The Secrets of São Miguel’s shores
For a second, I am convinced we are landing on water. Its teal surface is calm, immaculate, spoiled only by the opaque shadow of the airplane losing altitude. I close my eyes and think of the wonders scattered on the floor of the Atlantic – tossed coins of those wishing to return, aquatic creatures turned inside-out, anemone sprouting their tentacles, or maybe even cities sunken in their entirety. As a child, I often wished for gills or webbed feet to explore what lay at the bottom. I wanted to find pearls in oysters and wear them as studs in my ears. Optimistically, I would still make the dive for them now. The adrenaline would surely expand my lungs, optimally ration the oxygen, allow me to scoop up the shells. What else would I see down there? The blue below is inviting and I am curious, so I hold my breath and pretend that I am a tiny fish caught in a riptide.
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At last, the undercarriage kisses the landing strip, and I no longer think about breathing underwater. There is too much see above the surface, and I hungrily look around, absorbing the landscape. Stepping on the soil of São Miguel, the capital of the Azores archipelago, I picture it on a map - the island like an eye of a needle and I visible only under a microscope. I often feel tiny in London too, but here the smallness feels different, absolute. It feels like if I scream, no one will hear; my voice would simply be absorbed by the cushion of the ocean.
We enter the terminal in silence.
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Passports stamped and luggage collected, we exit the airport and get a taxi to the hostel in that pleasant haze you find yourself in when traveling. In that same haze, we check-in, unpack, and set off to explore and gather our bearings. There is no one to see us walk down to the promenade; the city is oblivious to our arrival. The streets meander softly, merging only to separate again. Obediently, we follow the white limestone sprinkled on the pavement like breadcrumbs. Where is it leading us? There is no one around to ask so we shuffle our feet along the pattern, walking it like a tightrope, carefully and with intention. The stubby houses sprout left and right, but I grow suspicious they are just facades on an abandoned movie set we have wandered in on. Just one push to unsettle the wooden beams, revealing the emptiness behind the basalt-stained front and violently rupturing the silence. Do I dare shatter the illusion? My hands are glued to my pockets, so I pick up the pace instead. The domestic trinkets refusing to gather dust on the windowsills are enough reassurance that this is a real town with real people.
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A gust of wind gets tangled in my hair and I can smell the ocean. We have reached the boardwalk. The tall monument ahead of us proclaims “The World Goes Through Here”. I believe it, I want to believe it. Although I can’t pin down the exact meaning, there is something triumphant about those words; sharing an intersection point with the trajectory of the World makes you feel infinitely significant. To my right, the water is gently rocking the white sailboats to sleep side to side, and the consistent rhythm of their masts clanking together sends my eyelids downwards. Above our heads, in the slate-blue skies, seagulls dangle like cradle toys on an invisible string. Jerking us out of the lull, before it becomes uncomfortable, is the banner on a booth in distance, which promises adventures. We pick up the pace again and head directly for the glass door.
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Azores is home to numerous species of whales and dolphins, and we want to see them all. The lady running the glass booth knows exactly what we are here for, pre-emptively whipping out the maps and the brochures and the laminated price sheets. Her voice is confident; she has said her piece before, and she will keep saying it, until the sea creatures sink to the bottom and refuse to ever again peak through the waves. I listen carefully. It’s 50 euros for a three-hour boat tour with a biologist accompanying you. She concludes with a punchy finale, “if you see dolphins, we say good. If you see whales, we say good. If you see nothing, it’s money back.” I have never seen either so, to me, it’s a fair deal. My head shakes in agreement, but before I have the chance to verbally commit, she puts her finger to her temple to indicate she has remembered something. “Actually, we do tours in a new place. It’s better, more whales”, she plants a dot somewhere along the north coast, directly across from our location. “Here”, the black ink repeats after her, “Rabo de Piexe”. Rabo de Piexe. I repeat the name a couple of times to get a feeling of it on my tongue, and it readily melts. We leave the booth in anticipation for tomorrow.
