The Miracle

A reviewing on the book of Ocean Hues

The Miracle

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How do you feel when you lose someone you love?

What is the kind of feeling you go through when someone you love is swept away by the tsunami? How far is Maldives to Sri Lanka?

As human beings, have we ever drifted across the sea and survived?

What is the level of excitement you feel discovering a survivor?

Do you believe in miracles?

Should we hold on to what our hearts tell us?

Standing in front of the sea, I greeted the rainy season with the wind caressing my body whilst looking at the distant enormous waves that were approaching, my mind immediately started ringing with questions. On this rainy day, the sky is overcast, the sea is exceptionally rough, it teases the embankment with occasional swells, splashing the rock boulders with water. However, the view does not prevent me from reading the book Ocean Hues by Amyna.

I made a promise to Nilaam that I will read Ocean Hues written by his mother Amyna in one week. In fact, in less than three days, I used all sorts of postures (including laying in bed, standing, looking upside down, etc.), and finally finished the task ahead of the time. Ocean Hues is a book with a real disaster as its storyline, regarding the tsunami that hit Maldives and Srilanka due to a powerful earthquake in Pulau Sumatera of Indonesia. At that time, more than 10 countries of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean were involved in the tragedy. Although many lost their lives and many others were gravely injured, it also created miracles on the other side. Ocean Hues, talks about a happy family in Maldives, who experienced the tsunami, got separated and then reunited after much suffering.

On the beach in Sheraton Maldives Full Moon Resort & Spa, I bent down and picked up a white coral, threw it into the ocean that had waves breaking every few minutes. The water is so clear even in this rainy season, the ocean just like a giant blue jasper stone full of white and blue color. The coral hit the water, started a ripple effect immediately, bouncing about for a few seconds before the ocean engulfed it. The ocean looked so fascinating. However, when the Ocean roars with anger, and the swells rise- how many lives will they take?!

Few days ago, I had a conversation with my local colleague Max, he felt shocked when he found out that I had no knowledge about the tsunami in 2014, and he said to me with an unbelievable tone: " Jenny, I really can't believe you haven't heard about the tsunami, it's a well- known tragedy, how come you don't even know when this had happened?"

Max said, that the earthquake and tsunami hit a range of six time zones, the same power that destroyed many in 1960 tsunami caused by Chile's great earthquake. In 2014, the counties like Kenya, Somalia (East III), Mauritius, French Réunion, Seychelles (East quad), Maldives (East Zone), India (half time zone of India), Bangladesh, Sri Lanka (East six region), Myanmar, Cocos (Myanmar) Islands (Burma half time zone), Indonesia, Thailand (East Seven), Malaysia and Singapore have been hit by the tsunami, in a total of more than 29.2 million victims.

The Miracle

In China, a famous historian named Liu believe "In a way, human’s wisdom can bet the nature’s rules…... "

Since then and now, many people believe that through wisdom we can overcome forces of nature. However, countless facts have proved that nature is the whole universe of life and death that changes in the operation of the law. We are small like ants crawling on the ground, we might face extinction an act of God. When we human make constructions by putting the steel into the seabed or we cutting the trees for industrialization, nature does not use words to guide us to distinguish between right and wrong, nor to dictate our narcissistic wisdom, nor to condemn the life and death of all things. Instead, we are passionate. We desire love, wealth and power. Then, we get depressed, anxious and fear……

In the story, Hussain's beloved Hawwa is swept away by the tsunami, his feelings become nothing to save his own deep loneliness. He sink-into the suffocating loneliness, which is reduced only when he meets Hawwa’s cousin, who has a remarkable resemblance to Hussain’s wife. Soon, he proposed Rugi after much persuasion from his family, Rugi is also very infatuated with Hussain because of Husain’s affection, so she promised marriage. On the other side, Hawwa is drifting from the Maldives to Sri Lanka's Galle with the tsunami, and rescued by Wuba, subsequently he takes her to his family. During that period, Hawwa is suffering amnesia, she cannot recall anything, but the depth emotions do not make her forget her beloved family, although she likes and relies on the young man who saved her life, but she feels that she does not belongs to him, so she repeatedly rejects Wubao’s love. Hussain and Rugi delay the wedding date because both of them cannot get out of the shadow of Hura. However, they finally decided the day of marriage under the pressure from parents and children. Luckily, the day before the wedding, he learns from Bennard from Sri Lanka, that his wife still alive. In the end, Hussain reunited with Hawwa, Rugi married with Wuba, all of them who had suffered from Tsunami ended up happy.

