Chapter 1- An Accidental Arrival
Fine grained copious sand particles were stretched to a distance, and the waves receded back and forth. Eyes flicked as the sand pinched the eyeballs and I groaned with the pain, panting and unfurling on the balmy beach.
The rippling water was mitigating the wounds and the blistering sun lurid to my vision.
I stood there for a while and a duo dressed in a dark black, scampered to my half-corpsed flesh sprawling aside a sea-shore, partially reclined to a boulder.
The two middle-aged people, evidently dressed as police, with guns resting in their belts and batons groped in their hands, ambushed the piercing sunlight. I'd see a dark shadow casted over their faces in the blistering rays of sun.
As the sun got its back, one of them dark-skinned with streaks of gray on sombre black hairs, and another with a wheatish complexion prodded my upper arm with a thick black baton. I winced with its contiguity and moaned back with torment.
A screeching sound walloped my ears and a guard exclaimed something I could barely understand, and ushered the other one to the wrecked boat unwavering at the shoreline.
My eyes were flickering with insentientment and I could only hear the shrills of the guards in a rumbling of sea waves.
A guard from a ramshackled boat, rummaging his hands through the redundant stuff, uplifted a few plastic bags with coloured substance in it and screamed surprisingly -- " drogas " ( drugs ). The other one holding a baton upright to my shoulder snickered -- " Comerciante ! " (merchant !).
Soon after, both the quirky men conveyed a dismissive look to my face, spat near my arm and recoiled to the green-brown land.
By a distance, they hurled a half-filled plastic bottle that nudged my forehead after a slight dribble to the lofty bed of sand.
I strewed beside the gigantic sea for a couple of hours. Soon the sun began to melt in the ocean and I practised to stand up to my feet, toppling with misery, faltering with the bumpy surface, sagging as I lumbered to the stiff ground.
I hobbled ahead to the asphalt from the slackened soil, with one hand on my injured thigh. Clothes ripped apart, hairs ruffled with dirt and water, and injuries were overwhelming my skin.
I glanced some people weirdly dressed, men and boys in draped T-shirts with multi-colored capri pants, and girls in tunics and floral maxi dresses and some with half covered thighs with tensed shorts, more often calling attention to their lustrous bead necklaces and bracelets. Their intoxicated eyes with dark and light coloured glasses were glinting the yellow and orange shades of the dying sky.
The long open hairs rustling and swaying with the wind were recounting the shagginess and unkemptness of their rough parched curls and scalps.
Smell of the smoke from cigars and cigarettes surrounded the ambience. Loud music from radio boxes and cell phones were a commotion in a sky gradually occupied with the hues of purple and blue. Cliques were bustling in the narrow streets and under the drab lamp-shades. People were dancing, howling, and wobbling with glass bottles and smoky cigarettes in their hands and clamped between their lips. Girls in short dresses kissing boys and girls and exchanging packets and tobaccos. Everything seemed to be an epitome of spoiled amateurs enjoying their lives in their own ways.
I clasped an iron pole with a fused light bulb, and gaped at the hustle-bustle. The turmoil caused by the cusses and shouts gave me a speculation of Spanish a natal tongue of the enigmatic place.
I tried to interface with the crowd by using gestures and a few Spanish words I knew -- " Hola ! Sì..., Nada De, Help !, Water... ". Barely anyone noticed.
I sat on an iron rusty bench and wheezed heavily with pain. While I reclined back, neck dangling to the backrest, gazing at the birds and darkening clouds, the sound of the loud music was piercing my ears and the smoke playfully tickled my nostrils.
Eventually, I heard a shrill sound travelling to my ears. I inclined my neck and found a sturdy man flanked with two lanky boys, one of them bald, partially hidden by the muscles of the front fellow. He uttered something furiously. His face fluttered with red and stubble bulging with his tone. The boy on the right laughed scornfully and the central man flaunted his brass knuckles steady in the middle of his fingers.
I took a deep breath and something heavy gulped through my throat. I stood up, jumbled to find a way to die via a stoutly built man with a blood swaying in his head, or running for a life on an unending path destined to food and water.
