The bum — a two-masted dhow of the kind that had sailed these waters since the Abbasids counted their pearls in Baghdad — slipped her mooring at Muharraq before the dawn call to prayer. On deck, forty divers sat cross-legged on teak planks worn smooth by three generations of bare feet. Below them in the hold lay the season's tally so far: twelve thousand oysters pried open, and among them, three stones of real value.
The arithmetic of the deep
A diver's life in 1934 was counted in minutes. Two under, hauling oysters into a rope basket slung around the neck. Ninety seconds on the surface, gasping the thick July air while the saib — the rope-puller — prepared the next descent. Sixty times a day, through a season that stretched from May to late September. The bank records of the day do not mention how many did not surface at all.
"The sea does not read the telegraph. The oyster does not know what a Japanese man has done."