It was 5.30pm on a Thursday afternoon. The sun was slowly laying down on the Caribbean Sea. It was at this hour that the evening would rise and the silent layers of the island would be waking up.
The water walsed below the fort but soon started moving in a slightly heavier performance. Large waves hit the shore and immediately changed texture as they pulled back from the sand to birth a few baby crabs. Two killy killy birds sat on one of the old fire canons by the fort, looking out over the sea.
When the wind passed by the shore it greeted the birds and took in the smell of the fresh coconut and rusted iron left behind. It decided to pause for a moment and transform into a breeze, to have a conversation with the surroundings. As the resting sun turned it’s light upon the old fort, the breeze decided to inquire.
“What are your memories?” The breeze asked the sea as it touched the wet shells of left behind coconuts.
“My memories? I have many.” The sea answered.
“Tell me the most important one.”
“Who is to tell from what I am built”, the sea replied. “All roads lead to me. I keep many memories and many memories have been taken from me.”
The breeze moved in confusion. It had travelled every place in the world and anytime it asked for memories it would learn about that one time that was so perfectly significant to remember the exactitudes of the place it was visiting. “What do you mean?” The breeze asked.
The sea brushed it’s waters against the large fort. “Over here, they call me the Golden Rock. But the gold here has many colors. And it has many stories. I have held countless bodies in search of it. Once upon a time the gold here was blue. It has had many shapes and movements as well.”
Some of the bricks in the fort had holes in them. The breeze dared not to touch them and looked to the sea for answers.
The two birds flew off north, towards a cloud.
The breeze suddenly felt the meeting of raindrops with treeleaves, coming from a big willowtree in the middle of the fort. “Tourist Office”, it read on the walls behind the tree.
“It is said that within these walls many secrets were kept”. The sea whispered softly as the sun turned the stones into a gold-like orange. “Each year the rain works hard to wash away any of the pain that is left. But each year, after the rainseason dries up, the drought reveals the sadness in the stones again”.
Taunting with the breeze’s curiosity the sea continued: “come back tomorrow and I will tell you about the memories that the animals passed onto me”.
This post was also featured in the September 2018 of issue of the Caribbean Studies Association Newsletter.
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