THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

It was during that time that the city began to hear about the Captains of the Sands, abandoned children who lived by stealing.  No one ever knew the exact number of children who lived that way.  There were at least a hundred, and more than forty of them slept in the ruins of the old warehouse.  Dressed in rags, dirty, half-starved, aggressive, cursing and smoking cigarette butts, they were in truth the masters of the city, the ones who knew it completely, the ones who lived it completely, its posts.

*

What does it matter either that astronomers say that it was a comet that passed over Bahia that night? What Pedro Bala saw was Dora, changed into a star, going to heaven.  A star with long, blond hair, a star like none other ever in the Bahia night of peace.  Happiness lights up Pedro Bala’s face.  The peace of the night came for him too.  Because he knows now that she will shine for him among a thousand stars in the unmatched sky of the black city.

Amado, Jorge, Captains of the Sands (London: Penguin, 2013)