Lauren Aimee Curtis was born in Sydney in 1988. She is the author of Dolores – shortlisted for the Readings Prize, the UTS Glenda Adams Award and chosen as a New Statesman ‘Book of the Year’ – and Strangers at the Port. Her writing is melodic, intense and knowing, and is marked by a passion for the peculiar.
Hear an audio extract of ‘Strangers at the Port’ here
‘Strangers at the Port’
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I knew no history. I had little concept of time beyond the harvest seasons, the changing weather. When I stood on the fishing dock as a child and looked out at the other islands in the archipelago, I was not thinking of battleships or explorers or sea monsters from mythologies. I was not thinking about what came before or what lay beyond.
What can I tell you about my young life on the island? It is shrouded in the mystery of childhood itself. I try to picture myself age ten, for that is the time when the ‘trouble’ – as you call it – began. But I don’t have an image of this girl. I can’t see her from the outside. There are no photographs. Besides, I don’t trust them.
I could tell you that my only true friend on the island, apart from my older sister, Giovanna, was a donkey with weepy eyes and long lashes, a white patch of fur on his belly I took pleasure in scratching. A rusted bell hung around his neck. He had a bung leg. We called him Shuffles. What is the significance of this donkey, I imagine you asking. Nothing, nothing. Except to say that when he was deemed useless we cared for him. Fed him apples. Tied scarves around his head. A big bow between the ears. I remember thinking I would marry him when the time came. I remember thinking this as if it were the most normal thought in the world.
Do you see what I am trying to say? Our world was very small. When I was ten and Giovanna was twelve, we had never left our island, not even for the others in the archipelago. We knew the islands surrounding us not by their proper names but by what they resembled: a turtle, a dog lying down, a mountain, a jagged crown. Those islands were black or grey or brown depending on the position of the sun. Ours was emerald green.
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Continue reading ‘Strangers at the Beach’ here.
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