Several sandstorms have passed since KaiKa’s mother died. The last mother on Sand Island left behind the last five children, the last islanders. Two short young women, two tall young men, and a little blind girl. KaiKa was the leader of her tiny tribe. There were NooaKhi and LaKhi, the last two men on Sand Island. They were both KaiKa’s half-brothers. Then there was SeeKa, KaiKa’s half-sister. And all four of them provided food, water, and protection for AiYi, the little half-bald blind girl who always followed KaiKa wherever she went, like a loving domesticated pet. She was no one’s sister.
All five young islanders walked around in the wilderness of Sand Island, naked but always covered with dirt and flies. Islanders had made peace with the flies that covered their bodies since the day they were granted their first dose of consciousness. Those flies traveled with them wherever they went, as if they were extended useless limbs for some islanders and common accessories for others. They were all dark-skinned, gaunt, dirty, and had rough, dry palms. They had long, untamed hair, and unapologetically ungroomed pubic and armpit hair. They all had beards. The men had long beards with few hairless patches on their cheeks and heads. They all produced nauseating odours that they barely noticed. Blind little AiYi, on the other hand, used each islander’s scent and voice, like facial features to give each islander an identity. That is how she recognised them.
Scars, blotches, and blisters marked the islanders’ bodies and faces like the marks on a piece of sedimentary rock. Hair covered their bodies and faces. Like hooves of the mighty elephant, the islanders’ feet and heels were cracked and thick enough to walk on hot, rough rocks without feeling any pain or discomfort. Like the knees of the dark brown desert camel, the islanders’ knees and elbows were covered with thick, knobbly grey dead skin. Every knee was as distinguished as their faces. Like the wild goat’s horns, their fingernails and toenails were long, hardened, and darkened by dirt reservoirs. Some were broken, and some had spiraled.
While their bodies were infested with famine and death, their eyes were like oases, rich with life. Their smiles were genuinely unthreatening and despondent. All but AiYi had missing molars an incisors and dark receding gums. Teeth that were not missing were black or yellow and either erupted or broken. Yet, they were the most gorgeous living beings one could find on Sand Island.
Two enormous granite rock mountain beds stood high at the heart of Sand Island. The first bed was confused between reds and browns, and the other was a certain shade of grey. One could look at the island from a mountain top and swear that the red-brown mountain bed fell from the sky and landed over the massive dark grey rock. The two rock mountains had cracked, shattered, and scattered around Sand Island. The rocks were covered and surrounded by white dunes filled with ancient seashells and sparkles of bleached corals that looked like the remains of ground skulls.
A few rocks had slid into the sea and were wrapped by paths of jagged white sea salt formations and coral ruins. One rock looked like a giant primordial shark that had died swallowing a giant sea lion and left nothing but its giant jaws intact. The sea lion trapped between the shark’s teeth with its flattened tail dipped into the sea forever. Shade was not to be found other than under small clouds that must have lost their way over the island or inside the crusty old caves, narrow cracks and passages, and under giant rocks that had settled over other giant old rocks.
Depending on the dunes’ continuously changing patterns, traveling from the west coast to the island’s eastern edge could take an audacious half-day of walking. And traveling from the northern tip of the island to its southern coast could take an entire day of recklessness. While the inner terrains of the island were easier to navigate, walking around the island at midday and gazing outwards into the ocean’s horizon was as useless as looking into a broken compass. The island was childless; there were no grey silhouettes of other islands as far as the eye could see. The sea was deep right under the islanders’ noses. Even if islanders knew how to swim, there was nothing to swim to. And the lowest tides always failed to uncover any juvenile sand or coral islands. Sand Island was utterly isolated from any other incubators of any form of existence.
The ocean was even grumpier and stingier than the land itself. It was like a merciless despicable warden that held the island and its inhabitants in captivity for its own amusement. Its water was acutely salty, and its waves were loud and violent, with a strong appetite to eat any living being Sand could toss into its plate. The ocean used the wave like a whip that was often and regularly used to lash and warn the islanders from getting close to its waters.
While serving inmates with regular meals was commonamong the most merciless wardens, the ocean did not care to carry any edible beasts or plants into the island’s empty dry trays. And no islander had ever successfully left the shores without being eaten by the sea and pulled away into its stomach. So, the islanders never dared to touch seawater that was in direct contact with the ocean. However, they had learnt that the shore’s seawater had healing qualities, especially in ponds of sea salt rock formations. They only made contact with water that had lost its way into a pond far from the tides, detached from its parent, the ocean.
Although food and life were far from being abundant on Sand Island, it was home to a handful of small animals, insects, and plants scarcely scattered across the island. Water was equally scarce too. Islanders could find freshwater either in tiny murky ponds of rainwater from the brief showers that happened after sandstorms, or in small tenebrous ponds hidden inside the dark caverns.
The five islanders had no cattle to herd, no crops to farm, no wicker to weave, no shelters to build or maintain, and no grains to sift and grind. So, they kept themselves alive by doing as little as possible and spent most of their time napping and resting inside the caves; laying down, stretching, and yawning all day long. They often saved their energy to perform quick daytime cacti fruit-gathering labour tasks and nocturnal mouse hunting.
A fire had no chance of survival on an island filled with sand, seawater, and monstrous sandstorms and tornadoes. Sand Island was a suffocating environment for fire. With the absence of wood and dried leaves, coupled with the abundance of sand, the island was not a hospitable place for a flare to breathe. They were deprived of the gifts of fire. They never experienced the warmth fire could bring to their bodies. They never tasted cooked food. And never imagined that there was a force out there that could bring light to the dark hallways in the depths of their caves.
With nothing much to be done in collaboration with time, patience was not a virtue on Sand Island. Patience was like a golden coin. If ever found on Sand Island, it would not have any value. Islanders had no reason whatsoever to be patient or impatient, as much as they had no reason to own gold. Yet, one can easily mistake the islanders’ anxiousness for impatience. Like a mob of meerkats that rarely drift away from their burrows, islanders were constantly anxious. They were never free to wander away from their caves. They kept themselves close and around the cave entrances. They took turns gazing into the horizon and scouting the sky for signs of an approaching sandstorm or a treacherous tornado. They also took turns in their hunting and gathering missions. They were afraid of being far away from their shelters and facing a sudden tornado or a sneaky sandstorm in the middle of the night. Any islander who went out for a hunt had to keep sight of the cave’s entrance. If a sandstorm or tornado struck, the islander should be able to dash towards the cave’s entrance and away from Sand’s blazing molars and its fatal stomach as quickly as possible.
Excerpted with permission from KaiKa’s Songs: A Story About the Survival of Men, Women, Gods, and Songs, MA Modhayan, Penguin.
