenty, but there are always enough that get through. What can we do? It is a big ocean. Sarani doesn’t bomb fish, does he?’

‘No, he says it is the Suluk people.’

‘Bajau also, Indonesian also, mainly it is the illegal immigrants.’ The immigration problem extends Malaysia-wide. Illegal immigrants were blamed for most anti-social crimes, I noticed from the newspapers: prostitution, mugging, smuggling, drug-dealing, car theft, burglary. Those who broke no further law after their illegal entry still faced deportation, in theory at least. Occasionally there were sweeps, ‘checkings’, followed by mass deportations, but the immigration laws are flouted at every level, from the ruling party handing out Malaysian documents to Muslim Filipino and Indonesian migrants at election time, to illegal Bangladeshi construction workers on prestige projects like the new Kuala Lumpur airport and the twin Petronas Towers, to loggers and plantation labourers in Sabah.

‘Sabah would close down if there were no illegals,’ said Ujan.

Unfortunately, the threat of deportation promotes the use of fish-bombs. If you were a poor fisherman who had left the Philippines with your family to make a living in Sabah, and you knew there was always a chance you could be caught tomorrow and sent back with only the clothes you had on, would you invest capital in nets and lines? Or waste what might be only a short time in these waters trying to catch fish by those laborious and uncertain methods, when for an investment of three ringgit, bomb and detonator, you can blow up twenty ringgit-worth of fish in an instant? And why should you care, while your luck holds, whether there will be any reef or fish left in a year’s time? It is not hard to understand the reasons people use fish-bombs, but it is very difficult to sympathise with them.

The speck on the horizon that I had glimpsed between the islands of the channel I took to be a large boat that had anchored off Mabul, maybe a naval patrol, or a freighter from Tawau. As we rounded Manampilik, and passed by the southern edge of the Creach Reef, I could make out five masts towering above the shape. Except they were not masts. Closer, it became apparent that they were legs; in the short time I had been absent from Mabul, someone had moored an oil rig 500 yards offshore.

I was returning on Sabung Lani’s boat, Sarani’s other son. He had no idea why it was there, but then he had no idea what it was either. I explained where diesel came from, and he brightened. He needed fuel. He always needed fuel. His boat was packed with people and their luggage; he was collecting passengers for the run across the border to Bongao. His own family was large, and his boat was no bigger than Pilar’s. He had come forward over the roof to sit with me, scattering girls singing their heads off amongst the nets. I shared their joy, to be on the sea again, in the warm light of the afternoon, knowing this time what lay ahead of me, and relishing the prospect. Sabung Lani sat close.

‘So you are sleeping on my father’s boat?’ He spoke gentle Malay. He always referred to Sarani as bapak saya punya, ‘father I have’, an elegant colloquialism to which he gave a humble and reverential intonation. I felt an immediate sympathy with Sabung Lani; he too suffered from acne. He looked like an older version of Pilar, heavier, and while they both had Sarani’s gentle eyes, Sabung Lani’s did not have his father’s mischievousness, nor Pilar’s sparkle. They had a sad expression, a memory of pain now distant. He was about forty years old, and had had eight children already with his large wife Trusina. The first six were girls.

‘You must spend a night on my boat, brother,’ said Sabung Lani, and I wondered if there would be room. ‘You want to come with me to the Philippines?’ It was a tempting invitation but the danger involved gave me pause for thought. ‘You will be safe on my boat.’ I said I would ask Sarani.

‘Bye-bye,’ said Sumping Lasa waving uncertainly, standing on the bow in her dirty green dress, still holding her flip-flops. From under the tarpaulin came the sound of rattling planks, and a musical shout of ‘Da’a, Don’t!’ from Minehanga as Sabung Lani’s boat, engine cut, glided in under way. Arjan, naked, burst out onto the bow. ‘Melikan, Melikan,’ he was shouting. He had both arms stretched out towards me. Sarani followed, all smiles. It seemed that they were as happy and excited to see me as I was to be back. This felt like the real beginning.