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S, the hostel’s chef, has a nomad’s aura. His palms resemble an artist’s sketch, lines upon lines, as he has lived an interesting life and has grasped at every opportunity. He is never in a rush because time never works against him. His gastronomic passion is colours, and every dish takes inspiration from the rainbow. His presence is as much a part of the dinners, as his culinary creations. Our hostel believes that dining is inherently social, thus meals must be shared with strangers who, by the time dessert is finished, turn into acquaintances. We gather in the terrace every day, at 8:30, when the sun begins its retreat. There are always new faces, and we exchange names, again and again. B brings out the starter and we, the guests, tuck in, exchanging impressions from the day. Everyone feels reserved in the first few minutes, stumbling over their words; people really underestimate the intimacy of sharing a meal. But S is there, and he knows how to smooth out the tension. He does not leave until the awkwardness melts away like butter under his calm demeanour and gentle way of questioning. If there are no kitchen commitments, he stays with us and pours himself a generous glass of white sangria.
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That evening, in our naïve excitement, we tell the table of the majestic creatures circling the shores of Rabo de Piexe. Between the spoonfuls, everyone readily digests my rhapsody, until S interrupts. “I wouldn’t go there”, his eyes are fixed on something in the distance, “I don’t think it’s a good idea”. A brief, but heavy silence follows. “Oh…right. How come?”, I ask with genuine curiosity and maybe a tinge of disappointment. S exhales in a languid manner and clasps his hands on the back of his neck. Time never works against him, so he takes it, building suspense until the air is thick with it. “It happened a long time ago...”, he begins. Instinctively, we lean in closer to savour the tale, the oak table in the middle like a hardened, smouldering campfire. In the unassailable haven of the lit veranda enveloped in the darkness of the night, most are receptive to the supernatural. What we heard was indeed a ghost a story, just not the paranormal kind. One more sinister, one which never ceases to haunt, which lingers, which shape-shifts. It happened a long time ago…
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That night I am restless. I know I should sleep, but instead I am recounting the story in my head. Through the window, I can just about discern the outline of the trees bowing to the Atlantic gales. Do these winds know they are the culprits for so much pain? They entice the waves to swallow entire ships, they tear down bridges, they are the bearers of bad news, but then again, it is easy to blame what is shapeless, invisible, voiceless. Unlike us, the winds do not get to choose their destiny; their essence is innate and fixed, alien to consequences of their being, of chaos, of disaster. No matter the outcome, they persist, like they have before and will continue to for infinities to come, as if it weren’t for their exhales, be they lethal or restoring, the World could have no trajectory at all.
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Twenty-one years ago, on a day when the ocean did not resemble a mirror and smoke failed to rise vertically, a boat washed up close enough to the shores of Rabo de Piexe for the villagers to get suspicious. The man at the helm, an Italian national named Vito Rosario Quinci, was no amateur to maritime challenges; he regularly journeyed back and forth from South America to Europe, but before the sheer might of the elements, sailor’s wisdom is often rendered useless. The boat’s damage warranted an immediate inspection at the harbor, but Quinci was stalling, as the inspection would reveal more than just a malfunctioning rudder. An experienced smuggler, Quinci was in possession of about half a ton of uncut cocaine, worth tens of millions. In a desperate attempt to conceal the cargo, he wrapped the bricks in plastic, placed them into fishing nets, and sank them down with an anchor. I told you the floors of the Atlantic were scattered with all kinds of things. Some are manifestations of human greed, and the thing about human greed is no matter how hard you try to drown it, it will float up to the surface. All that’s hidden with malice inevitably reveals itself. The nets were too thin to withstand the tides, which ripped them apart, releasing the bricks into the open. In a matter of hours, they reached the shores of Rabo de Piexe, permanently refracting the direction of the World that went through São Miguel on course to tragedy.
