By Stephanie Hanes

As soon as I slipped into the greenish-blue water, into the enclosure the boat crew simply called "the cage," I realized I couldn't breathe.

It was the cold, I thought. There hadn't been any wet suits my size, so I was wearing one that was too big, without a hood, and the chilly ocean water circulated around my body, mocking any concept of insulation. With one hand, I clutched the iron grab bar in the cage – a safe place to hold on, our guide had told us – and I gulped for air, tasting briny seawater instead.

Then I heard marine biologist Michael Scholl yell at the four of us floating in the cage. "Go down!" That was our cue, he had told us before we got on the boat that morning. It meant we were supposed to hold our breath, duck underwater, and look through our goggles; it meant that a great white shark was swimming nearby.

This, of course, was the point of cage diving with sharks – an increasingly popular adventure in waters near Cape Town, South Africa.

I was already shivering, but didn't know what else to do. I went under.

The shark cage is about three feet wide, and more than six feet high. It is tied to the side of the boat “Shark Fever” and to a number of buoys that keep it floating – so about a foot of the cage is above water. It has a barred lid that is closed as soon as the divers are in the cage – a safety measure, Mr. Scholl told us, to keep a great white from gliding in with us.

(I checked the bars – wide enough to squeeze through if the cage, for some reason, sank. But which would be better, I wondered, drowning in a sinking cage or getting eaten by a shark?)

The water looked brownish and dusty from below the surface. But within seconds, a huge mass of grayish-white flesh was in front of me – no more than inches away. It was ghostlike, floating, its humongous mouth slack-jawed, its dark eye no more than inches from mine.

It was more awesome than scary. The creature seemed so calm; its path through the water cradle-rocking smooth. I could start to understand why some people might be tempted to reach out and stroke it – something that Scholl had warned us was the No. 1 violation of cage diving. It sounded stupid at the time. No touching the great white sharks through the cage, he’d told us. The group of tourists started to laugh.

“No. Seriously,” he said, some people have tried to touch the sharks. "We will cancel the dive for everybody else on the boat and head back to shore.... Those sharks are by far not as dangerous as most people believe but they are still very powerful animals; they might hurt you without intending to."

One swipe of a powerful fin and your arm could shatter, he added.

I had no real desire to touch the shark. But at that first sighting, I also wasn't as frightened as I thought I'd be.

Then, with a wave of panic, I became convinced that my frozen legs were floating uncontrollably through the bars of the cage. I tried to pull my feet closer to my body, and felt like I was flailing. I shot up through the surface and tried to get air.  Not much came in, and I felt my teeth clacking against each other.

"Go down!"

I ducked again, trying to keep track of my bobbing limbs. This time, the shark came toward us ferociously, mouth open, lunging, a rocket with jagged teeth in full display. It was going for a piece of bait the crew had tossed into the water, which was attached to a rope so the thrower could retract it before the shark got it. But the shark might as well have been coming for us. It exploded through the water, an inch from the cage – an inch from me.

The wave shook the cage, and I recoiled into the Italian tourist next to me. I was shivering harder now. As I pushed my head above the surface, I heard one of the crewmembers joke that I was turning a new shade of blue.

"Go down!"

Again, underwater, I see near me the shark, this creature that doesn't survive long in captivity, that is still a mystery to most scientists, that is revered and feared and honored. It is quiet. I have the sense that it is only the shark and I, looking at each other, and I am acutely aware that I am the creature out of place.

Out of breath, I shoot up again to the surface.

“Ah, you are from America. Thank God for George Bush!” It’s the first thing Ghazi Suleiman – a devout Muslim and one of Sudan’s top human-rights lawyers – says as I sit down in his living room in Khartoum one night. Dressed in a white tunic-like robe, he explains why he’s such a fan of President Bush.

First, he says, America’s ouster of Saddam Hussein has put pressure on leaders all over the Muslim world to loosen political and religious strictures. In Sudan – a nation with a predominantly Muslim North and predominantly Christian South - the government has continued to lessen its enforcement of sharia law and its harassment of political dissidents, he says. “I have more freedom because of the war in Iraq.”

Second, Suleiman supports Mr. Bush because, “he understands the problem with Islam.” It’s been used “as a machine gun politically to suppress the masses,” he says. It works as a tool of repression because according to Islamic law, “A good Muslim is not allowed to raise up arms against the state.” Also, politicians use the harsh punishments in Islamic law to disable their opponents.

“Islam is a good religion,” he adds, “but it must be watched. It must be caged.” Bush, he says, understands this. (This certainly isn’t the view Bush has expressed publicly. But I found the interpretation interesting.)

At this point, Suleiman’s friend and fellow lawyer, Gabriel Matur Malek, jumps in. He’s a Christian and a member of one of Sudan’s largest ethnic groups, the Dinkas. There’s an old Dinka saying, he says: “If you do something wrong to me, I forgive you. But I know that someday God will make you hit the son of a chief on the head. Then the chief will punish you.” Some Dinkas believe, he says, “that the Islamic world has hit the son of the chief on the head – and now they’re seeing the wrath of George Bush.”

As the conversation wound down, I bid goodbye. As I headed out the door, Sulieman called out, “You go back to your country and vote for George Bush!” No promises. But it sure was an interesting night.