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priests and pawnbrokers. Even jugglers, acrobats, fakirs, gamblers, beggars and, of course, many women on hand to sell themselves. Such a babble of languages! What a confusion of activity! Everyone intent on what might be gained from the pearls that ironically were mere irritations to the oysters that contained them.
    Five thousand divers! Imagine such a number, five thousand. Most were Ceylonese Moorman and Lubais from Kilakari, also many Tamils from Tuticorin, Malayans, Arabs, Burmans. Not many Japanese and only a few amas, however those few were by far the best divers and the most industrious. On days when the seas were considered by others to be too rough to dive safely, the amas, Amira among them, defied the undertows and worked the bottom as usual.
    The boat from which Amira dove was an oversize dhow that had come there from Bahrain. It was painted bright orange except for its figurehead, a crudely carved interpretation of a serpent, that for some reason was painted blue. The boat had one large square sail of hand-woven cloth and riggings made of twisted date fiber. The captain or master or sammatti , as he was called, was a bearded and dishonest Persian, who had an uncanny talent for picking out which of the oysters brought aboard by the divers contained the choicest pearls. Defying anyone to object, either the divers, line tenders, the boiler or the pilot, he would open those certain oysters, remove their pearls and store them in his jaws. No matter that it was prohibited, that every oyster was supposed to be contributed unopened to an aggregate that would at the end of each day be divided among all. Great-grandmother Amira would glare at this Persian, silently but explicitly, to convey her mind. Despite numerous opportunities not once did she ever secret a pearl anywhere upon or within her body.
    The usual depth she was required to dive was ten fathoms (about sixty feet), which was no strain on her, as she had been down twice as deep. During each dive she gathered as few as fifteen or as many as fifty oysters.
    By midafternoon when the boat headed for shore it was often bringing in twenty thousand.
    Those were divided daily, unopened, with the divers of each boat receiving a one-third share, of which a third went to their rope tenders. The question then for Amira was whether she should open her oysters and have her compensation be the value of whatever pearls, if any, they might contain. Or to sell her unopened oysters on the spot to one of the many pearl merchants. Amira seldom gave it a second thought and when she did she only had to picture herself sitting forlornly amidst a pile of empty shells.
    She sold to a shrewd Indian, a Chettie from Madura, who dressed quite fashionably in semi-European attire, carried a walking stick and wore patent leather boots, which, as the days passed, were being abraded and dulled by the beach sand. To ensure that she continued to sell her unopened oysters to him, he always forlornly reported that those he’d bought from her the day before had been entirely without pearls—or had contained only a few nearly worthless seeds. Amira knew, of course, that he was exaggerating, to put it politely, and she would have preferred it if he’d admitted that they were accommodating each other.
    By decree of the Ceylonese government, the season of 1905 ran from February twentieth to April twenty-first. Sixty days were scheduled but only forty-seven were worked because of holy days and storms. The total number of oysters taken was 81,580,716. (It was estimated that 20,000,000 more were illicitly opened.) The catch yielded pearls that brought at local worth 5,021,453 rupees ($2,000,000). In 1905 money it was an enormous amount.
    Right after that Ceylon season Amira returned home to Hegurajima. The sum she brought with her was not a fortune but far more than any Yoshida ama had ever earned. With it she paid to have a small but sufficient house built for her sister and to have rooms added