from The Crossing

The turtle in search of immortality

On the beach my anxious mother lit the kerosene lamp and walked the whole length of the sands, lighting up the sea in search of the beiro that would take us to the island of Ataúro, visible hunched in the pitch-dark night like a giant turtle which, in search of immortality, had turned itself into land.

By days rather than hours

Our family solitude was soon broken by the arrival of an African cipaio, the descendant of former deportees from Mozambique, the famou...