Silence of the Chagos

Shenaz Patel draws on the lives of exiled Chagossians in this tragic example of 20th century political oppression. Every afternoon a woman in a red headscarf walks to the end of the quay & looks out over the water, fixing her gaze “back there”: to Diego Garcia, one of the small islands forming the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

With no explanation, no forewarning, & only an hour to pack their belongings, the Chagossians are deported to Mauritius. Officials tell her that the island is “closed”— there is no going back for any of them. Charlesia longs for life on Diego Garcia, where the days were spent working on a coconut plantation; the nights dancing to sega music.

As she struggles to come to terms with her new reality, Charlesia crosses paths with Désiré, a young man born on the one-way journey to Mauritius. Désiré has never set foot on Diego Garcia, but as Charlesia unfolds the dramatic story of his people, he learns of the home he never knew & the disrupted future of his people. With the sovereignty of Chagos currently being debated on an international judiciary level, Silence of the Chagos is an important & timely examination of the rights of individuals in the face of governmental corruption.

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“Some 20 years ago, I was struck by a photo showing barefoot women on the road facing the armed police. They were Chagossian women protesting in Mauritius with astonishing determination.” This photo, which she's never forgotten, is the inspiration for the Mauritian novelist & journalist Shenaz Patel's 3rd book. Mingling various voice, Patel describes, in a bitter, clear-cut style, the tragedy of the inhabitants of the Chagos, those coral islands of the Indian Ocean that were turned into an American military base & whose inhabitants…