The Pearl Diver’s Daughter

My father went into the sea every morning for sixty years, and every morning he came out again. That was the arrangement. On the day this story begins, he broke it. I should explain the arrangement, since it governed my whole childhood. Before dawn, while the Fort was still dark and the muezzin at the Meeran Mosque was only clearing his throat, my father would walk to the ramparts below the lighthouse in his old sarong, leave his slippers side by side on the stone, and climb down to the water. My mother said he swam. He did not swim. He went down, and stayed down, and came up when he chose. As a small girl I used to count. I would stand at the wall in my school frock with my hair half-plaited and count the seconds, the way he had taught me, one-elephant, two-elephant, while the swell moved over the place where he had been. I never reached…