You need to meet her in person to experience the full impact of her incomparable spirit. There she is, so thin, looking like a small girl as she sits in her wheelchair, unable to use her voice ever since a tracheostomy was performed to help her breathe. She greets me with a kind of a smile and you don’t immediately notice the obvious signs of the debilitating Motor Neuron disease that has afflicted her for the last three years. It is the same rare condition that afflicted the brilliant scientist, Stephen Hawking, and is also called Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Seen from the air, the line of palm thatched roofs stretches out from the land and into the water, extending the island nearly a kilometre into the ocean. Lush with vegetation, the island is an oasis of green, edged with white sand. For architect Murad Ismail the remote Baa Atoll in the Maldives is the home of his best known creation – the Four Seasons resort Landaa Giraavaru.