‘He’s been asking all the time, “Where’s the Melikan, where’s the Melikan?”. Careful,’ said Sarani as he helped me aboard, ‘there is Mbo’.’ Arjan was clamouring for me to pick him up. I stood on the bow with the little packet of naked sun-warm skin wriggling in my arms, and looked out over the fleet, the boats clustered in twos and threes, more than twenty, Pilar astern of us, and Sabung Lani poling forward to anchor ahead. People waved at me from other boats, ‘Oho, Melikan,’ shouted Timaraisa and her children, and I was taken back into the arms of the water-borne community. Arjan was trying to put something in my mouth with his snotty fingers. I accepted the gift, a morsel of shark jerky.

I put him down, and he was off, making the boards rattle under his vigorous little feet. ‘Da’a,’ Minehanga shouted again. Mangsi Raya was asleep. Sumping Lasa joined in the noisy fun. ‘Da’a,’ said Sarani, and grabbed Arjan on his next pass and gave him a smack. He sat down hard. It had to be serious for Sarani to become involved. Sumping Lasa had escaped to the stern and Minehanga had to go after her, calling across to Timaraisa, who paddled over in a dug-out. Both children were taken away. Mangsi Raya had woken and, finding her mother absent, she started crying.

‘Naughty kids,’ said Sarani. ‘They’ve been running around all day, disturbing the Mbo’. And now crying.’ A pandanus mat had been set up forward in the cabin, one end tucked over the tarpaulin’s port wall-strut, and adjusted so that the other end hung down onto the deck and formed an apron stage for the offerings, for the seat of Mbo’. On the overlap sat an old coconut in its brown leathery husk and a portion of unthreshed rice. The rice was contained within a band of bark over which had been placed a square of black cloth, and the rice poured in on top to make a pool of yellow grains. Simple, but specific, offerings on a simple altar, but offerings to what, to whom? I was eager with questions, but first I had to discover how to behave during the period of Mbo’.

‘No, no, it’s no problem that you are here,’ said Sarani, ‘but be careful with your feet. You can lie with your head near the mat, or sit near it, but do not point your feet towards it. Do not make a lot of noise like those naughty kids. There are other things which will disturb Mbo’, if the wind is too strong or the sea too rough. We cannot go anywhere in this boat, or start the engine, or do any work in the boat while there is Mbo’. On the first day, in the afternoon, we start Mbo’ Pai, and put out the rice and the coconut. It stays there tonight, and in the morning, we will pound the rice and grate the coconut, and cook them together. Everyone eats. Then tomorrow we can do nothing also, one more night the mat stays there, and in the morning, finished.’ I had missed the dressing of the altar and the consecration of the offerings. Sarani told me it had been accomplished by the old couple I had seen perform the ceremony on my first morning at Mabul. They spoke words, Mbo’ words, over the coconut and the rice.

The objects themselves excited questions, both land products, both enclosed within a husk. Why would a maritime people make an offering of land crops? I would have expected an offering of something from the sea. These objects would not have been out of place on a farmer’s fertility altar; did they point to an agrarian origin? Why rice? Unhusked rice? The coconut was less out of place, but Sarani told me it is only as part of the Mbo’ meal that the Bajau Laut eat old coconut.

And what was it that connected the two, that fitted them to be offerings? I suspected that it had something to do with the husk, with the fact that the outer part must be stripped away to reveal the inner. The only other (overtly) ancestor-worshipping culture I have observed in South East Asia was that of the inveterate betel-chewers of western Sumba, a rice-growing people. As part of their annual fertility rite, they make offerings at the megalithic graves of their ancestors of sirih pinang – a whole betel nut, a thin green fruit that looks like a large immature catkin, and lime powder. For the Sumbanese, the symbolism of the offering is manifest: the betel nut, very much like a miniature coconut, is the womb; the catkin stands for the penis; the white powdered lime for the fertilising seed. There were similar elements here, the fertile hollow of the coconut and the myriad grains of rice the sperm.