Human being’s emotion is a kind of magical existence. Mostly, our happiness will conduct from subjects when our emotion gets response from the things or people we expected. When our emotions feel satisfied, the atmosphere will change to that of hope, with colorful butterflies flying into our life. While once the feelings lost the link, loneliness will occupy our life just like the air enveloped by sulfuric acid eroded the city of life day by day and year by year. Without emotion, our soul is like a rootless weed, unable to find attachment; and without emotion, the soul of man is like a broken celadon on the ground. People are seeking for the belongings, searching a conversion for the deep emotion. As long as our emotion end on the way home, life will be more stable. In the story of Ocean Hues, Hussain and Hawwa possessed each other as the best emotional destination, so that when Hawwa drifted away by the tsunami, Hussain emerged by a sense of distraction, he can only rely on prayer to ease his fear of the soul, he feels better until Rugi come into his life to full fill the emptiness he felt.

The author of Ocean hues is very attentive, there are many details described about how local Maldivian lives and I almost thought the story must be true. I cannot stop myself to bother my local colleagues to clarify the story. The story is set in Maldives and Sri-lank Galle, according to geography report that the shortest bird fly distance between those two destinations is 867 km = 539 miles- the power of the tsunami can bring a person 80 kilometers per day. Even if it does, what about the unpredictable sea conditions and aggressive marine life that it takes away. I assume Hawwa was drifting in the ocean for around 10 days, till she reached Galle. Miraculously Hawwa survived this ordeal with no food or anything to drink.

The Miracle

In the real world, when we human face the natural disasters, we will be easily swallowed by the attacks, basically, live will be a myth which human’s desired but cannot touch. Interestingly, such myths exist in the tsunami that was triggered by the Indian Ocean earthquake. Max recommended me a famous Spanish disaster film -----The Impossible (Spanish:Lo imposible).The film is a real story that adapting to Spanish doctor María belón to the real experience of her family in the great catastrophe. Maria and Henry brought their family to Thailand on a small island to celebrate Christmas holiday, an unexpected tsunami separated them, then Maria and her older son Lucas fled together meanwhile they saved a little boy Danial. However, Maria got seriously injured when she and the older son successfully dodged a second wave. Luckily, she was rescued by locals and sent to a hospital for treatment. On the other side, Henry survived with two other sons, and Henry was desperate to find Maria and her son Lucas. Eventually, the family reunited at the hospital, where Maria and her family boarded a scheduled plane to a hospital in Singapore with the help of the insurance company.

One of the videos that interviewed many survivors: asked them what kind of experience they had after the tsunami?

Lucas, who was a survivor, he answered, "Imagine you are thrown into a high-speed automatic washing machine with blades, nails, wood, steel, and sludge, and you stir with all kinds of things, that is the feeling of being swept up by the tsunami. "

Admittedly, the vast majority of people who have experienced major disasters are more appreciative and thankful according to the famous psychology researcher Gao Guorong. Although I did not experience the tsunami, the experience of the river washed me away when I was a child that is also something that is unforgettable in my life. I will never regret I have had the experience, because it gives me vision how to think about the nature, it makes me believe in nature. In other words, the past teaches me the power of the nature, and the theory about nature that has been guiding me to know myself and the world.

This belief just like the author of Ocean Hues Amina (Amyna) said: "The Tsunami, it had claimed so many lives, in several parts of the world. But, somehow, it had been kind to some of them. "

The Miracle