A tourist in Fiji finds herself seduced by more than just the local weather and scenery — quickly adapting to the lack of WiFi, she surrenders, for a few days at least, to a different culture, world view, and pace of life.
I was not looking for romance when I first stepped onto that palm-tree-garnished, sapphire-ocean-haloed, seashell-speckled island in the middle of the great Pacific.
Nor was I looking for romance when the local six-pack-studded, bicep-bulging, Hercules-channeling Fijian boy greeted me on the shore, swung my backpack onto his shoulder, and guided me to my beach hut (I swear).
But perhaps in some places – just like encountering scooter accidents in Bali, or being hit on by a ladyboy in Thailand – certain things are bound to find us.
I threw on a beach dress, slipped off my sandals, and left the beach hut to explore, unaware that I would not wear my sandals again for the remainder of my stay.
From all corners of the island, I could see nothing. Only long, empty stretches of blue that suggested no one or nothing could affect us, invade us, save us. Delicate tidal crashing was a consistent, comforting background noise day and night, and the air smelled of fresh flowers and frying fish.
The few locals inhabiting the island were quiet and smiley, like they knew tourists rarely wanted to be disturbed upon their barefoot sanctuary. But in the evenings when I – along with the six other tourists staying on the island – joined them in the kitchen hut for dinner, their charisma came alive. They asked questions and told stories, teased our foreign accents until belly laughing with tear residue coating their cheeks.
On the island, time did not exist. Only its crazy long-lost aunt was around: Fiji time.
“What time is breakfast?”
“Fiji time.”
“When shall we play volleyball?”
“Fiji time.”
“What time is low tide so I can avoid the stingrays?”
“Relax, it’s Fiji time.”
I had been excused from schedules and stress. It almost felt like I didn’t have to participate in spinning with Earth and orbiting the sun like everyone else. The island had been granted a letter of exemption from the planet, and those upon it could do whatever they liked.
~
“Bula!”
I was arranging sand into coin-sized mounds with my fingertip, entertained by the dainty crabs shuffling around my obstacle course when his greeting emerged from the crooked palm trees. He came and sat in the leafy shade beside me. (He being the Fijian boy who had greeted me on shore the day before. He was six-pack studded, bicep-bulging, Hercules-channelling… wait, did I mention that already?)
“Bula,” I replied.
“Your name was Hannah?”
“Yeah, and yours was Koa, right?”
“Yes,” he replied, kicking sand about with his foot. “How long you stay here for?”
“Three nights.”
“Not long enough!”
I laughed. “Something tells me I won’t want to leave when the time comes.”
He sighed. “People always fall in love wid dis place.”
“It’s ‘cause it’s so relaxing! I love having nothing to do all day,” I told him, watching as he leant back on his elbows and settled into the sand. “Don’t you ever get bored here?”
He looked at me like I had suggested stripping naked and racing each other into the ocean. “Impossible,” he said. “Der is always tings to do.”
I smiled. “Tell me.”
He shrugged. “I plant trees, chop wood, garden, fish, build structures, make nets. I greet tourists and make sure dey have a good time. I help out in de kitchen and look after my nieces, nephews, and cousins. And when I’m not doing all dat, I’m playing volleyball or doing riddles or writing.”
For a boy who lived on a tiny island with no Western work culture, WiFi, or worries, he had a lot going on. “What do you write?” I asked.
“I like writing poems.”
My eyebrow raised. “What kind of poems?”
“Whatever I feel like,” he replied, eyes playful.
A teasing smile tugged at my lips. “Can you write me a poem?”
He chuckled, watching me for a moment too long. Instead of answering, he said, “Your smile is tempting,” and then hauled himself off the sand.
I watched him walk away until he disappeared inside the kitchen hut.
~
The island hummed to its own rhythm. It was in charge of its own existence; it answered to no force, authority, or burdensome management. The island had been forgotten by the world, left behind while others focused on politics and war and urbanization. Anything could be happening on the other side of that motionless, Tiffany-blue horizon. We were cut off from humanity, and I had no desire to reach out.
For once, the world was still. Island life felt good, and I could see the effect it had on the locals. They lived their days smiling, dancing, joking, completing their tasks with a sense of gratitude. Everything seemed so simple; happiness came with no obstacles.
The clouds were turning milky pink, the sun already below us when Koa came and sat opposite me on the bench table. It was my second day on the island and I was reading my book, watching the sun set while I waited for the gong to sound for dinner. There were no other solo tourists on the island, only a family of four and two English girls who were backpacking friends. Everyone was off having quality time together – stretching out in hammocks, dipping their feet in the ocean – so when Koa came and sat opposite me, we were alone.
He placed a sketchbook and several pencils in front of him.
I pointed. “Have you been drawing?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Do you want to see?” He flipped through detailed sketches of his family, gatherings of friends, and random celebrities.