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The paradox of small communities is that they simultaneously nurture a sense of entrapment and attachment. Everyone wants to escape, but once out, the prospect of returning seems irresistible. R is no exception. We stick our thumbs on the side of the road, outside the Gorreana tea plantation, in hopes for a ride to Furnas. She stops and offers to take us all the way to the village. She looks roughly our age and has one of the kindest faces I’ve ever seen. Full of gratitude and excitement, we occupy the backseat of the tiny maroon Skoda. She persistently apologises for her broken English, but as far as we are concerned it’s great and our Portuguese is much worse. Besides, she is doing us a favour, driving us all the way for free. “Today, I do something good”, the rear-view mirror reflects her smile, and we readily return it. We talk about the Azores and London. R has never been, but she tells us she spent a year in Denmark with her sister and considered relocating there permanently. It’s the only time she has been out of the country. “I wanted to leave so badly, but I missed home too much. I wanted to come back. Home is here”, she shares almost apologetically. I nod and lean my head against the cold window; we drive through a pageant of green in all its glory, shades of emerald mixing in with olive dotted with chartreuse. Is this what the world looked like before concrete cured beneath our feet, before metallic spines of skyscrapers found a way to straighten? Perhaps if I was born into this green, I would miss it too. Perhaps big cities would seem oppressive to me. We are silent for the rest of the journey, until the Furnas road-sign appears to our left. The mist of the craters begins smoking us out of the car, and we once again thank R for her generosity.Right before we part ways, R timidly tells us that her mum used to work on the Gorreana tea plantation, where she picked us up from, until she passed away two years ago. “I drive past it often. They all know me there and they let me visit whenever. They still have pictures of her on the walls”, through the tears her eyes are shades of emerald mixed with olive dotted with chartreus, “I thought of her, and then saw you two, and decided, today I do something good.” On this island, ghosts of the past walk hand in hand with the living.
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There must be some fancy psychological explanation for this paradox, this community-oriented Stockholm Syndrome, and I suspect it’s a by-product of extreme intimacy; in communities where most people know each other, being privy to triumphs and downfalls is at once comforting and overwhelming. The degree of solidarity and support is incomprehensible to urban dwellers; people look out for each other, because struggles are shared. However, in such proximity, all anonymity is surrendered, and with it, a space of your own. Having everyone’s eyes fixed on you at all times can suffocate.
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So, when a tragedy strikes small communities, does it sound reverberate further? Are the ripples more pronounced, more aggressive, do they cut the water deeper? When the packages washed up on the beaches of Rabo de Piexe, most villagers had never consumed cocaine (let alone cocaine this pure, and thus potent). While the police carried out an operation to seize as many bricks as possible, the quantities were too large to ensure total elimination; predictably, the drugs ended up in the wrong hands unleashing an epidemic of addiction and overdoses. It is rumoured that cocaine was sold in pint glasses for about 20 euroes each. If that doesn’t get across the oversaturation of the drug, it is said that women served fish coated in cocaine crust and men dissolved it in their morning coffee like sugar. In the first couple of months, the hospitals saw a huge increase in patients experiencing drug-induced issues, ranging from heart palpitations to coma. Many turned to harder drugs like heroine to cope with withdrawal, unleashing a generational curse of perpetual addiction passed from parent to child, from sibling to sibling. Many died of overdoses. Rabo de Piexe, to this day, remains the poorest and most underdeveloped area of the island. According to the Guardian, a methadone van patrols the area as a last resort to keep the addicts functional and minimise the risk of overdosing or consuming laced drugs. It is devastating to think how many lives have been turned upside down. And while the Atlantic winds are blamed for this unlucky concurrence of circumstances, if you dive down deeper to see what’s at the core of the tragedy of Rabo de Piexe, you’ll see human avarice, desperate to drown itself away from public view.
I want to sleep, but I can’t. Instead, I stare at the ceiling and think about women serving mackerel fried in white powder.
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The Word goes through here, and I can feel its pulse in my temples. The winds cannot differentiate where they steer the World, and fairness does not come into play. But, perhaps it corrects itself? Or is it us correcting it? Afterall, we have more agency than the winds – our choices matter, our perceptions matter. For an island that has been through so much, there remains so much beauty. I can see it in the landscape, I can see it on the narrow streets of Sao Miguel, I can see it in R’s eyes, and it takes a lot to resist growing bitter when tragedy surrounds you. Every inch of movement brings the good, the bad, and the something in between. What we need to remember is that we, too, steer the world, and unlike the winds, we choose where to.
When I offer you stories, I offer you the course of the World.
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To avoid forgetting, I’ve trapped the sunrays in a single jar of Azorean pineapple jam in the early hours of the morning to bring home. But keeping it didn’t feel right, so I gave it away. I’ll remember anyway. I’d rather make them smile.