Sarani was not strong on symbols. ‘Sometimes we make Mbo’ Pai when someone is ill, and you must make Mbo’ Pai before a wedding, but this kind is one that we do from time to time for good luck.’ Nasib was the word he used, meaning also ‘fate’ and ‘fortune’. ‘Good luck for fishing, for health, for the boat.’ I wondered if there was an element of animism at work, if the boat had a spirit that could be protected and strengthened through the observance of ritual. I had seen such a ceremony performed in another part of the Malay world, a shamanic cleansing and fortifying of a house-spirit, a spiritual spring-clean.

‘No, of course the boat does not have a ghost.’ I sensed he was getting irritated by my questions, but I had to ask how the ceremony was thought to work.

‘No, the ancestors do not come here.’

‘Where are the ancestors, Panglima?’

‘Their spirits are with Mbo’. Mbo’ is the first ancestor. He comes here.’

‘And the ancestors made the same offerings?’

‘Oh, yes. They did it like this, so we do it like this the same.’

‘And if you do this, you will thrive?’

‘Kalau Tuhan menolong.’

Sarani was the first to wake and he set about the third act of Mbo’ Pai. He emptied the rice onto a winnowing tray, and took it aft to where Minehanga and another woman were waiting by the rice mortar, carved from a single piece of wood. Every boat had one of these, knocking about, sat on, used as a quotidian container, until the time came for it to assume its ceremonial role. Sarani emptied half the rice into the hollow and the two women standing opposite each other, each with a foot on the base, drove double-ended pestles as tall as themselves into the mortar in turn, one two, and the boat’s sounding boards gave back thump thump, thump thump. The first light of day reached us through the palms of the island as the rice was winnowed over the stern.

Minehanga tore the husk off the coconut and split it with a parang. She squatted on a block of wood to which was attached a cruelly toothed metal spur and ground the coconut against the bit, catching the grated flesh in a bowl below. The mixture of rice and coconut was put on to cook. Everyone on the three remaining family boats partook of the meal – Sabung Lani had left for Bongao before dawn. The rice had been too long in the grain and made the whole meal taste musty.

The taboo on work aboard the boat was still in force and the injunction served to remind Sarani of all the chores he had to complete, all the improvements he wanted to make. ‘Tomorrow, we will wash the boards, we will take out all the nets, and find that rat. We will wash out the hold. We will wash all our clothes. Then I want to build a roof. Like Pilar’s, plank-board and pitch-cloth, if there is wood. You see, you put supports and then an arched beam across …’ This led him to examine the rickety structure that held up the tarpaulin. ‘But this will have to wait until Sabung Lani comes back. He has a sainso.’ I wondered what on earth a sainso was. ‘You know, it’s a machine from your country. Sainso. For cutting wood.’ A chainsaw, Sabung Lani had a chainsaw. ‘From Si Sehlim the fish agent in Sandakan. He also has an ajusabal.’ This turned out to be an adjustable spanner of gargantuan proportions with which Sarani (or more likely Pilar) would work on the engine. Sarani could not even start the engine by himself.

The nut holding the flywheel onto the engine block was huge and rusted. ‘I want to take the wheel off and put that on.’ He was pointing to a rusting contraption that was sloshing around in the oily bilge, a crank handle that he would mount across the top of the engine, and at the end of the shaft a geared cog and chain set-up that would turn the engine over. The chain sat in a tin soused with oil. ‘Then I can start it myself.’ I cast an eye over the motor, the wads of flip-flop rubber that wedged the throttle lever into place, the tube leading into a plastic five-litre oil bottle that acted as the oil reservoir, the other tube, held up by a piece of string tied to a roof spar, running out of the plastic barrel with a lid and a tap that was the fuel tank – more like a patient in intensive care than a locomotion unit – and I wondered that it started at all.

It was permitted, however, to work away from the boat, and Sarani, on Pilar’s boat, made ready to go fishing on the reef. My sunburn had subsided, and I was glad to be able to accompany Sarani again, if only to get away from his boat; there was something about the stillness and the inactivity aboard during the Mbo’ Pai that seemed preternatural. As he poled out against a stiffening breeze I asked him about the place of his ancestors near Bongao, about his childhood.