“They’re good!” I said.
He grinned, mischief in his eyes. “Do you want me to draw you?”
“No,” I said without hesitance. My face was a shade of tomato and my hair was pulled back into a low bun, the sweat and grease acting as a slick hair gel.
He ignored my protests.
We were silent for a while, his eyes flicking from mine to the paper, the air between us becoming more charged with curiosity as the silence wore on. I tried to keep my face neutral, but when I caught a glimpse of Koa’s sketch resembling a little boy from the Tudor times, laughter burst from my lips.
Koa shook his head, smirking. He put down his pencil. “Dat smile.”
The tone of his voice made my face turn hot.
~
We waited until the ocean was black and the moon big, a single runway of celestial light casting upon the carbon black water. I stood on the beachfront with the two English girls, the three of us kitted out in snorkeling masks, flippers and spears. Koa and his brother had a single piece of equipment each: a torch.
“Okay, let’s go,” Koa said. “Eliza, Beth,” he said to the English girls, “you two go wid Mo.” Koa clapped his brother on the back. Already walking towards the ocean, Koa called over his shoulder, “Hannah, you come wid me.”
I followed Koa into the blackness. When the water was waist-high, he plunged below the surface. For a moment, I stood and watched the torchlight dart from left to right, streaking the ocean in the lightest, iciest blue. Then I took a deep breath and pushed myself under.
The torchlight was shrinking as Koa sliced through the current. After half an hour of failed spearfishing attempts, I was fighting to keep up with him – exhausted but panicked at being left behind in the violent ocean washing machine he was thriving in – when the torchlight cut out.
I shot up from the water like I was attached to a hydrofly machine. I pirouetted my neck, half expecting to see Koa beside me, reassuring me that the torchlight had simply died and he hadn’t abandoned me in the middle of the pitch-black ocean with no directional means to find my way back to the island.
But he was nowhere to be seen.
I did not know if the waves were too high or we had swam too far from shore, but I could not see the beach hut lights blinking back at me from the island. I was a tiny bobbing head in a globe of coal black.
“Koa!” I screamed over the fierce tidal howls and slaps of water that broke over unidentifiable objects nearby –jagged rocks, perhaps.
I ducked back underwater, bulging my eyes to encourage magical photons to enter and provide me with the superpower night vision needed to save my life, but underwater was blacker than above. I pushed back above the surface, trying not to think how far we had drifted from each other during the power cut.
“Koa!” I bellowed into the void, voice shaky, spluttering on mouthfuls of ocean.
My head darted to the left as a streak of light flicked on several meters away. It grew brighter as Koa swam towards me.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I was too exhausted, stunned, fucking relieved to respond.
When we arrived on shore over an hour later, the islanders had gone to sleep. I marched over the gentle shoreline, collapsing onto the beachfront and into the arms of safety. Koa came and sat beside me, unbuckling the bag containing our two speared fish and dumping it next to him.
“Why-” I said through heaving gasps of breath, “did you-” my lungs felt like they were about to cave in, “do that?”
“Do what?”
“Turn the torch off!” I replied, his oblivion encouraging me to find the energy to be irate.
He turned to look at me with wide eyes. “Oh, sorry. I saw a barracuda. I didn’t want it to follow us. Dey can be known to attack spearfishers.”
I swallowed. As far as reasons went, I suppose that one was pretty justifiable.
“Did I scare you?” he asked.
I pretended to scratch my forehead. “Nah, not really,” I replied, avoiding eye contact.
“Oh!” Koa said, eyes shining as he remembered. “I went spearfishing a few nights ago and I saw a shark! Biggest one yet!”
“Wow,” I replied, not about the shark, but about how if I’d known that before being invited spearfishing, there was no way I would have gone.
We stayed on the moonlit beach for a long time – only retreating to our beach huts well after midnight – talking and tracing shooting stars with our fingertips. The fearsome ocean was a distant memory now we were back on the familiar sand, swept away once more by the all-consuming spell of the island.
~
On my last day, I woke up forgetting that it was my last day.
The sheer white curtains of my beach hut swayed in the morning breeze, dusting the wooden floorboards and casting bands of sunlight onto my bed. I could hear the gong sounding for breakfast, but I didn’t move, despite my grumbling stomach. My mind was savoring the feeling of rising in paradise, of being out of reach on a tiny island, waking up to warm air and the sound of tinkling tide rather than car horns and builders drilling.
Breakfast could wait. I was on Fiji time.
After breakfast, I watched all six tourists board the ferry and leave the island. Nobody replaced them. I was the only non-local remaining.
I spent the day with my book, tanning in a hammock, gorging on fresh pineapple and sweet papaya while the locals completed their tasks. Koa scraped grass, merrily working in the sweltering heat while I discretely watched him through my sunglasses. His smiling eyes never faltered as he hummed along to the thump of his rake, making it enjoyable to watch him (fine, he was also topless, if you must know).
