I’d studied the issue of the dispute with Nicaragua as a university student. In 2012, though, I was in the throes of my own cataclysm. Diabetes, loss, the urge to bury everything that had anything to do with Colombia – especially this island, site of what must be my last happy days in strangers’ memories. Besides, in 2012, a few blocks from my flat, floods of students had inundated Mexico, a hundred thousand, a hundred and twenty thousand; it was the height of the Mexican Spring, and the news covered nothing else. In a way, those mobilisations gave me strength to carry on.

Little by little, the beach I found early that morning – the magazine-cover beach – loses its shine. A brusque man pitches tents, advancing one hammer-blow at a time towards where I sit. The white and blue canopies are going to drive me from my spot, and here come vendors offering beer and cocktails, massages, braids, mangos. I covertly scan my purchase: two small sealed plastic bags full of pressed buds, one darker than the other. It’s time to go home. After a single hour in the sun, I’ve had enough.

On one of my last visits to the island – it comes back to me as I sidestep the clods of shit left behind by street dogs – my mum told me something strange had happened. Her tone was hushed, almost gossipy. People were talking about a sort of pulse that came from the bottom of the sea, to the south of the island. Fishermen and divers reported it and the minister of god-knows-what sent a commission to conduct field expeditions; the candid conclusion was that it was completely inexplicable. They never did account for this mysterious phenomenon, which had caused entire lobster pods and shoals of fish to disappear. It was a faint but steady tremor. Garage churches multiplied, some people fled and took shelter in the hills for a few days, you’d hear sermons about the end-times. The end-times, the beginning-times, the end, the end.

The military truck is parked practically on the pavement in front of my house. Bridling at the intrusion, I creak open the front gate and cross the terrace. I’m hot as the street. Now I open the wooden door and receive a gust of stale air that won’t go away, as if the house won’t forgive me for abandoning it. I readapt to the grievances as I break up the weed and drink a glass of lemonade with brown sugar. The afternoon will slip away fast. At dusk, the smoke.

Roll, light. Deep puff,

swallow, sigh.

Puff, swallow, let go.

Repeat.