‘My father came from Sanga-Sanga. My mother’s family was near Sibutu, but she died when I was still small. I was the ninth of ten children. Three of the others died when they were young. My father was already old and when my mother died he went back to Bongao. It was a dangerous journey before we had engines, the current is very strong. When we got there I did not live with my father. I slept on a different boat with another family. I worked with them and then, when I was just a youth, I hadn’t long been wearing shorts, I worked for the Japanese. They were building an airstrip on Sanga-Sanga Island. They paid us Japanese dollars and then the aeroplanes and the boats of the Melikan came playing bombs, and they paid us Melikan dollars to mend the flying ship place. Your dollars in Italy are the same?’

This was astounding information. I could have asked Sarani how old he was till I was blue in the face, and still be none the wiser, but now, as a result of his desire to show off his Japanese vocab and his curiosity about the international currency market, I could work out that if he was wearing shorts, at (say) the age of eleven, in 1942, he was roughly sixty-five, and fourteen at the end of the war. ‘Some of those Melikan used to give me cans of food, which I sold, and sometimes we went fishing in their boat and I would dive for them. For oysters.’

He was quiet for a moment, remembering. ‘I had my own boat after that. I went out to catch trepang, just working all the time. My father had died. I had no family close by. I ate with the other family, the one from before, but every night I was spearing trepang, and every day I was boiling it and smoking it. I would sit there on the sea-shore watching my fire, and the boys my age would say, “Come, play baseball,” and I would say no and stay tending my fire. There was a girl who would stay with me on the beach sometimes and she … Oh, what was that?’ A ray. ‘We must find poles for those spear heads. We can do that on Mabul tonight.’ He did not resume his story. I asked him what happened next, and he said ‘When? Here, start paying out the net.’

Collecting reef produce is much like collecting wild mushrooms – you have to know what is safe to eat. You have to know what is safe to touch, for that matter; at least mushrooms do not bite you, prick you, sting you or cut you. The biters do not present much of a threat. Reef sharks are timid fish, and barracuda attacks are caused in the main by mistaken identity – look out for that flashing silver bracelet that looks like a fish in distress. Triggerfish are ill-tempered enough to attack an intruder into their nesting territory, but their mouths are small and nutrition is not the object of their biting. There are two deadly poisonous biters, the sea snake and the blue-ringed octopus. The sea snake is one of the most poisonous of all snakes: fifteen minutes to organ failure. Luckily, it is also one of the most docile and bites so rarely that it is not considered dangerous. They also say that its mouth is so small, it can only bite in places like the fraenum of skin between the fingers; I have not met anyone who has tested this theory, although one did swim glancingly across my shoulder once. The octopus lives in deeper waters and is rare. Stingrays, stonefish, scorpion fish, lionfish, rabbitfish all have poisonous spines and all (except the lionfish) live in shallow water. An adverse reaction to any of these toxins could lead to death. Or you can step on a long-spined urchin, or fire coral, or a jellyfish, or a species of cone-shell that fires poison darts. The rabbitfish were not the only hazards in the net as I pulled it in. Sarani pointed out the gill-spines on angelfish, the twin sheathed blades at the base of the surgeon fish’s tail. I had much to learn.

At first light and without further ceremony, Sarani had rolled up the pandanus mat that had marked the seat of Mbo’. The taboo ended, it became an ordinary part of the boat’s fittings once more. Sarani leant against it as he prepared the day’s first wad of sirih pinang.

As soon as the boards were up, Arjan jumped down onto the nets in the hold. His feet disappeared into the monofilament and caught in the mesh as he tried to pull them out. He fell over onto the mattress of nets, and his arms became entangled. He wriggled about, squealing with laughter, kicking his legs against the net. His arms freed, he stood up again so he could throw himself forward once more. It looked like too much fun for Sumping Lasa not to join in.

