The stretch of sand on the tip of the island serves as the landing spot for visitors. The island has no jetty.
Overgrown bushes cover what used to be a cleared road. A bit farther off on either side one can make out rows of palm trees which must once have been the edge of the road.
The thick foliage abruptly gives way to a clearing. An enclosure with a building is right in front. Nearby a set of measuring scales, tall and imposing.
It is not difficult to imagine the old days when adults and children, balanced on one side of the scale while the other side was loaded with food items.
This is the uninhabited island Haa Alifu Atoll Matheerah, or as its often referred to, Matheerah Fulhu. Until the 80s Maldivians used to travel from near and far to a shrine on the island to fulfill promises.
Folklore
Fathimath Abdulla, 73, a native of another nearby abandoned island called Hathifushi, recounts a story passed down from generation to generation.
“Fisherman from Hathifushi on their way back from fishing trip saw a wooden box bobbing up and down in the ocean,” he recalls.
Legend has it that one of the men hit the box twice with his oar, but on the third try he found he couldn’t lift his hand.
They hurriedly rowed back and told the islanders. A larger crowd then set sail on a wooden raft to look at the box.
“When they came they saw the wooden box was now buried in the sand and only the name written on it was visible.”
The name was ‘Shareef Ali Al Makhi’, the only thing in the recorded history of Matheerah.
It is believed that the tomb inside the island’s enclosure is his, although no other information about him exists.
Also inside the enclosure is a huge wooden mast, roughly the size of the big flagpole in republic square in Male’.
Islanders say most of the buildings found in the enclosure were created with things that washed up on shore, including the mast.
“The story goes that the mast rose upright on its own, when locals came the following day,“ says Fathimath.
On the right side of the enclosure is an intricately-designed doorway leading to the shrine. Even to the inexperienced eye the design looks similar to the 18th century Kandhuvalu mosque found in the island of Utheemu.
However neglect has lead to discolouration and only trace amounts of the coloured lacquer work are still visible.
A sacred site
Islanders considered the place sacred, but feared it as well.
Fathimath spent four months collecting and cooking toddy on Matheerah Fulhu in the 50s.
“The men would collect toddy during the day, but they would finish collecting from the palm trees near the shrine before sunset. Nobody ventured there after dark,” she says.
Fathimath and another girl stayed inside the makeshift hut after nightfall. She remembers that islanders believed they found traces of human movement on the sand at daytime.
Ancient traditions
“From far and wide people used to come to visit Matheerah Fulhu,” Fathimath remembers.
“It was common to get around two or three dhonis of people on some days. The island chief of Hathifushi became defacto caretaker of the shrine.”
People would come to weigh their babies using the scales, she says, “or after having made a promise along the lines of ‘if such and such happened’, they would distribute food items equivalent to their own weight.”
The visiting dhoni would first go to Hathifushi, where a local islander would hop on it. That person would act as a facilitator and take the visitors to the shrine.
Kadhi or bonidbai (porridge type Maldivian desserts) in huge ceramic pots, bananas, grains would be weighed against a person’s weight to fulfil their ‘promise’.
Sometimes the offerings included Maldivian crepes, silver and gold threads to the equivalent of someone’s height.
Fathimath laughs when she recalls how even then Maldivians were very conscious of hygiene.
“If it was crepes, the person would have to stand on a mat, put a white cloth over themselves, and the first crepe would be placed on top of his head, the next one touching it, and you drop the first one to the mat, and so on it would go until his length was covered.”
The the food was taken back to Hathifushi, poured into a huge basin and the pots washed and given back to the visitors.
“A person would come out and call to all the islanders, who would come to collect the food,” Fathimath recalls. Depending on the number of people in a family, each person would get a ladle’s worth of food.
Gold and silver thread was also given the length of someone’s height, but its fate is unknown. It seems for a long time it was kept in a box in the island chief’s house – Fathimath says she saw it in her youth. But rumour has it that upon the island chief’s passing; the box was stolen by a scheming family member.
In the eighties, the practice of fulfilling promises at shrines was banned.
“It was considered bid’ah (innovation) and stopped,” Fathimath says.
Ahmed Tholaal, assistant director of the department of national centre for linguistic and historical research, says there is no budget for conservation of the place.
“Even if we do get budget, Matheerah Fulhu is not on the priority list,” he says – unsurprising since there are historical places on inhabited islands that need conservation.
Once one of the most visited islands, Matheerah Fulhu’s historical relevance is now left to ruin.
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