Snapshots from the past

The police housing complex was behind us. As we closed the fence gate I raised my right hand and waved my salaams. Father waved back and returned to his bunker. We were at last on the other side of the fence. No one was in sight. We made a U-turn and headed east to the seashore. Pyramid-like sand dunes lay in wait as if on guard, cloaking the ocean from view. The wind hissed and blew a siren. Squalls of easterly gale encircled the dunes and dispatched gusts of desert sand into space. Handfuls of dry prickly grains leapt at us and I felt a slap and a burning sensation, first on my right cheek and then on my left. The breeze fluttered our bright flowery dresses and transformed them into fans that unfurled and puffed all around our thighs. This was the seashore's way of saying, 'Assalamu alaikum!'

We scurried on and pushed our way through the hilly soft squash and our plastic sandals made thuds and plops on the mushy sand. Soon the whirring ocean waves drowned our footsteps and the air thickened with the pungency of salted shrimps and narwhale. For the second time in two weeks we were at the edge of the sand dunes where the centuries old ocean sprays stiffened the dunes into soggy Pyramids. At the bottom of the molded sand dunes, feathers peeped from underneath a whitewashed withered rock. As we peered around for last week's find, a goat's head skull, a whopping splash plastered us on to the squishy Pyramids for a second or two. We clambered on all fours on the mushy spongy earth and I felt it squeak, slosh and sigh under my feet. The skull was gone.

Twenty or so meters away, a stray leg bone jarred under the weight of the recurrent waves. All around, tiny rock splinters and slippery marble stones were scattered; strewn about the shore as if drizzled from above. A multi-colored pebbles vied for attention under the glimmering baking light. There were sea shells of every sized and shape; some rounded, some already withered and shriveled by time and tide and some returned to the rumbling underbelly fo the ocean before I even caught a glimpse of them. Crustaceans, old and new, broken and whole, sprinkled the white seascape; some glided back into the ocean as swiftly as they came, others resisted the tidal flow and stayed put for a while until another surf surged in and lapped them up. The coastline stretched as far as the eye could see and beyond. Troubled dark blue water extended the east and rubbed the blue benign sky at the horizon. the quivering oceans spewed saline froth and puffed up foam and brought scum, acerbic and white, to the drenched dunes.

I removed my sandals and waded stealthily into the trembling water. The fierce splash that had sucked in and downed my new shoes the week before had now tried to wrench the sands from my hands, but I hung on to them.