Sarani and I wrestled the nets up onto the bow deck, where Pilar waited to transfer them to his boat. The last net was one I had not seen used before. It had a larger mesh and it looked new. ‘Si Sehlim gave the money last time we were in Sandakan. Thousands, and now look what the rat has done. Here.’ Sarani had found a section that had been shredded, very neatly, into strands of spaghetti that scattered into the bilge as we lifted it out. The hold was empty now, but there had been no sign of the rat. I stepped down into the hold to join Sarani. Arjan and Sumping Lasa peered over the edge of the planks. Minehanga was positioned as backstop by the engine well. The hunt was on.

Sarani moved forward to the bow locker, separated from the main hold by a half bulkhead, and pulled out the coils of rope, the floats, a new anchor, a punctured football, and an old coconut that were stored there. I was expecting the rat to come bursting out at any moment, to bear down on where I stood in the hold, gripping a length of wood. But nothing emerged from the locker. The rodent had to be aft.

The waves lapped against the hull. The water in the bilge was hardly moving. We scanned the shadows under the cabin boards, below the engine and beyond to the stern. Nothing. Sarani started slowly towards the stern, poking his stick into the crannies between the ribs and the gunwale, squatting down as he checked under the cabin deck, rattling the stick under the block of wood on which the engine sat. Nothing. A movement at the edge of my field of vision startled me into raising my stick. It was only a cockroach, but now my heart was pounding.

Sarani moved out of sight under the deck beyond the engine. Any moment now. Where else could it be? I was now the lonely backstop. I crouched over the bilge, commanding the approaches to the bow locker. Any moment now. But Sarani had found nothing in the stern hold either. He called to me that I should check the bow locker again. I wondered if it might have hitched a ride onto Pilar’s boat with the nets. I peered into the locker, prepared to meet the stare of beady eyes, but there was nothing. I was running my stick around inside the rim of the car tyre when Minehanga cried out. It was on deck.

I got there as Sarani was coming up through the boards of the stern. Minehanga had seen the beast, its head poking out from behind a plank leaning against the gunwale. She had thrown Sumping Lasa’s flip-flops at it. The gap between the board and the gunwale had created a covered run above decks that the rat was using to double back towards the bow. Sarani took the stern end of the plank. I took the other, my cudgel raised, ready to Bat-A-Rat. Slowly we pulled the top edge of the plank away from the gunwale. The rat was halfway between us, crouched in defence, halted in its retreat towards the stern. When the light touched it, it turned again and bolted in my direction. It had too far to go. What had been a refuge was now a trap. Sarani opened up the old ammunition crate that held what tools he had and pulled out a sledge hammer with a rusty head. The body of the rat settled onto the sea bed near a spinney of black urchins. It was no longer there the next morning.

In the days that followed, waiting for Sabung Lani’s return from Bongao, my role aboard the boat filled out. I had been a deck-hand from the start, but the purchase of disposable razors made me ship’s barber too. Sarani was my first customer and he sat patiently presenting a toothless jaw while I tried to work up a lather on his salty oil-skin face. The performance drew a crowd. Arjan watched fascinated, raising his grubby hand to his forehead from time to time as though something were bothering him. Sarani told me he had fallen into the engine well while I had been in Semporna and had cut his scalp. Barber and leech, I washed away the dried blood matting his hair to reveal a wound that should have been stitched. It was showing signs of infection already. ‘You have medicine?’ asked Sarani. I had a small supply of antiseptics, and set about shaving the area surrounding the cut. ‘That one looks like water,’ except it was H2O2 instead of H2O: hydrogen peroxide, the diver’s remedy. When applied to a cut it turns white and fizzes like a dose of salts. Arjan’s cut was volcanic, a bubbling vent in the middle of the bald patch. There were murmurs of surprise. ‘It’s like Coca-Cola,’ said Sarani. I swabbed the cut with betadine and pulled the edges as close together as I could with the plaster, wondering just how long it would stay on a head like Arjan’s. Thereafter I was asked to look at wounds old and new, from the nick on Sumping Lasa’s finger to the long invaginated gash in one young man’s leg. I did what I could.