But by now, I had learned the flow of the island, and anticipation was jittering in my stomach as I waited for the sun to dim.
When the evening finally rolled in – the sky transitioning into a fade of pink and purple zebra print – as I expected, Koa found me.
“Do you want to watch de sunset?” he asked.
We pulled a double kayak through the floury sand and pushed it into the iridescent ocean. The sun set on the other side of the island – the side obscured by moderate cliffs and thick foliage – so we rowed away from our beachfront, rounding the watery corner until all we could see were ocean and cliffs. There was nothing to suggest that we were not the only two people on the planet, drifting away on an orange kayak.
I dangled my legs in the ocean, watching the sky melt as the day ended, alone with the island boy who had introduced me to his way of peaceful living. I wasn’t leaving tomorrow. Tomorrow didn’t exist. Nothing was real – there was no past, no future – other than the two of us in the middle of an undisturbed location, undisturbed moment, attached to a feeling I never wanted to let go of.
~
I ate dinner alone that night, with no company other than the nocturnal crabs. When my dinner was just bones and head, Koa appeared. He leaned against a palm tree, folded his arms and asked, “How was your fish?”
“Good, thanks,” I replied.
Our eye contact was alive with anticipation, with something eager yet shy, apparent yet unspoken. The longer we looked at each other, the more isolated our world became; the more I wanted to remain on the island; the more tempted I became to live out my natural-haired, free-spirited fantasy forever.
“Come wid me,” he said.
We sat on a corner of the beach concealed with palm trees and overgrown bushes. The insects were squeaking and toads ribbiting as we lazed under the silvery sky, watching the tide dissolve in the sand.
“Put out your hand,” Koa said.
I closed my eyes and held my palm open. Koa gave me a sheet of crumpled paper. Unfolding it, I saw a collection of capitalized pencil scrawls about sunsets and stargazing and a tempting smile, and I realized what it was: my poem.
Now, a little history.
Believe it or not, I am a girl who resents all forms of cringe. I hate cheesy romantic gestures and excessive compliments and life-sized teddy bears holding hearts stitched with ‘Be My Valentine.’ Once, I got the ick because a nice boy had insisted on riding a few extra bus stops to make sure I got home safely. Another time, my toes physically curled when a guy suggested taking a gondola ride along a lantern-lit river like we were about to recreate a Venice-style proposal. God only knows how I would have reacted if either of those poor men then presented me with a fucking handwritten poem, but I imagine it would have involved vomit.
But in Fiji, I was a million miles away from my old self.
I was zoned out from everything that was not the island, inaccessible to people and pasts and anything that did not involve sun and sand and seashells. Cringe was beyond me. If Koa had got down on one knee there and then, set forth a ring and asked me to live off the land with him forever, spearing fish and planting coconuts for the rest of my days, I probably would have considered him. I was drunk on serenity, obsessed with the effortless presence the island granted. I was surrendering to ease and disassociating from cringe, and I was too carefree to fight it.
~
For the first time in three days, I put my sandals on my feet. I exited my beach hut for the last time, wandering over to the locals gathered on the beach waiting to send me off.
I boarded Koa’s sailing boat and watched the island disappear from my grasp, unblinking as the locals waved to me from shore. The sailing boat rounded the watery corner until the beachfront was just a memory, and there was nothing ahead other than cliffs, endless ocean, and a big white ferry waiting to take me back to the mainland.
“Will you be back?” Koa asked as he hugged me goodbye.
All I could manage was a shrug and sheepish smile as a lump formed in my throat.
I boarded the ferry.
Rushing to the back of the top deck, I gripped the hot railing as the engine began to shudder and groan. Koa was sitting in his sailing boat full of new arrivals who had no idea what liberation they were about to unlock: a place where time didn’t exist and the night was for living, an island surrounded by nothing but on it, everything.
A cauldron of frothy ocean pushed us apart. Koa waved with both arms, his huge smile like a neon sign against his face.
I continued waving until I could no longer make out his facial features I would never forget; until the island boy and his sailing boat turned into an anonymous blob in the ocean. I didn’t take my eyes off the island until it was just a mark on the horizon, a cliff in the distance that you would be forgiven for assuming was uninhabitable. I liked it that way: a dot of land where no one would guess there was a lure, a lust, a longing.
As I docked back on the mainland, the island already felt like a mirage, something too pure to have truly existed. I knew I would never see or hear from Koa again. He would always be the island boy hidden in the expanses of the great Pacific, cut off from the world and its worries.
The only communication left between us was his handwriting in my pocket.
Saying that, he did slide into my Instagram DMs a couple of hours after I left the island. Apparently, he wasn’t too cut off for a SIM card.
Hey, what can I say, it’s a globalized world.
