When I kind of come around, I get up, I get my betel bag and, staggering, I get out – with the last passengers – on the deck. I look around, a huge port, full of small and big boats harbored side by side, smearing the sky with their coffers’ smoke. And farther away, grey houses, huge, different. No relation to our island’s port. On my island’s port, you can’t get enough of smelling the sea. Here, the air has a heavy smell. It smells of oil and other stinky scents that I cannot imagine where they may come out of.
This time, our ship anchors by the port, so we don’t need a boat to carry us to the land. I feel lost. As if I’m not myself. My head is completely empty, as though there is no mind in it, and I move mechanically, like a puppet. Huge, dark buildings everywhere. Everything around is