The passing of time was marked by gratifying moments that showed I was progressing from being tolerated on the boat to being accepted. Arjan could sit on my lap without fidgeting or pulling my chest hair. At meal-times Minehanga no longer gave me my own bowl. As the men of the household Sarani and I ate from the same dish. We were served our food before women and children, but often Mangsi Raya could not wait and would crawl to my side, staring into my eyes with unnerving trust as I fed her flakes of fish. Sumping Lasa’s tantrums were becoming less frequent and I realised with a pang that the traits in her character I found so unlovely had in fact been symptoms of the disquiet my presence had caused her. One night when the wind was cold, I was woken by a movement against my back; it was Sumping Lasa snuggling in behind me for warmth. I let her stay, despite Sarani’s warning not to sleep too close to the children. ‘You will be wet,’ he said. ‘They will pee on you.’ I got wet anyway; the wind brought rain soon after.

Analisa, one of Sarani’s granddaughters, a pretty girl of ten, shyly proffered the bamboo louse-pick to me one day. I had watched the operation often enough and knew the right noise to make on discovering a louse, ‘tsss’ on the inhale, and on killing it, an exhaled ‘hmm’. It worked like a progress report. I took the pick and she lay down on the deck in front of me waiting to be groomed. I parted her wind-blown hair with the bamboo slat and scanned her scalp for louse spoor. I was an inept tracker – I failed to find a nit even – but Analisa had thought it natural to entrust me with this service. Bunga Lasa, Sarani’s youngest child by his first wife, relieved me of the pick when she had seen enough of my incompetence and was soon going ‘tsss-hmm’ as she cut a swath through the parasites. Then she turned on me. It did not occur to me that she might find anything that would summon the sound effects, but she did. ‘Tsss-hmm’, once, twice, announced acceptance into a club I would rather not have been joining.

My familiarity with life afloat was growing on a subconscious, physiological level as well. I knew without looking the state of the tide. My balance was improving as my body came into synchronism with the periods of the sea, its broad movements, its grace-notes. I could walk the length of Pilar’s roof while the boat was under way. I could even walk the length of the dug-out without bending to hold onto the sides. My eyesight became sharper, revealing shapes on a farther horizon. One morning when the deep-water net had shifted in the night, I was the first to spot the polystyrene float. I began to be able to read the sea, the shallows and currents, from the colour of the water and the pattern of waves. Sarani had me steer when both he and Minehanga were busy.

On our fishing trips in the dug-out I had worked my way up from baler to net-boy already. Sarani began to pass the pole to me more often while he prepared a quid, or caulked the canoe, or worked on the net. Then came the day at Kapalai when he let me get into the water for the first time.

I had always been a tourist on the reef before then, as a diver or a snorkeller, and as a diver you are taught to touch as little as possible and take nothing. My instructor in Cairns had made it clear: ‘ “Take only photographs and leave only footsteps” except underwater, if you know what I mean, and then you don’t want to be walking on the coral, so no footsteps at all actually.’ The reason Sarani did not walk on the coral was because he was barefoot. He certainly had no qualms over bashing it about a bit, rattling his new spear into holes and crannies or excising a giant clam. I soon quashed the reluctance that came with putting on my mask and snorkel and collected shells alongside him.

We were covering areas of the reef which a sightseer would ignore, the zone of sea-grass and scrubby coral that grows in lumps from a bed of sand; we were not in search of beauty. I knew what I was looking for, but I was not entirely sure where I would find the shells. I stayed close to Sarani as he combed the sea-grass, pulling the canoe behind him. He would reach down and the first I would see of a kahanga or a téhé-téhé was as his hand brought it up through the water. The dolen were easier to find, scattered on the sand between the coral heads, though a surprisingly high proportion of the shells were occupied by hermit crabs. After I found my first kahanga, my eyes became accustomed to their shape and I found many more. The urchins were more elusive, covering themselves with a camouflage of vegetable matter, so that you had to look for an unnatural agglomeration of sea-grass fragments rather than for the creature itself. I made a considerable contribution to our day’s haul.

