Pensativities: Selected Essays

As if the Sea Had Another Shore

No one in fact ever travels to an island. Islands exist within us, like a territory we have dreamt of, like a piece of our past that has broken free of time. In me, this insular ghost first appeared when Jonito died and my parents told me he’d gone to an island in the middle of the Chiveve. I was a kid, Jonito was a toad and the Chiveve wasn’t even a real river. How could a little stream like that have enough water to contain an island? But in those days, nothing was real. And Jonito spent my whole childhood, crawling, cautious and sluggish, around that little piece of earth surrounded by dark waters.

This is why it now sounds strange to me that I should be entering into an agreement with Mamudo for him to take me out to the islands tomorrow. I use the term “islands” in the plural, but I shall be lucky if the little sailing dhow gets to any island at all.

I have to confess that it wasn’t easy to reach an agreement. For negotiations to go well, they shouldn’t be easy. At least here, on the coast of Cabo Delgado. The sellers approach as noiselessly as shadows, as if the sand were carpeted to cushion their arrival. In the south of Mozambique, where I come from, they would have accosted me differently:

“I’m selling things.”

And the commercial relationship would have been defined immediately, a non-symmetrical relationship between the person with the product and the one with money. The price is within reach. Any thing above that is considered a tip. Not so here. The approach is more professional from the start. The seller announces himself like this:

“I have a deal for you.”

And we are both on the same side of the table, knowing in advance that there’s going to be a game of verbal give-and-take that will go on for some time. That was how Mamudo approached me. The visit to the “islands” (he kept using the plural) was a complete package. He would provide the boat, he would be the sailor and the steward (serving a meal that he himself would prepare). After agreeing on the price, there was still need for an advance so that he could buy the food. All with the utmost propriety, because as he himself said, everyone in the neighbourhood could vouch for his good name.

The “deal” was completed and a tourist couple who had been listening to the conversation asked whether they could join the expedition. Mamudo then drew up an addendum to the agreement I had already signed.

I went to bed early because our departure the following morning would be at an hour when, according to Mamudo, even the fish would still be sleeping. I dreamt I was some marine creature gliding through those transparent waters, brushing against coral reefs and the dark bellies of dinghies. But in the middle of the night, I was awoken by the noise of a window rattling. A gale was beginning to blow. The fine white sand was being thrown against the wooden walls of my chalet. The beach was gradually invading the floor of my room.

In the morning, it was obvious that the excursion would have to be postponed. When I reached the place at which we were to meet, the tourists were complaining to Mamudo and demanding their money back. But the sailor had already spent the advance the previous day. A second storm was brewing: the tourists’ complaints were getting louder. They were going back to Maputo later that day and didn’t have time to waste. I decided to intervene, placating the foreigners in their excitement. And it worked: at the end of the morning, under a leaden sky, we all sat on Mamudo’s veranda eating the chicken that he had grilled. And there we remained, listening to stories that Mamudo reeled off like the beads on an endless rosary. Each story was a paddle cutting through waters that took us further and further away from the world. At the end, the sailor brought us a basin of warm water to wash our hands. And he said:

“Life is a deal.”

Not a particularly poetic image, but that was his way of romanticizing the miraculous way we had celebrated our encounter. When the tourists took their leave, there was a smile on their faces as if they had, after all, visited an island and its paradise. In the end, the sailor kept his promise: without leaving the beach, he had taken us on a journey to the sea’s far shore.

Article published in İndico, July 2009.