Rain and chains..

-Saint Peter sent us the rain!!

He watched at my eyes when telling me those words, with a toothless smile... he was walking happily carrying his bag, as old and wrinkled as his dark skin. However, it was as if the rain was moistening and hydrating both, giving them new life.
Hot weather was nearly unbearable…the air difficult to breath… and the downpour falling, had offered all of us a relief for some minutes.

The sea had veered from the deep blue to the emerald and the clouds at sky had given new greenery to the palms of the Oceanic Avenue, at that magic city of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. The fortress was outlined against the summer storm, now brightened by the coming sun and while observing it, I thought about many years ago. I imagined the eyes of other black men, as black as the one that had spoken to me.

They were arriving at the coast… and when seeing that fortress, they would surely had asked themselves what was waiting them at that land, so distant from theirs. They had been constrained to go on board of those ships… some of them came from far villages, where foreigners had arrived speaking with guns and terror…
They knew that they had lost their freedom but what they didn't know at that moment was that they would never recover it... neither them, nor their children nor their grandsons.
Because even the slavery would be abolished many years after, the chains would be others…. maybe concealed… maybe with different denominations…. but chains at last…

Cloudburst had finished, as fast as it had begun… and my heart was still wondering how would have been life for that old man there, at his faraway Africa.
I imagined him smiling to rain, and feeling gratitude… not to Saint Peter, but to who knows which protectress goddess… thanking the blessing for the arid soil…