The new spear came into action to good effect against porcupine fish. One of the many strange fishes that employ methods of defence other than flight or shoaling, the porcupine fish inflates its body when threatened, thereby erecting the spines with which it is covered. Obviously this strategy offers no protection against an attack with a spear. Sarani stopped the blow short, so that it was a jab rather than a lunge, and the porcupine fish would obligingly immobilise itself. His second strike speared the fish. He took three. They plopped into the canoe spurting water through the spear holes and deflated like beach balls in a rock pool. We ate all three, boiled, for lunch.

I was at a loss as to how to eat what appeared to be a plateful of spines, and puffers in general are renowned for their toxic viscera. I waited for Sarani’s lead. He kept the spines towards the front of his mouth, cleaning them of flesh one at a time, turning them around with his lips. Not having teeth seemed to be an advantage. A sharp end would poke out at intervals and when the spine finally emerged, I recognised it instantly as the mysterious object I had found on tropical beaches in the past. I collected a handful once and they reminded me of a set of jacks, or of those fiendish anti-cavalry devices that, no matter how you scatter them, always land with a point sticking up into the air. Or into the roof of your mouth, your tongue, your gums, your lips. There was a knack to eating porcupinefish which was eluding me, and what I did manage to get off the bone had a very strange texture, fatty and elastic. It tasted surprisingly good.

Nightly visits ashore also became part of the routine for Sarani and me. Our first trip had had purpose – to find a haft for the spear point I had bought in Semporna. On subsequent nights, our visits to the island became social calls, a way of filling time before the boat needed propping up, the tide drying close to midnight. If he felt guilty about deserting his family for a while, he expiated it by coming back with treats – packets of crunchy snacks for the children and a bottle of Coca-Cola, decanted into a plastic bag, for Minehanga. She would wake on our return and drink it on the spot through a straw she kept for the purpose.

Mabul is not a large island; it can be circumambulated at a stroll in half an hour. On occasion our path would take us through the Sipadan-Mabul Resort’s compound, though it made me nervous. It felt like stumbling across Las Vegas after years in the desert, the lights, the music, white people sitting at tables in the open-sided dining room eating meat and salad, drinking beer and Australian wine and Scotch. I have been a holiday-maker in such places often enough, but in Sarani’s company I felt alienated from my own people. I would keep to the shadows as we passed, until the night Robert Lo spotted me.

‘So you made it.’ The dislocation from the place and circum stance of our first meeting made this reunion surreal: from the noise-filled hall of Earls Court, to a balmy tropical night on an island with a fraction of the floor-space; from suit and tie to shorts and a T-shirt. He had looked more at home in a suit. Sarani put on his confused old man act in Robert’s presence and excused himself to keep an appointment he had made to massage a shopkeeper’s wife. Robert was busy with some Taiwanese guests and took me over to the table where two of his diving instructors sat.

Sam and Tim were both English. Both had long sun-bleached hair and the sort of incidental tan that comes from working outdoors in the tropics. Robert introduced Sam as Samantha and she chided him – ‘only my Gran calls me Samantha’ – in an unmistakably Yorkshire accent. Tim was as Cockney as Bow Bells. If anything I found them more amazing than they found me when I told them what I was doing on their doorstep. ‘You mean those dirty old boats out from the village? They use fish-bombs, don’t they?’ They were relieved to hear that my hosts only used nets and spears. They saw the damage that was being done to Kapalai close-up and on a daily basis. That morning Tim had taken a group to a spot known for its beautiful coral and bizarre fish life, and he had found a pile of rubble.

Sarani returned and was sitting with some of the resort’s boatmen on a bench under the palms in front of the restaurant. Sam was keen to meet him and meeting her put a twinkle in his eye. I acted as translator. He was very surprised to hear that she was unmarried and was working here as a diver. ‘Does she go diving at Sipadan? Are there many fish?’ Sam went to get a fish-identification book from the resort library. It was a treasury, every species illustrated with a photograph of a specimen in its habitat. Sarani’s eyes lit up at the pictures of sharks and I told him Sam had seen four different species on one dive alone, including oceanic hammerheads. ‘He says if they catch one of those they are rich for two months. If they catch two, a son can get married.’ Sam’s expression dropped a little when she realised Sarani had at one time or another dispatched examples of most of the species in the book. ‘We saw dolphins today at Sipadan as well. Tell me they don’t catch dolphins.’ I could not, and I could not lie; Sarani accompanied his explanation of how to harpoon a dolphin with hand gestures. She took it well. She saw the difference between traditional hunting and commercial exploitation, but when Sarani turned the page to the rays I though better of telling her how much he could make from a manta. Tim stopped by on his way to bed. ‘What’s he doing, reading the menu?’

I was not keen to foster relations with the resort while we were at Mabul – I felt closer contact might taint Sarani and would certainly tempt me – but he was very taken with Sam. Of more immediate concern was our continuing run of poor catches from the deep-water nets. And then the engine failed. Pilar diagnosed a worn-out valve. Going to Semporna would have meant a trip in Pilar’s boat without enough sea produce to cover the cost. Sam suggested we go on the resort’s speedboat which was making a run in the morning. Tim had a day off and decided to come with us.

Sarani was fascinated by the boat. The twin 200 horsepower outboards lowered into the water at the push of a button, the hydraulics whining. They started at the push of another. He held on as we skimmed over the light chop at what was light-speed in comparison to his boat. It was thrilling to be travelling at thirty-five knots through the bright morning air, the controlled forte of the engines behind us, the sea a precious blue, and on the flood tide we streaked across the Creach Reef. In the Semporna Channel, the water was dead calm and we seemed to be floating above it. The landmarks whizzed past, the mangroved inlet, the detached stilt village, the turn at the south point of Bum Bum into the home strait. The outskirts of Semporna were upon us, the fish farms, and then we were pulling up to the jetty next to the ice house. Sarani was unfazed and started unloading his various empty jerrycans before the boat had been tied up. He set off to find a man who owed him money. Tim ushered the departing guests to the minibus waiting to take them to Tawau airport. I was making plans for a breakfast of fried rice.

The bald lieutenant was in the café with two other men, one in a policeman’s uniform. They both had the sleek air of authority about them and the man out of uniform, the elder of the two, wore rich clothes, a gold watch and a gold ring. The lieutenant called Tim and me over.

‘This is our ex-Deputy Chief, and this is Inspector Amnach of CID.’ The Deputy Chief had been posted to the Peninsula, a post with more responsibility, and he was saying goodbye in his civvies before he left. He had picked a good time to leave, when the whole Semporna establishment was under scrutiny, and he projected self-assurance, knowing his career would always run so. He spoke courteous English and asked Tim about the diving and Tim in his usual manner, at once blunt and long-winded, replied, ‘Sipadan’s great. Mabul is so so. And Kapalai, well, you can forget about Kapalai in a couple of years. Why? Fish-bombing. You ought to come out and see sometime.’ He started a long and repetitive lecture on the stupidity of playing bombs. Every time he seemed to be finishing, he would come up with a different way of saying what he had just said and add, ‘You know what I mean?’ in such a way, raising his eyebrows and wrinkling his freckled forehead, blue eyes wide, lips pursed, as to force one to treat it as a real question and say ‘yes’. Diplomacy was not one of his talents, but his manner was so good-humoured and earnest that it was hard to take offence.

The implied charge of incompetence did not offend the ex-Deputy Chief. He was patient in his rehearsal of the difficulties facing the coastguard in its operations against the fish-bombers. Tim had a solution for every one: the reef is too shallow? use inflatables; they throw the evidence overboard? have divers on hand to recover the bombs. He offered his own services. The ex-Deputy Chief spelt it out.

‘It is not our job to protect the reef. Our job is to catch criminals. Of course the people who are playing bombs are breaking the law, but as I have said we cannot catch them there. Do you know how many reefs, how many islands there are on this coast? We only have posts at Tawau, Semporna and Lahad Datu. If we go to one reef, the bombers go to another. Our operations are concentrated on the detonators. We cannot arrest someone for having an empty bottle or fertiliser or petrol. These are innocent things.’